So the process has gone on.

There were thirteen original States and six more have become members of the Union without having been through the status of territories, making nineteen in all; while twenty-nine States have developed from the colonial stage.

The incorporation of the colonies into the Union is not merely a political fact; the inhabitants of the colonies become an integral part of the parent nation and in turn become the progenitors of new colonies.
If such a process be long continued, the colonies will eventually outnumber the parent States, and the colonists will outnumber the citizens of the original States and will themselves become the nation.
Such has been the history of the United States and its people.

By 1850, indeed, one-half of the population of the United States was living west of the Alleghany Mountains, and at the present time approximately seventy per cent are to be found in the West.
The importance of the Ordinance of 1787 was hardly overstated by Webster in his famous debate with Hayne when he said: "We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." While improved means of communication and many other material ties have served to hold the States of the Union together, the political bond was supplied by the Ordinance of 1787, which inaugurated the American colonial system..