Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/109

 CLAY dissolved, would the dissolution of the Union restore slavery in the District of Columbia? Are you safer in the recovery of your fugitive slaves, in a state of dissolution or of severance ^f the Union, than you are in the Union itself? '^But, I must take occasion to say that, in my opinion, there is no right on the part of one or more of the States to secede from the Union. War and the dissolution of the Union are iden- tical and inseparable. Th ere can be no disso lu- tion of_t he Union except by' consent or^^S z-^^^^*- No one can expect, m the existing state of things, that that consent would be given, and war is the only alternative by which a dissolution could be accomplished. And, Mr. President, if consent were given — if possibly we were to separate by mutual agreement and by a given line, in less than sixty days after such an agreement had been executed, war would break out between the free and slave-holding portions of this Union — between the two independent portions into which it would be erected in virtue of the act of separation. Yes, sir, sixty days — in less than sixty days, I believe, our slaves from Kentucky would be fleeing over in numbers to the other side of the river, would be pursued by their owners, and the excitable and ardent spirits who would engage in the pursuit would be restrained by no sense of the rights which appertain to the independ- ence of the other side of the river, supposing it, then, to be the line of separation. They would 99