horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." These batteries rained their storm of iron hail on one poor siege-worn company, because, in obedience to lawful authority, in the performance of sworn duty, the gallant Anderson resolved to keep his oath. That brave and faithful band, by remaining at their post, did not hurt a hair of the head of a Carolinian, bond or free. The United States proposed not to reënforce, but to feed them. But the Confederate leaders would not allow them even the poor boon of being starved into surrender; and because some laws had been passed somewhere, by which it was alleged that the return of some slaves (not one from Carolina) had been or might be obstructed, South Carolina, disclaiming the protection of courts and of Congress, which had never been withheld from her, has inaugurated a ruthless civil war. If, for the frivolous reasons assigned, the seceding States have chosen to plunge into this gulf, while all the peaceful temperaments and constitutional remedies of the Union were within their reach, and offers of further compromise and additional guarantees were daily tendered them, what hope, what possibility of peace can there be, when the Union is broken up, when, in addition. to all other sources of deadly quarrel, a general exodus of the slave population begins, (as, beyond all question, it will,) and nothing but war remains for the settlement of controversies? The Vice-President of the new Confederacy states that it rests on slavery; but from its very nature it must rest equally on war; eternal war, first between North and South, and then between the smaller fragments into which some of the disintegrated parts may crumble. The work of demons has already begun. Besides the hosts mustered for the capture or destruction of Washington, Eastern Virginia has let loose the dogs of war on the loyal citizens of Western Virginia; they are straining at the leash in Maryland and Kentucky; Tennessee threatens to set a price on the head of her noble Johnson and his friends; a civil war rages in Missouri. Why, in the name of IIeaven, has not Western Virginia, separated from Eastern Virginia by mountain ridges, by climate, by the course of her rivers, by the character of her population, and the nature of her industry, why has she not as good a right to stay in the Union which she inherited from her Washington, as Eastern Virginia has to abandon it for the mushroom Confederacy forced upon her from Montgomery? Are no rights sacred but those of rebellion; no oaths binding but those taken by men already foresworn; are liberty of thought, and speech, and action nowhere to be tolerated except on the part of those by whom laws are trampled under foot, arsenals and mints plundered, governments warred against, and where their patriotic defenders are assailed by ferocious and murderous mobs?

SECESSION ESTABLISHES A FOREIGN POWER ON THE CONTINENT.

Then consider the monstrous nature and reach of the pretensions in which we are expected to acquiesce; which are nothing less than that the United States should allow a FOREIGN POWER, by surprise, treachery, and violence, to possess itself of one-half of their territory and all the public property and public establishments contained in it; for if the Southern Confederacy is recognized, it becomes a Foreign Power, established along a curiously dove-tailed frontier of 1,500 miles, commanding some of the most important commercial and military positions and lines of communication for travel and trade; half the sea-coast of the Union; the navigation of our Mediterranean Sea, (the Gulf of Mexico, one-third as large as the Medi

IMMENSE COST OF THE TERRITORIES CLAIMED BY SECESSION.

39

terranean of Europe,) and, above all, the great arterial inlet into the heart of the Continent, through which its very life-blood pours its imperial tides. I say we are coolly summoned to surrender all this to a Foreign Power. Would we surrender it to England, to France, to Spain? Not an inch of it; why, then, to the Southern Confederacy? Would any other Government on earth, unless compelled by the direst necessity, make such a surrender? Does not France keep an army of 100,000 men in Algeria to prevent a few wandering tribes of Arabs, a recent conquest, from asserting their independence? Did not England strain her resources to the utmost tension, to prevent the native Kingdoms of Central India (civilized States two thousand years ago, and while painted chieftains ruled the savage clans of ancient Britain) from reëstablishing their sovereignty; and shall we be expected, without a struggle, to abandon a great integral part of the United States to a Foreign Power?

Let it be remembered, too, that in granting to the seceding States, jointly and severally, the right to leave the Union, we concede to them the right of resuming, if they please, their former allegiance to England, France, and Spain. It rests with them, with any one of them, if the right of secession is admitted, again to plant a European Government side by side with that of the United States on the soil of America; and it is by no means the most improbable upshot of this ill-starred rebellion, if allowed to prosper. Is this the Monroe doctrine for which the United States have been contending? The disunion press in Virginia last year openly encouraged the idea of a French Protectorate, and her Legislature has, I believe, sold out the James River canal, the darling enterprise of Washington, to a company in France supposed to enjoy the countenance of the emperor. The seceding patriots of South Carolina were understood by the correspondent of the London "Times," to admit that they would rather be subject to a British prince, than to the Government of the United States. Whether they desire it or not, the moment the seceders lose the protection of the United States, they hold their independence at the mercy of the powerful governments of Europe. If the navy of the North should withdraw its protection, there is not a Southern State on the Atlantic or the Gulf, which might not be recolonized by Europe, in six months after the outbreak of a foreign war.

