known, you have a sacred duty to perform to your ancestry and to
posterity. The time is at hand when for good or for evil, the
questions which have agitated the public mind are to be solved. Is it
true as asserted by northern agitators that there is such contrariety
between the North and the South that they cannot remain united! Or
rather, is it not true as our fathers deemed it, that diversity in the
character of the population, in the products and in the institutions
of the several States formed a reason for their union and tended to
secure to their posterity the liberty which was the common object of
their love, and by cultivating untrammeled intercourse and free trade
between the States, to duplicate the comforts of all?

There was a time when the test of patriotism was the readiness to
sever the bond which bound the colonies to the mother country.
Recently our people with joyous acclamation have welcomed the
connection of the United States with Great Britain, by the Atlantic
cable. The one is not inconsistent with the other. When the home
government violated the charters of the colonies, and assumed to
control the private interests of individuals, the love of political
liberty, the determination at whatever hazard to maintain their
rights, led our fathers to enter on the trial of revolution. Having
achieved the separation, they did what was in their power for the
development of commerce. They secured free trade between the States,
without surrendering State independence. Their sons, not only free,
but beyond the possibility of future interference in their domestic
affairs, now seek the closest commercial connection with the country
from which their fathers achieved a political separation.

Had the proposition been made to consolidate the States after their
independence had been achieved, all must know it would have been