Most Americans never dreamed of what would come. Thomas Jefferson did, and so did Andrew Jackson. Both understood that in creating a continental nation, the United States would discover extraordinary prosperity and a stable democratic order. They also believed that without that continental power, the United States would be destroyed, as were so many nations and settlements that had existed previously in North America. If the United States occupied a sliver or merely a part of the continent, it would not survive. A continent filled with multiple independent nations, such as Europe, would tear
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