a 13 two Carolinas, and Georgia, which were originally English colonies, all the rest of the South is settled upon lands Bought and paid for by the Union. That is to say, the North has borne the greatest part of the expense. Louisiana was sold to the United States in 1801, by the first consul, for fifteen millions of dollars. Florida was purchased of Spain in 1820, for about five millions. The Mexican war, with its cost of a billion of money and its cruel losses, 5vas necessary to secure Texas. In short, of all the rich territories that border the Mississippi and the Missouri from their source to their mouth, there is not one inch but has been paid for by the Union, and therefore belongs to it. It is the Union that has driven out or indemnified the Indians. It is the Union that has built all the forts, the docks, the lighthouses, and harbors. It is the Union that made all these desert places of value, and rendered colonization possible. Northern as well as Southern men .cleared and planted these lands, and transformed into flourishing States these sterile solitudes. Can old Europe, where unity is everywhere the result of conquest, show us a title to property so sacred as this ? A country more entirely the common work of a whole people ? And now, shall a minority be permitted to appropriate a territory which belongs to all, and to choose for themselves the best part of it ? Can a minority be permitted to destroy the Union and to imperil its first benefactors, without whom, indeed, it could not exist? 'to say that this revolt is not impious, is to say that caprice constitutes right. It is not, however, a political reason only, which opposes the separation. Its geography, the situation of the different portions, obliges the United States to form one nation. Strabo, contemplating the vast country we now call France, said, with the foresight of genius, that beholding the nature of the territory and the courses of the streams, it was evident that the forests of Gaul, then thinly inhabited, would become the home of a great people.* Nature had prepared our territory to become the theatre of a great civilization. This is no less true of America. She is, in truth, only a double valley with an imperceptible head-level and two great water courses, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. No high mountains which separate and isolate peoples; no natural barriers like the Alps and Pyren es.
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