Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/285

272 infamy, and the curses of mankind hang over our memory for ever and ever, world without end! II. Suppose we separate. The North may at length feel some little manhood; become angry at this continual insult, and be roused by fear of actual ruin ; calculate the value of the Union, and find it not worth while any longer to be tied to this offensive partner. See what may follow in the attempt at dissolution. Look at the comparative military power—the men and money—of the North and South.

Omitting California and the territories, the North has fifteen million freemen, or three million men able to do military duty; and also thirty-two hundred million dollars ($3,200,000,000); while the South has fifteen hundred million dollars ($1,500,000,000), six million five hundred thousand freemen, and three million five hundred thousand slaves. But the latter are a negative quantity to be subtracted from the whole. So the effective population is three millions, or six hundred thousand men able to bear arms. Such is the comparative personal and material force of the two. I will not speak of the odds in the quality of Northern and Southern men, looking now only at the obvious quantitative difference.

The contest could not be doubtful or long. The North could dictate the terms of separation, and would probably take two-thirds of the naval and military property of the nation, and all of the territories. Then would come the question, where shall be the line of demarcation between Freedom and Slavery? I think the North might fix the Potomac and Ohio as the Northern, and the Mississippi as the Western limit of Slavery. Depend upon it, we shall not leave more land than these boundaries indicate to the cause of bondage. Then the ten Barbary States of America might found a new empire, with despotism for their central idea; take the name of Braggadocia, Servilia, Violentia, Thrasonia, or, in plainer Saxon title, Bullydom; and become as famous in future history as the " Five Cities of the Plain" were in the past. But would Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, consent to be border States, with no Fugitive Slave Bill to fetter their bondmen?

I do not propose disunion — at present, I would never leave the black men in bondage, or the whites subject to