e sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see
that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, _in its
twofold character_.

Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of
all the members of this great republic to separate! A voluntary
separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would
be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede?
What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I
to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in
common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other
house of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to
remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and
shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, Sir, our ancestors, our fathers and
our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with
prolonged lives, would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our
grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation
should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the
harmony of that Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy
and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the
navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty
States to defend itself? I know, although the idea has not been stated
distinctly, there is to be, or it is supposed possible that there will
be, a Southern Confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this
statement, that any one seriously contemplates such a state of things. I
do not mean to say that it is true, but I have heard it suggested
elsewhere, that the idea has been entertained, that, after the
dissolution of this Union, a Southern Confederacy might be formed. I am
sorry, Sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of, or dreamed of,
in the wildest flights of human imagination. But the idea, so far as it
exists, must be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side
and the free States to the other. Sir, I may express myself too
strongly, perhaps, but there are impossibilities in the natural as well
as in the physical world, and I hold the idea of a separation of these
States, those that are free to form one government, and those that are
slave-holding to form another, as such an impossibility. We could not
separate the States by any such line, if we were to draw it. We