IMMENSE COST OF THE TERRITORIES CLAIMED BY SECESSION.

Then look at the case for a moment, in reference to the cost of the acquisitions of territory made on this side of the continent within the present century, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and the entire coast of Alabama and Mississippi; vast regions acquired from France, Spain, and Mexico, within sixty years. Louisiana cost 15,000,000 dollars, when our population was 5,000,000, representing, of course, a burden of 90,000,000 of dollars at the present day. Florida cost 5,000,000 dollars in 1820, when our population was less than 10,000,000, equal to 15,000,000 dollars at the present day, besides the expenses of General Jackson's war in 1818, and the Florida war of 1840, in which some 80,000,000 of dollars were thrown away, for the purpose of driving out a handful of starving Seminoles from the Everglades. Texas cost $200,000,000 expended in the Mexican war, in addition to the lives of thousands of brave men; besides $10,000,000 paid to her in 1850, for ceding a tract of land which was not hers to New Mexico. A great part of the expense of

the military establishment of the United States has been incurred in defending the South-Western frontier. The troops, meanly surprised and betrayed in Texas, were sent there to protect her defenceless border settlements from the tomahawk and scalping-knife. If to all this expenditure we add that of the forts, the navy yards, the court-houses, the custom-houses, and the other public buildings in these regions, 500,000,000 dollars of the public funds, of which at least five-sixths have been levied by indirect taxation from the North and North-West, have been expended in and for the Gulf States in this century. Would England, would France, would any government on the face of the earth surrender, without a death-struggle, such a dear-bought territory?

THE UNITED STATES CANNOT GIVE UP THE CONTROL OF THE OUTLET OF

THE MISSISSIPPI

But of this I make no account; the dollars are spent; let them go. But look at the subject for a moment in its relations to the safety, to the prosperity, and the growth of the country. The Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers, with their hundred tributaries, give to the great central basin of our continent its character and destiny. The outlet of this mighty system lies between the States of Tennessee and Missouri, of Mississippi and Arkansas, and through the State of Louisiana. The ancient province so-called, the proudest monument of the mighty monarch whose name it bears, passed from the jurisdiction of France to that of Spain in 1763. Spain coveted it, not that she might fill it with prosperous colonies and rising States, but chat it might stretch as a broad waste barrier, infested with warlike tribes, between the Anglo-American power and the silver mines of Mexico. With the independence of the United States, the fear of a still more dangerous neighbor grew upon Spain, and in the insane expectation of checking the progress of the Union westward, she threatened, and at times attempted, to close the mouth of the Mississippi, on the rapidly increasing trade of the West. The bare suggestion of such a policy roused the population upon the banks of the Ohio, then inconsiderable, as one man. Their confidence in Washington scarcely restrained them from rushing to the seizure of New Orleans, when the treaty of San Lorenzo El Real in 1795 stipulated for them a precarious right of navigating the noble river to the sea, with a right of deposit at New Orleans. This subject was for years the turning point of the politics of the West, and it was perfectly well understood, that, sooner or later, she would be content with nothing less than the sovereign control of the mighty stream from its head spring to its outlet in the Gulf; and that is as true now as it was then.

So stood affairs at the close of the last century, when the colossal power of the first Napoleon burst upon the world. In the vast recesses of his Titanic ambition, he cherished as a leading object of his policy, to acquire for France a colonial empire which should balance that of England. In pursuit of this policy, he fixed his eye on the ancient regal colony which Louis XIV. had founded in the heart of North America, and he tempted Spain by the paltry bribe of creating a kingdom of Etruria for a Bourbon prince, to give back to France the then boundless waste of the territory of Louisiana. The cession was made by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso of the 1st of October, 1800, (of which one sentence only has ever been published, but that sentence gave away half a continent,) and the youthful conqueror concentrated all the resources of his mighty genius on the accomplishment of the

CONTROL OF THE OUTLET OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

41

vast project. If successful, it would have established the French power on the mouth and on the right bank of the Mississippi, and would have opposed the most formidable barrier to the expansion of the United States. The peace of Amiens, at this juncture, relieved Napoleon from the pressure of the war with England, and every thing seemed propitious to the success of the great enterprise. The fate of America trembled for a moment in a doubtful balance, and five hundred thousand citizens in that region felt the danger, and sounded the alarm.*

