ischief, in the struggle for the imperial power, the
crown of the American presidency, I sometimes tremble for its fate.

Two great parties are now dividing the Union on this question. It is
evident to every man of sense, who examines it, that practically, in
respect to slavery, the result will be the same both to North and
South; Kansas will be a free State, no matter what may be the
decision on this question. But how that decision may affect the
fortunes of those parties, is not certain; and there is the chief
difficulty. But the greatest question of all is, How will that
decision affect the country as a whole?

Two adverse yet concurrent and mighty forces are driving the vessel
of State towards the rocks upon which she must split, unless she
receives timely aid--a paradox, yet expressive of a momentous and
perhaps a fatal truth.

There is no hope of rescue unless the sober-minded men, both of the
North and South, shall, by some sufficient influence, be brought to
adopt the wise maxims and sage counsels of the great founders of our
government.

TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILROADS (Delivered in the United States Senate,
February 17th, 1858. in Support of the Pacific Railroad Bill)

An objection made to this bill is, the gigantic scale of the
projected enterprise. A grand idea it is. A continent of three
thousand miles in extent from east to west, reaching from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, is to be connected by a railway! Honorable
Senators will remember, that over one thousand miles--one-third of
this whole expanse of the continent--the work is already
accomplished, and that chiefly by private enterprise. I may, as a
safe estimate, say, that a thousand miles of this railroad leading
from the Atlantic to the West, upon the line of the lakes, and
nearly as much upon a line further south, are either completed, or
nearly so. We have two thousand miles yet to compass, in the
execution of a work which it is said has no parallel in the history
of the world. No, sir; it has no parallel in the history of the
world, ancient or modern, either as to its extent and magnitude, or
to its consequences, beneficent and benignant in all its bearings on
the interests of all mankind. It is in these aspects, and in the
contemplation of these consequences, that it has no parallel in the
history of the world--changing the course of the commerce of the
world--bringing the West almost in contact, by reversing the
ancient line of comm