ways ready to
defend themselves against their rivals. Questions of customs and of
frontiers; rivalries, jealousies, in fact all the scourges of old Europe
will overwhelm America at once and together; she will have to establish
custom houses over an extent of five hundred leagues; to build and arm
forts on this immense frontier, to keep on foot large standing armies,
to maintain a naval force; in other words, she will have to renounce her
old Constitution, to weaken her municipal independence by the
centralization of power. Farewell to the old and glorious liberty!
Farewell to those institutions which made America the common refuge of
all who could not exist in Europe! The work of Washington will be
destroyed; the situation will be full of dangers and difficulties. I
understand how the prospect of such a future can delight those who have
never been able to forgive America her prosperity and greatness; history
is full of such sad jealousies. Still better I understand and approve of
this, that a people accustomed to liberty should risk its last man and
give its last dollar to preserve the inheritance of its fathers. I do
not understand why there are persons in Europe who believe themselves
liberal when they reproach the North for its generous resistance by
advising her disgracefully to relinquish her rights. War is certainly a
frightful evil, but from war a durable peace may issue, the
South may tire of a struggle which exhausts its strength, the old Union
may again arise in its glory, and the future may be saved. What but
endless war and numberless miseries can result from a separation? This
dismemberment of a country is an irreparable evil; no people, no nation,
will submit to such a calamity until it no longer has any power to
resist.

Up to this time I have reasoned in the supposition that the South would
remain an independent power. But unless the West joins the confederates,
and the Union reestablishes itself against New England, this
independence is a chimera: it might last for some time; but in ten or
twenty years, when the free population of the West would have doubled or
trebled itself, how would the South, necessarily much enfeebled by slave
culture, compare with a people, thirty millions in number, enclosing it
on two sides? To resist successfully, the South would be forced to rely
on Europe; it could only live when protected by a great naval power, and
England is the only one in a condition to guarantee for it