But in another moment the aspect of affairs was changed, by a stroke of policy, grand, unexpected, and fruitful of consequences, perhaps without a parallel in history. The short-lived truce of Amiens was about to end, the renewal of war was inevitable. Napoleon saw that before he could take possession of Louisiana it would be wrested from him by England, who commanded the seas, and he determined at once, not merely to deprive her of this magnificent conquest, but to contribute as far as in him lay, to build up a great rival maritime power in the West. The Government of the United States, not less sagacious, seized the golden momenta moment such as does not happen twice in a thousand years. Mr. Jefferson perceived that, unless acquired by the United States, Louisiana would in a short time belong to France or to England, and with equal wisdom and courage he determined that it should belong to neither. True he held the acquisition to be unconstitu tional, but he threw to the winds the resolutions of 1798, which had just brought him into power; he broke the Constitution and he gained an Empire. Mr. Monroe was sent to France to conduct the negotiation, in conjunction with Chancellor Livingston, the resident Minister, contemplating, however, at that time only the acquisition of New Orleans and the adjacent territory.

But they were dealing with a man that did nothing by halves. Napoleon knew, and we know that to give up the mouth of the river was to give up its course. On Easter-Sunday of 1803, he amazed his Council with the announcement, that he had determined to cede the whole of Louisiana to the United States. Not less to the astonishment of the American envoys, they were told by the French negotiators, at the first interview, that their master was prepared to treat with them not merely for the Isle of New Orleans, but for the whole vast province which bore the name of Louisiana; whose boundaries, then unsettled, have since been carried on the North to the British line, on the West to the Pacific Ocean; a territory half as big as Europe, transferred by a stroke of the pen. Fifty-eight years have elapsed since the acquisition was made. The States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas, the territories of Nebraska, Dacotah, Jefferson, and part of Colorado, have been established within its limits, on this side of the Rocky Mountains; the State of Oregon and the territory of Washington on their western slope; while a tide of population is steadily pouring into the region, destined in addition to the natural increase, before the close of the century, to double the number of the States and Territories. For the entire region west of the Alleghanies and east of the Rocky Mountains, the Missouri and the Mississippi form the natural outlet to the sea. Without counting the population of the seceding States, there are ten millions of the free citizens of the country, between Pittsburg and Fort Union, who claim the course and the mouth of the Mississippi, as belonging to the United States. It is theirs by a transfer of truly imperial origin and

Speech of Mr. Ross, in the Senate of the United States, 14th February, 1803.

magnitude; theirs by a sixty years' undisputed title; theirs by occupation and settlement; theirs by the Law of Nature and of God. Louisiana, a fragment of this Colonial empire, detached from its main portion and first organized as a State, undertakes to secede from the Union, and thinks by so doing that she will be allowed by the Government and People of the United States to revoke this imperial transfer, to disregard this possession and occupation of sixty years, to repeal this law of nature and of God; and she fondly believes that ten millions of the Free People of the Union will allow her and her seceding brethren to open and shut the portals of this mighty region at their pleasure. They may do so, and the swarming millions which throng the course of these noble streams and their tributaries may consent to exchange the charter which they hold from the God of Heaven, for a bit of parchment signed at Montgomery or Richmond; but if I may repeat the words which I have lately used on another occasion, it will be when the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, which form the eastern and western walls of the imperial valley, shall sink to the level of the sea, and the Mississippi and the Missouri shall flow back to their fountains.

Such, Fellow-citizens, as I contemplate them, are the great issues before the country, nothing less, in a word, than whether the work of our noble Fathers of the Revolutionary and Constitutional age shall perish or endure; whether this great experiment in National polity, which binds a family of free Republics in one United Government—the most hopeful plan for combining the homebred blessings of a small State with the stability and power of great empire-shall be treacherously and shamefully stricken down, in the moment of its most successful operation, or whether it shall be bravely, patriotically, triumphantly maintained. We wage no war of conquest and subjugation; we aim at nothing but to protect our loyal fellow-citizens, who, against fearful odds, are fighting the battles of the Union in the disaffected States, and to reestablish, not for ourselves alone, but for our deluded fellow-citizens, the mild sway of the Constitution and the Laws. The result cannot be doubted. Twenty millions of freemen, forgetting their divisions, are rallying as one man in support of the righteous cause-their willing hearts and their strong hands, their fortunes and their lives, are laid upon the altar of the country. We contend for the great inheritance of constitutional freedom transmitted from our revolutionary fathers. We engage in the struggle forced upon us, with sorrow, as against our misguided brethren, but with high heart and faith, as we war for that Union which our sainted Washington commended to our dearest atfections. The sympathy of the civilized world is on our side, and will join us in prayers to Heaven for the success of our arms.