The manners of the Eastern portion
of the States would be sufficiently congenial to form a Union, and
their interests are alike intimately connected with agriculture and
commerce. A friendly and commercial intercourse would be maintained
with the States in the Southern Confederacy as at present.
Thus all the advantages which have been for a few years depending
on the general Union would be continued to its respective portions,
without the jealousies and enmities which now afflict both,
and which peculiarly embitter the condition of that of the North.
It is not unusual for two friends, when disagreeing about the mode
of conducting a common concern, to separate and manage, each in
his own way, his separate interest, and thereby preserve a useful
friendship, which without such separation would infallibly be
destroyed."[25]
Such were the views of an undoubted patriot who had participated in the
formation of the Union, and who had long been confidentially associated
with Washington in the administration of its Government, looking at the
subject from a Northern standpoint, within fifteen years after the
organization of that Government under the Constitution. Whether his
reasons for advocating a dissolution of the Union were valid and
sufficient, or not, is another question which it is not necessary to
discuss. His authority is cited only as showing the opinion prevailing
in the North at that day with regard to the _right_ of secession from
the Union, if deemed advisable by the ultimate and irreversible judgment
of the people of a sovereign State.
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