This great valley, one mighty plain, without an intervening mountain, contains, west of the Mississippi, seven States and Territories of an area sufficient for thirteen more of the size of New-York. East of the Mississippi, it embraces all the remaining States except New-England, New-Jersey, Delaware, South-Carolina, and Florida. New-York is connected with the great valley by the Alleghany River; and Maryland by the Castleman's River and the Youghiogany, and Alabama, North-Carolina, and Georgia, by the Tennessee and its tributaries. Nearly one half the area of Pennsylvania and Virginia is within its limits. Michigan is united with it by the Wisconsin River, and Texas by the Red River; whilst Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, and Mississippi, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana, and Arkansas own almost exclusively its sway.
And who will dare erect the feeble barriers designed to seclude the great valley and its products from either ocean, the Lakes, or the Gulf, or persuade her to hold these essential rights and interests by the wretched tenure of the will of any seceding State? No line but one of blood, of military despotisms, and perpetual war, can ever separate this great valley. The idea is sacrilege. It is the raving of a maniac. Separation is death. Disunion is suicide. If the South presents the issue that the Union or slavery must perish, the result is not doubtful. Slavery will die. It will meet a traitor's doom, wherever it selects a traitor's position. The Union will still live. It is written on the scroll of destiny, by the finger of God, that 'neither principalities nor powers' shall effect its overthrow, nor shall 'the gates of hell prevail against it.'
Nor will we ever surrender the grave of Washington. There, upon the Potomac, on whose banks he was born and died, the flag of the Union must float over his sacred sepulchre, until the dead shall be summoned from their graves by the trump of the resurrection.
The Fourth of July, 1776, when our name was first inscribed upon the roll of nations, shall be forever commemorated under one flag, and as the birthday of one undivided Union. The memorable declaration of American Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States, all subscribed upon that consecrated ground at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, shall ever mark the noble commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the keystone of the arch of a perpetual and unbroken Union.