reat stream--eight hundred miles of whose
lower course is thus controlled by these three States, unitedly
inhabited by hardly as many white people as inhabit the city of
New York. Observe, then, the country drained by this river and
its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank and
Kentucky on its east bank. There are nine or ten powerful
States, large portions of three or four others, several large
Territories--in all, a country as large as all Europe, as fine
as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all
the revolted States, and powerful regions of the earth. Does any
one suppose that these powerful States--this great and energetic
population--will ever make a peace that will put the lower
course of this single and mighty national outlet to the sea in
the hands of a foreign government far weaker than themselves? If
there is any such person he knows little of the past history of
mankind, and will perhaps excuse us for reminding him that the
people of Kentucky, before they were constituted a State, gave
formal notice to the federal government, when Gen. Washington
was President, that if the United States did not require
Louisiana they would themselves conquer it. The mouths of the
Mississippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabitants of
its great valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit
them.

Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of
mountains abutting on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers
all Western Virginia, and all Eastern Kentucky, to the width,
from east to west, in those two States, of three or four hundred
miles. These mountains, stretching south-westwardly, pass
entirely through Tennessee, cover the back parts of North
Carolina and Georgia, heavily invade the northern part of
Alabama, and make a figure even in the back parts of South
Carolina and the eastern parts of Mississippi, having a course
of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, and running far south
of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture. It is a
region of 300,000 square miles, trenching upon eight or nine
slave States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself;
trenching upon at least five cotton States, though raising no
cotton itself. The western part of Maryland and two-thirds of
Pennsylvania are embraced in the nor