Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

That the restoration of the integrity of our Union is to be accomplished without a vast expenditure of treasure, and perhaps of blood, no one anticipates. We all know something of the cost of European wars, but we know also our own resources, and the immense stake for which we will be fighting. Our fathers fought for seven years for our national freedom, and the spirit abroad throughout our land indicates that their sons, if necessary, will fight seven years more to save it from destruction and disgrace. Whether the debt incurred for its preservation shall be hundreds or thousands of millions, it will be a sacred legacy to future generations. A debt of five hundred millions, as remarked by an English journalist, would leave this nation less severely taxed than any nation of Europe.

If any man supposes that this Republic can be advantageously sundered into two, let him cast his eye upon the map and endeavor to find a natural line to separate the two confederacies. The geographical formation of our country indicates that it is one; nature has provided no boundary line between the North and the South; no river like the Mississippi, no mountain chain like the Alleghanies, or the Rocky Mountains, running from the West to the Atlantic, and forming an Alpine boundary to divide the sections. On the contrary, the Father of waters stretches out his great arms to the East and to the West, bearing on his bosom to the Gulf the generous products of the valleys which they fertilize, and carrying back in their place the cotton, rice, and sugar of our Southern borders, and imports from foreign climes.

The Mississippi, source and channel of prosperity to North and South alike in every mile of its progress; on the West to Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana; on the East to Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, proclaims to the citizens of the immense region which it waters through thousands of miles in extent, from North to South, and East to West, that our country is one and indivisible.

Our duty to the South forbids our acquiescence in this rebellion, for it would reverse the American policy for the last half century, and reconsign to foreign invasion, to anarchy and ruin, the immense territories which we have rescued from European sway, and united as parts of our great nation.

Look back to the olden time and see what the Southern country would again become. Trace the history of Florida from the days of Charles V., from the adventures of De Leon and De Soto, the persecution of Protestants from France, and the retaliation on the murderous Spaniards; the capture of St. Augustine by Sir Francis Drake, the buccaneering inroads of the English, the transfer of Florida to the British crown; its partial settlement from Italy and Greece, the privateering exploits in our revolution, the capture of Baton Rouge and Pensacola, until its purchase by our Government in 1819.

Remember that the Spaniards navigated the Gulf of Mexico for two centuries, without discovering that it was the outlet of the great river of the North; a fact which, perhaps, induces the Southern confederates to imagine that we also may be persuaded to forget its existence. Look at Louisiana from the days of Law and the Mississippi bubble to its cession to Spain in 1762, and its retrocession to France in 1800, when we hastened to buy it from the First Consul, and you will find nothing in Florida, in Louisiana, nor indeed in Texas, to indicate even the first beginning of the prosperity which has been so rapidly developed under the fostering protection of the Federal Government.

Let the American Union be dismembered, and what is to prevent foreign powers from reentering upon our national domain from which at such great cost and labor they have been ousted?

An old officer of the French empire writing to the Courrier des Etats-Unis, has predicted that in the first place France would retake Louisiana, according to ancient treaties, that Spain would reclaim Florida, that England perhaps would seek to appropriate Oregon, and that Mexico, under foreign protection, would retake New Mexico, Texas, and California; or supposing that we should consent to the establishment of the so-called Southern Confederacy, which we know to be a mere military despotism, what possible guarantee can we have for peace in the future, when each State reserves the right to secede at pleasure and enter at will into foreign alliances, inaugurating universal chaos and chronic dissolution? Even now, while the struggle is being waged, the leading men of South Carolina, already sick of their independence before it is accomplished, repudiate republican institutions, and sigh for a British prince to lend the odor of royalty to the aristocracy which they boast — an aristocracy based not upon historic deeds and noble heroism, but simply upon the color of their skins, and their despotic dominion over helpless slaves — an aristocracy whose wealth is invested in human flesh, and whose revenues are collected in the field by the lash, and on the auction block by the hammer I!

Let our Union be divided with the view of accomplishing present peace, and not only would the United States fall from her position of a first-class power to that of a minor republic, with a contracted seaboard and a defenseless border — but the act of separation would inaugurate an exposure to hostilities; first, from our new and unfriendly neighbor, and then from every foreign power with which one or all of the Southern States might choose to form an alliance. Either contingency would necessarily change our national policy, require the maintenance of a standing army, and complicate