did when, in the better days of the Empire, they left the banks of the Tiber to found colonies on the banks of the Thames, the Seine, the Guadalquivir, or the Danube. On the last hill-top they halted long enough to point out to the eye of their children the dome of the Campidoglio, on which they might never look again. They knew that, however far they wandered, they could not go beyond the protection of the Roman eagle. And it was only in the days of "the Decline and Fall" that this ceased to be true. Then Rome learned that terrible lesson,-that the heart of an empire may go to decay, while a distant dependency continues to flourish. Let us avoid this danger. Our branches have not yet grown too large for the parent tree, nor must the fruit be shaken untimely to the ground. which monarchy and its twin-brother despotism have written for us in the book of Fate. But our fathers held a better faith. They believed that the pen which wrote the doomsday book of nations inscribed one page for the successful and permanent establishment of liberty and self-government here, and its vindication against all domestic and foreign foes.

We know this is the doom

We have only just come to the test. The war of Independence was only the struggle of infancy to breathe free; the war of 1812, only the assertion of our rights of majority; the war with Mexico, only a brief but brilliant episode in the march of our civilization. But now a whirlwind has struck the half-grown oak, and it is struggling with the forces of the tempest in all directions. Secession is wasting its most malignant furies on the tree under whose broad branches it has breathed healthful air and beneficent protection. It has invoked to its aid every engine of destruction and every agency of malignity; it has hurled the firebrand and poisoned the arrows; it has tried to put out our national life; it has tried to wind up our history, and turn the fruit of all the heroism of our fathers, and the hopes of desponding nations, to ashes. In the West and Southwest it has tried to make all the

Indian tribes as fiendish as itself. Every frontiersman and trapper has been tempted; every borderer's home is in danger to-day unless its master will become a traitor to the flag under which he was born.

There is but one remedy for all this, so far as our distant Territories are concerned. Our Governors and Indian Superintendents must be clothed with full military authority to vindicate the sovereignty of the Government and the absolute supremacy of the flag. They must be to us what the Proconsuls were to Rome. They can (if they are the right men) enrol for defence all our loyal citizens within their jurisdictions. And thus a wall of fire will be put along all our western and southwestern borders, which will give to those distant inhabitants a blessed feeling of security, and show to friends and foes that wherever our eagles fly, their young brood are just as safe as they would be if they were nestled under the arches of our Capitol.

The inauguration of this policy of consolidating our national system of pure and vigorous civil life throughout the whole West has received the best thoughts of the Administration, and a well-considered plan has been adopted and is being carried into effect. Freedom and the republic are growing stronger every hour.

XLII.

The Impossibility of the Final Division or Partition of the American Union.

THIS Union may seem to be dissolved.

But it looks so

only to the shallow, the doubting, or the untrue. To the innumerable host of the thinking, the believing, the loyal, and the brave, it stands stronger than ever. It is every day growing conscious of its strength. It corrects its mistakes as soon as they are detected. It recovers from adverses as fast as they come. It prepares for the future as the moments

fly.

That it is impossible to produce a permanent division or partition of the Union of these States, it is only necessary

It

to look at facts. The Union has never been broken. has been threatened, barked at, hawked at, and wounded. But, like the national flag, torn and riddled though it may be in conflict, and even captured, it is the Stars and Stripes still.

To gain any difficult point, the chief obstacles must first be overcome. In order to break up this Union, certain obstructions must be got out of the way. Some of these chevaux-de-frise were interposed by the Almighty, who made the continent. Some were the work of the founders of the Union, who made the Constitution. Some we owe to their great and worthy successors, the immortal post-Revolutionary statesmen, who cast over the Constitution and the Union all the light of their genius and patriotism. The first obstacle to remove would be the geography of the continent. A

single river alone can and will hold these States together. The Mississippi is the eternal sentinel of the Union. Its waters spring from the cool fountains of the North, among its everlasting fountains of life-giving power. These waters, as they flow on through a score of States, mingling with each other, carry the language of empire with them, saying, "This river is national; it belongs to the whole country! God made it!"

The complete exemplification of this fact and sentiment is so clearly stated in the note* below that I need not say any

* In the "National Intelligencer" for April 2, 1862, this whole geographical question is treated with a calm and dispassionate judgment which for half a century has distinguished that pre-eminently national and historic journal. It says:

"We do but reproduce geographical data, often cited by others, and familiar to every intelligent American reader (but the bearings of which do not seem to be sufficiently understood abroad), when we say that whoever looks at a map of the United States will observe that the State of Louisiana lies on both sides of the Mississippi River, and that the States of Arkansas and Mississippi lie on the right and left banks of this great 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. If we observe, then, the country drained by this river and its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank and Kentucky on its east bank, we find that it includes nine or ten powerful States, large portions of three or four others, and several large Territories,—in all a country as large as Europe, as fine as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all the revolted States, and destined to be one of the most populous and powerful regions of the earth. Does any one suppose that these powerful States-this great and energetic population-will ever 'consent' to a peace that shall 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 need to be reminded that the people of Kentucky alone, before they were constituted a State, gave formal notice to the Federal Government, when General Washington was President, that if the United States did not acquire Louisiana they would themselves conquer it. In the words of a distinguished citizen of that martial State, 'the mouths of the Mississippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabit

thing further on this point. Whatever argument is presented by William H. Collins, Esq., of Baltimore, will be gladly listened to by any right-minded American.

ants of its great valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit them.'

"If such is the interdependence of the country lying in the valley of the Mississippi that it must ever remain subject to one Government and share in one destiny, it remains to say that it seems equally impossible to draw a line of separation on the Atlantic slope east of the Alleghany Mountains and south of the Potomac. The geographical considerations which govern the decision of this question have been so clearly stated by an intelligent citizen of Maryland that we have but to recite them for the purposes of this argument. We quote from an able pamphlet addressed to the people of Maryland by William H. Collins, Esq., of Baltimore:

"If a line of separation is to be drawn on the Atlantic slant, where shall it run? The Chesapeake Bay and the streams emptying into it, together with the lands which they pierce and fertilize, will, for reasons stronger than human power, remain with the northern part of our country. If I read the map aright, Nature has so willed it.

"It is deemed conclusive that, in the event of a separation, the northern part of the country will be the maritime Power. He who doubts this would scarcely be trusted by the strong common sense of the American people. If any thing in the future can be foretold, this would seem to be certain. Let the men of business, the thinkers, the statesmen, of our country, ponder this proposition well. Much depends on it.

"Some twenty miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake lies the Hampton Roads, one of the noblest harbors of the world. Large enough to float in security the navies of the earth, its mouth is narrow, though of easy access. Fortress Monroe completely guards its entrance, and renders the harbor safe in war from an enemy. To the maritime power of our country that harbor, as a refuge from the tempest or the enemy, is of untold value. From the port of New York, and along the southern coast around the peninsula of Florida, no such harbor exists for the thousands of Northern ships engaged in commerce with the Gulf of Mexico, or with South America, or around Cape Horn, or with the West Indies. In peace and in war, Fortress Monroe is to the northern part of our country more precious than Gibraltar is to England. When England agrees to give up Gibraltar, then, and not till then, will the United States agree to surrender Fortress Monroe and the Hampton Roads.

"But the possession of the Hampton Roads involves absolute control over the commerce of Norfolk and Portsmouth, as also of the James River, which empties into those roads south of Fortress Monroe. Will Virginia