on_ in this matter, the whole
project of secession must come to nought.

But laying aside all the obstacles to union among the seceding states,
how is it possible to take the first step to _actual_ separation! The
separation, at the worst, can only be _political_. There will be no
chasm--no rent made in the earth between the two sections. The natural
and ideal boundaries will remain unaltered. Mason and Dixon's line will
not become a wall of adamant that can neither be undermined nor
surmounted. The Ohio river will not be converted into flame, or into
another Styx, denying a passage to every living thing.

Besides this stability of natural things, the multiform interests of the
two sections would, in the main, continue as they are. The complicate
ties of commerce could not be suddenly unloosed. The breadstuffs, the
beef, the pork, the turkies, the chickens, the woollen and cotton
fabrics, the hats, the shoes, the socks, the "_horn flints and bark
nutmegs_,"[A] the machinery, the sugar-kettles, the cotton-gins, the
axes, the hoes, the drawing-chains of the North, would be as much needed
by the South, the day after the separation as the day before. The
newspapers of the North--its Magazines, its Quarterlies, its Monthlies,
would be more sought after by the readers of the South than they now
are; and the Southern journals would become doubly interesting to us.
There would be the same lust for our northern summers and your southern
winters, with all their health-giving influences; and last, though not
least, the same desire of marrying and of being given in marriage that
now exists between the North and South. Really it is difficult to say
_where_ this long threatened separation is to _begin_; and if the place
of beginning could be found, it would seem like a poor exchange for the
South, to give up all these pleasant and profitable relations and
connections for the privilege of enslaving an equal number of their
fellow-creatures.

[Footnote A: Senator Preston's Railroad Speech, delivered at Colombia,
S.C., in 1836.]

Thus much for the menace, that the "UNION WILL BE DISSOLVED" unless the
discussion of the slavery question be stopped.

But you may reply, "Do you think the South is not in earnest in her
threat of dissolving the Union?" I rejoin, by no means;--yet she pursues
a perfectly reasonable course (leaving out of view the justice or
morality of it)--just such a course as I should expect she would pursue,
embolden