division brings weakness, imbecility, and a loss of self-respect; it
invites aggressions from foreign powers, and compels to submission to
insults that otherwise would not be given. Not general competence, for
the South is quite as dependent upon the North as the North upon the
South.

Disunion is a violent disruption of great material interests that now
are wedded together. The dream of separate State sovereignty, our great
Union split into two or more confederacies, prosperous and peaceable, is
Utopian. So far from the secession doctrine carried out leading to peace
and prosperity, it can only lead to perpetual war and adversity. The
request to be 'let alone,' is simply a request that the nation should
consent to see the Constitution and Union overthrown, slavery
triumphant, and the great problem that a free people can not choose its
own rulers against the will of a minority prove a disgraceful failure.
It is a request that a nation should purchase a temporary peace at the
price of all that is dear to its liberty and self-respect. The arrogance
of the demand '_to be let alone_,' is only equaled by the iniquity of
the means resorted to, to break up the best Government under the sun.
The question of disunion, of separate State sovereignty, was fully
discussed by our fathers. Thus Hamilton, whose foresight history has
proved to be prophetic, says:

'If these States should be either wholly disunited, or only united
in partial Confederacies, a man must be far gone in Utopian
speculations, who can seriously doubt that the subdivisions into
which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests
with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests, as
an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men
are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a