60 draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could. Sir, nobody can look over the face of this country at the present moment, nobody can see where its population is the most dense and growing, without being ready to admit, and compelled to admit, that ere long America will be in the valley of the Mississippi. Well, now, sir, I beg to inquire what the wildest enthusiast has to say on the possibility of cutting that river in two, and leaving free States at its source, and its branches, and slave States down near its mouth, each forming a separate Government ? Pray? sir; pray, sir, let me say to the people of this country that these things are worthy of their pondering and of their consideration. Here, sir, are five millions of freemen in the free States north of the river Ohio: can anybody suppose that this population can be severed, by a line that divides them from the territory of a foreign and an alien Government, down somewhere, the Lord knows where, upon the lower banks of the Mississippi ? What would become of Missouri ? Will she join the arrondissement of the slave States ? Shall the man from the Yellow Stone and the Platte be connected, in the new Republic, with the man who lives on the southern extremity of the Cape of Plorida ? Sir, I am ashamed to pursue this line of remark. I dislike it, I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up! to break up this great Government, to dismember this glorious coun
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