The Same Subject Continued
(Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States)
For the Independent Journal.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:
IT IS sometimes asked, with an air of seeming triumph, what
inducements could the States have, if disunited, to make war upon
each other? It would be a full answer to this question to
say--precisely the same inducements which have, at different times,
deluged in blood all the nations in the world. But, unfortunately
for us, the question admits of a more particular answer. There are
causes of differences within our immediate contemplation, of the
tendency of which, even under the restraints of a federal
constitution, we have had sufficient experience to enable us to form
a judgment of what might be expected if those restraints were
removed.
Territorial disputes have at all times been found one of the
most fertile sources of hostility among nations. Perhaps the
greatest proportion of wars that have desolated the earth have
sprung from this origin. This cause would exist among us in full
force. We have a vast tract of unsettled territory within the
boundaries of the United States. There still are discordant and
undecided claims between several of them, and the dissolution of the
Union would lay a foundation for similar claims between them all.
It is well known that they have heretofore had serious and animated
discussion concerning the rights to the lands which were ungranted
at the time of the Revolution, and which usually went under the name
of crown lands. The States within the limits of whose colonial