as it is easy to foresee, that
from different causes, and from different quarters, much pains will be
taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction
of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against
which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most
constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously)
directed; it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate
the immense value of your national union to your collective and
individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and
immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak
of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity;
watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing
whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can, in any event, be
abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every
attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to
enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens
by birth, or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to
concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to
you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of
patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local
discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same
religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have, in a
common cause, fought and triumphed together; the independence and
liberty you possess, are the work of joint counsels, and joint
efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves
to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more
immediately to your interest. Here, every portion of our country finds
the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the
union of the whole. . . . .

. . . While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and
particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to
find in the united mass of means and efforts, greater strength,
greater resource, proportionably greater security from external
danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign
nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from
union an exemption from those broils and wa