rned him of
his fate. But the hour of reflection had come, and nature and conscience
wrought within him, until at length "_he came to himself_."

And now, ye men of the new States of the South! You are not of the
original thirteen. The battle had been fought and won, the Revolution
achieved, and the Constitution established, before your States had any
existence as States. You came to a prepared banquet, and had seats
assigned you at table just as honorable as those which were filled by
older guests. You have been and are singularly prosperous; and if any
one should deny this, you would at once contradict his assertion. You
have bought vast quantities of choice and excellent land at the lowest
price; and if the public domain has not been lavished upon you, you
yourself will admit that it has been appropriated to your own uses by a
very liberal hand. And yet in some of these States, not in all, persons
are found in favor of a dissolution of the Union, or of secession from
it. Such opinions are expressed even where the general prosperity of the
community has been the most rapidly advanced. In the flourishing and
interesting State of Mississippi, for example, there is a large party
which insists that her grievances are intolerable, that the whole body
politic is in a state of suffering; and all along, and through her whole
extent on the Mississippi, a loud cry rings that her only remedy is
"Secession," "Secession." Now, Gentlemen, what infliction does the State
of Mississippi suffer under? What oppression prostrates her strength or
destroys her happiness? Before we can judge of the proper remedy, we
must know something of the disease; and, for my part, I confess that the
real evil existing in the case appears to me to be a certain inquietude
or uneasiness growing out of a high degree of prosperity and
consciousness of wealth and power, which sometimes lead men to be ready
for changes, and to push on unreasonably to still higher elevation. If
this be the truth of the matter, her political doctors are about right.
If the complaint spring from over-wrought prosperity, for that disease
I have no doubt that secession would prove a sovereign remedy.

But I return to the leading topic on which I was engaged. In the
department of invention there have been wonderful applications of
science to arts within the last sixty years. The spacious hall of the
Patent Office is at once the repository and proof of American inventive
art and ge