William Augustus Mowry

"The "Stars and Stripes" now float over a vast continent, extending from the Atlantic to the Great Ocean, and from the Gulf to the Frozen Seas of the North. The Great Republic may now be considered as embracing four nearly equal quarters, of about nine hundred thousand square miles each:—the first being the original territory east of the Mississippi River; the second, the Louisiana Purchase; the third, Texas and the Mexican Provinces; and the fourth covering Oregon and Alaska."