umph of the North will be even much more complete than we imagine
to-day. I do not know what is to happen, but this I know: the North is
more populous, richer, more united; European immigration goes only to
the North, European capital goes only to the North. Of what elements is
the population of the South composed? The first six States that
proclaimed their separation number exactly as many slaves as freemen.
What a position! Is it probable indeed that this confederation contrary
to nature, in which each white will be charged with guarding a black,
can afford a long career? The South, divided, weakened, bearing in its
side the continually bleeding wound of slavery, reduced to choose in the
end between the direful plans which must destroy after having dishonored
it, and the Union which consolidates its interests while thwarting its
passions--is it possible that the South will not return to the Union?

Something tells me that if the Union be dissolved, it will be formed
again. A lasting separation is more difficult than is imagined. Face to
face with Europe, face to face with the United States, the great
republic of the South would find it too difficult to live. To live at
peace is impossible; to live without peace is not to be thought of. The
great Southern republic must perish surely by its failure, and still
more surely by its success, for this monstrous success will draw down
its destruction. There is in America a necessity, as it were, of union.
Unity is at the foundation, diversity is only on the surface; unity is
bound up with the national life itself, with race, origin, belief,
common destiny, a like degree of civilization, in a word, with profound
and permanent causes; diversity proceeds from the accidents of
institutions.

Looking only at the province of interests, is it easy to imagine an
irremediable rupture between New York and Charleston, between the valley
of the Mississippi and New Orleans? What would the valley of the
Mississippi be without New Orleans, and New Orleans, isolated from the
vast country of which it is the natural market? Can you fancy New York
renouncing half her commerce, ceasing to be the broker of cotton, the
necessary medium between the South and Europe? Can you fancy the South
deprived of the intervention and credit which New York assures her? The
dependence of the North and the South is reciprocal; if the South
produces the cotton, it is the North which furnishes the advances, then
pu