h, from East to West, upon the line
between the Free and Slave Country, and 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
back and 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 stipulations would ever be 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 million
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 square miles. Once half as
populous as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than
seventy-five million 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 sea coast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one Nation, its
people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe b