aginative reality to the national idea;
just as the second message had aimed to give argumentative reality.

"There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary
upon which to divide. Trace through from east to west, upon the line
between the free and the slave Country and we shall find a little
more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and
populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while
nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors' lines, over
which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their
presence. No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass by
writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary.

"But there is another difficulty. The great interior region, bounded
east by the Alleghanies, 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 ten millions
of people, and will have fifty millions 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
one million square miles. Once half as populous as Massachusetts already
is, it would have more than seventy-five millions of 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 the statistics the small proportion of the
region which has, as yet, been brought into cultivation, and also the
large and rapidly increasing amount of its 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