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[227] way, which Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party of his day denounced as ‘the gravest of crimes.’

If the considerations to which I have referred were entitled to have any influence in determining the policy of the Southern States because of Mr. Lincoln's election, that influence should have been most strongly felt in the border States, where the danger of mischief was greater, and yet these were the States that adhered most steadfastly to the Union. This fact tends strongly to show the difference of opinion between the people of the cotton and of the border slave States, and serves to illustrate the sincerity of the attachment of the latter to the Union.

I have thus endeavored to show you how matters stood before the 15th of April, 1861, and to point out the important fact so essential to a correct understanding of the history of that eventful period, and yet so constantly overlooked, disregarded, or misrepresented, that with reference to a dissolution of the Union for any cause existing before the 15th of April, the difference between the people of the border States and those of the cotton States was as clearly marked as the difference between the North and South had been before the election of Mr. Lincoln.

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