the East. Ohio is the
isthmus that connects the South with the British possessions, and
the East with the West. The Rocky Mountains separate us from the
Pacific. Where is to be our outlet! What are we to do when you
shall have broken up and destroyed this government? We are seven
States now, with fourteen Senators and fifty-one Representatives,
and a population of nine millions. We have an empire equal in area
to the third of all Europe, and we do not mean to be a dependency
or province either of the East or of the South; nor yet an
inferior or secondary power upon this continent; and if we cannot
secure a maritime boundary upon other terms, we will cleave our
way to the seacoast with the sword. A nation of warriors we may
be; a tribe of shepherds never.

No less outspoken were the similar declarations of John A. McClernand,
of Illinois, who said the question of secession disclosed to his vision
a boundless sea of horrors.

[Sidenote] "Globe," Dec. 10, 1860, p. 39.

Peaceable secession, in my judgment, is a fatal, a deadly
illusion.... If I am asked, Why so? I retort the question. How can
it be otherwise? How are questions of public debt, public archives,
public lands, and other public property, and, above all, the
questions of boundary to be settled? Will it be replied that, while
we are mutually unwilling now to yield anything, we will be
mutually willing, after awhile, to concede everything? That, while
we mutually refuse to concede anything now for the sake of national
unity, we will be mutually ready to concede everything by and by
for the sake of national duality? Who believes this? What, too,
would be the fate of the youthful but giant Northwest in the event
of a separation of the slave-holding from the non-slave-holding
States? Cut off from the main Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico on
one hand, or from the eastern Atlantic ports on the other, she
would gradually sink into a pastoral state, and to a standard of
national inferiority. This the hardy and adventurous millions of
the North-west would be unwilling to consent to. This they would
not do. Rather would they, to the last man, perish upon the
battlefield. No power on earth could restrain them from freely and
unconditionally communicating with the Gulf and the great mart of
New York.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 10, 1860,