While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic
agents abroad is clearly from the free states, from their greater
commercial interest, yet we have had the principal embassies, so as to
secure the world-markets for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar on the best
possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of
both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and
sailors were drawn from the North. Again, from official documents, we
learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for
the support of the government has uniformly been raised from the North.
Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars
you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your
sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the
altar of your ambition--and for what, we ask again? Is it for the
overthrow of the American government, established by our common
ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on
the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity? And as such, I
must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been
repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots, in this
and other lands, that it is the best and freest government--the most
equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in
its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles, to elevate the
race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon.
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