Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/182

148 York,” but will that be possible after the Union is dissolved? Mark well what position the North will take, if, by a revolutionary act against our national government, you should attempt to cut loose from the Union. The territories are the property of the Union as such; those who in a revolutionary way desert the Union, give up their right to the property of the Union. That property, the territories, will remain where the Union remains, and the slave-power would do well first to consider how much blood it can spare, before it attempts to strip the Union of a single square foot of ground. Thus, while according to Judge Douglas, you now have a chance to acquire slave territory by the operation of his “great principle,” that chance will be entirely gone as soon as by a secession you give up the least shadow of a right to the property of the Union.

Lastly, you threaten to dissolve the Union, because the North refuses to submit to the exclusive economic policy of the planting interests. You want to establish the commercial and industrial independence of the slaveholding States. For years you have held Southern conventions and passed resolutions to that effect. You resolved not to purchase any longer the products of Northern industrial labor, but to build your own factories; not to carry on your exporting and importing trade any longer by Northern ships, but to establish steamship lines and commercial connections of your own. Well enough. Why did you not do it, after having resolved it? Was it want of money? You have an abundance of it. Was it want of determination? Your resolutions displayed the fiercest zeal. What was it, then? And, indeed, the failure is magnificently complete. Senator Mason's homespun coat, sewn with Yankee thread and needle, adorned with Yankee buttons, hangs in the closet, a lone star in solitary splendor. After trying to establish a large shoe factory for the South,