o states, and if it be right for a state or a county to
secede, it is equally right for a town or a city. This doctrine of
secession is a huge revolving millstone that grinds the national life to
powder. It is anarchy in velvet, and national destruction clothed in
soft phrases. No people with patriotism and honor will give up territory
without a struggle for it. Would you give it up? It is said that the
states are owners of their territory! It is theirs to use not theirs to
run away with. We have equal right with them to enter it. I would like
to ask those English gentlemen who hold that it is right for a state to
secede when it pleases, how they would like it if the county of Kent
would try the experiment. The men who cry out for secession of the
Southern States in America would say, "Kent seceding? Ah, circumstances
alter cases."

One more reason why we will not let this people go is because we do not
want to become a military people. A great many say America is becoming
too strong, she is dangerous to the peace of the world. But if you
permit or favor this division, the South becomes a military nation and
the North is compelled to become a military nation. Along a line of 1500
miles she must have forts and men to garrison them. Now any nation that
has a large standing army is in great danger of losing its liberties.
Before this war the legal size of the national army was 25,000. If the
country were divided then we should have two great military nations
taking its place. And if America by this ill-advised disruption is
forced to have a standing army, like a boy with a knife she will always
want to whittle with it. It is the interest then of the world, that the
nation should be united, and that it should be under the control of that
part of America that has always been for peace.

The religious minded among our people feel that in the territory
committed to us there is a high and solemn trust, a national trust. We
are taught that in some sense the world itself is a field, and every
Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for the moral
condition of the globe. But how much nearer does it come when it is
one's own country! And the church of America is coming to feel more and
more that God gave us this country not merely for material
aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the church of Christ.
Therefore we undertook to rid the territory of slavery. Since slavery
has divested itself of its municipal p