which
has yet been brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly
increasing amount of 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 Francisco; but
separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present
rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off
from some one or more of these outlets, not perhaps by a physical barrier,
but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

And this is true, wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed. Place
it between the now free and slave country, or place it south of Kentucky
or north of Ohio, and still the truth remains that none south of it can
trade to any port or place north of it, and none north of it can trade to
any port or place south of it, except upon terms dictated by a government
foreign to them. These outlets, east, west, and south, are indispensable
to the well-being of the people inhabiting and to inhabit this vast
interior region. Which of the three may be the best is no proper question.
All are better than either, and all of right belong to that people and to
their successors forever. True to themselves, they will not ask where a
line of separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be no
such line.

Nor are the marginal regions less interested in these communications to
and through them to the great outside world. They, too, and each of them,
must have access to this Egypt of the West without paying toll at the
crossing of any national boundary.

Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the land
we inhabit; not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing
of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In all its
adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation. In fact,
it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the
separation might have cost.

Our strife pertains to ourselves--to the passing generations of men--and
it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one
generation.

In this view I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and
articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States:

Resolved