It is a relinquishment of five
parts out of eight of the territory of the United States; an abandonment
of the fairest subject for the payment of our public debts, and the
chaining those debts on our own necks, _in perpetuum_. I have the utmost
confidence in the honest intentions of those who concur in this measure;
but I lament their want of acquaintance with the character and physical
advantages of the people, who, right or wrong, will suppose their
interests sacrificed on this occasion to the contrary interests of that
part of the confederacy in possession of present power. If they declare
themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to
retain them. Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as
soldiers, to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons,
or rather, to be themselves the subjects, instead of the perpetrators,
of the parricide. Nor would that country quit the cost of being retained
against the will of its inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be
done. They are able already to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi
out of the hands of Spain, and to add New Orleans to their own,
territory.
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