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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
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