G recognized as the first natural and inalienable right; and that this right has been consistently asserted in every direction ; and it is the Union alone and above all which protects this fundamental right against all possible assumption of power by single states, and which gives it permanent and national guarantees. The Union, therefore, represents the principles of free Labor, ■ free Intercourse, free River and Lahe Navigation, free Schools, free Press, and free Religion. The Union guarantees in its entire immense extent of 3,250,000 square miles (almost as large as all Europe), to all its present and future inhabitants the most unlimited liberty of thought, commerce, and industry. Unquestionably it is mainly this great principle which has given to the Union its vast power and prosperity, and which cannot fail to secure to it a still more glorious future. Of what use would be to this country its rich and fertile lands, if the West were separated from the East, and the North from the South, by all sorts of inter-state restrictions and jealousies ; if the people were compelled to surrender regularly a large portion of its working population to standing armies ; or if it were restrained in the free exercise of its labor and industry by interstate tariffs, or by a system of guilds, like that remnant of the middle ages in Europe? In the Old Country, where a different condition of things requires a different system of government, the people are proud, and very properly so, of the great progress which has been made there, in facilitating intercourse amongst the different peoples, in the abolition of river dues, guilds, the progress of free trade, and the emancipation of the serfs; and yet all these achievements of modern times are but fragments of the great and general freedom of labor, which the Union guarantees for all time to come, to every citizen, native and adopted, as well as to the future immigrant. Viewed from this stand-point, the attempt of the Rebels to destroy the Union, and to establish in its stead a Confederacy based upon Human Slavery as its corner stone, cannot be regarded as other than a crime against this Nineteenth Century, and as an attempt against all recognized human rights. Can any one doubt as to the result of this conflict? As well might we assume that England would re-enact its former system
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