now enjoys, has been acquired mainly through the instrumentality of the
present government. While this agent continues, the capacity of
attaining to still higher degrees of prosperity exists also. We have,
while this lasts, a political life capable of beneficial exertion, with
power to resist or overcome misfortunes, to sustain us against the
ordinary accidents of human affairs, and to promote, by active efforts,
every public interest. But dismemberment strikes at the very being which
preserves these faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless hand on
this great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only what we possess,
but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new possessions. It would
leave the country not only bereft of its prosperity and happiness, but
without limbs, or organs, or faculties, by which to exert itself
hereafter in the pursuit of that prosperity and happiness.

_Dismemberment of the United States the Greatest of Evils_

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous
war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may
renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it;
if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation,
they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a
trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty
pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the
dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall
reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again
the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame
together the skillful architecture which unites national sovereignty
with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, if
these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and
the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy