Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/113

Rh have heard it suggested elsewhere, that that idea has originated in a design to separate. I am sorry, sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of, or dreamed of, in the wildest flights of human imagination. But the idea must be of a separation including the slave states upon one side, and the free states on the other. Sir, there is not—I may express myself too strongly, perhaps, but some things, some moral things, are almost as impossible as other natural or physical things; and I hold the idea of a separation of these states, those that are free to form one government, and those that are slaveholding to form another, as a moral impossibility. We could not separate the states by any such line, if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here to-day, and 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 off that river, and leaving free states at its source and its branches, and slave states down near its mouth. 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 any body 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 River be connected, in the new republic, with the man who lives on the southern extremity of the Cape of Florida? 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 great country—to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government! No, sir; no, sir! There will be no secession. Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession!

Sir, I hear there is to be a convention held at Nashville. I am bound to believe, that, if worthy gentlemen meet at Nashville in convention, their object will be to adopt counsels conciliatory—to advise the south to forbearance and moderation, and to advise the north to forbearance and moderation, and to inculcate principles of brotherly love and affection, and attachment to the constitution of the country as it now is. I believe, if the convention meet at all, it will be for this purpose; for certainly, if they meet for any purpose hostile to the Union, they have been singularly inappropriate in their selection of a place. I remember, sir, that when the treaty was concluded between France and England at the peace of Amiens, a stern old Englishman, and an orator, who disliked the terms of the peace as ignominious to England, said in the House of Commons, that, if King William could know the terms of that treaty, he would turn in his coffin. Let me commend the saying of Mr. Windham, in all its