s line can be made any more difficult to pass by writing it down on
paper or parchment as a national boundary. The fact of separation, if it
comes, gives up on the part of the seceding section the fugitive-slave
clause along with all other constitutional obligations upon the section
seceded from, while I should expect no treaty stipulation would ever be
made to take its place.

But there is another difficulty. The great interior region bounded east
by the Alleghenies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky
Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and
cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of Tennessee,
all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri,
Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of Dakota, Nebraska, and part
of Colorado, already has above 10,000,000 people, and will have 50,000,000
within fifty years if not prevented by any political folly or mistake.
It contains more than one third of the country owned by the United
States--certainly more than 1,000,000 square miles. Once half as populous
as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than 75,000,000 people. A
glance at the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great
body of the Republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it, the
magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific
being the deepest and also the richest in undeveloped resources. In the
production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all which proceed from them
this great interior region is naturally one of the most important in the
world. Ascertain from statistics the small proportion of the region which
has yet been brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly
increasing amount of products, and we shall be overwhelmed with
the magnitude of the prospect presented. And yet this region has no
seacoast--touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people
now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South
America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco; but
separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present
rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off
from some one or more of these outlets, not perhaps by a physical barrier,
but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

And this is true, wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed. Place
it between the no