men whose opinions respecting their country have weight at home and
are entitled to weight abroad. I mention this merely to show how
insurmountable would be the difficulty of preventing secession, let
which side win that may.

"We will never abandon the right to the mouth of the Mississippi."
That, in all such arguments, is a strong point with men of the
Northern States--perhaps the point to which they all return with
the greatest firmness. It is that on which Mr. Everett insists in
the last paragraph of the oration which he made in New York on the
4th of July, 1861. "The Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers," he
says, "with their hundred tributaries, give to the great central
basin of our continent its character and destiny. The outlet of
this system lies between the States of Tennessee and Missouri, of
Mississippi and Arkansas, and through the State of Louisiana. The
ancient province so called, the proudest monument of the mighty
monarch whose name it bears, passed from the jurisdiction of France
to that of Spain in 1763. Spain coveted it--not that she might
fill it with prosperous colonies and rising States, but that it
might stretch as a broad waste barrier, infested with warlike
tribes, between the Anglo-American power and the silver mines of
Mexico. With the independence of the United States the fear of a
still more dangerous neighbor grew upon Spain; and, in the insane
expectation of checking the progress of the Union westward, she
threatened, and at times attempted, to close the mouth of the
Mississippi on the rapidly-increasing trade of the West. The bare
suggestion of such a policy roused the population upon the banks of
the Ohio, then inconsiderable, as one man. Their confidence in
Washington scarcely restrained them from rushing to the seizure of
New Orleans, when the treaty of San Lorenzo El Real, in 1795,