nd we shall find a little more
than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and
populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while
nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors' lines, over which
people may walk and back forth without any consciousness of their
presence. No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass
by writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary. The
fact of separation, if it comes, gives up on the part of the seceding
section the fugitive-slave clause along with all other constitutional
obligations upon the section seceded from, while I should expect no
treaty stipulation would be ever made to take its place.

But there is another difficulty. The great interior region, bounded
east by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the
Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn
and cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of
Tennessee, all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of
Dakota, Nebraska, and part of Colorado, already has above ten millions
of people, and will have fifty millions within fifty years if not
prevented by any political folly or mistake. It contains more than one
third of the country owned by the United States--certainly more than
one million of square miles. Once half as populous as Massachusetts
already is, it would have more than seventy-five millions of people. A
glance at the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great
body of the republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it,
the magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Mountains to the
Pacific being the deepest and also the richest in undeveloped
resources. In the production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all
which proceed from them, this great interior region is naturally one of
the most important in the world. Ascertain from the statistics the
small proportion of the region which has, as yet, been brought into
cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount of its
products, and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the
prospect presented; and yet this region has no seacoast, touches no
ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may
forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and
Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Fra