of the seven, which, a few
months ago, dismembered the Democratic Convention assembled at
Charleston. These seven were South Carolina, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; in other words, all those
States which were the first to vote for secession. The same list, with
the addition of Georgia and North Carolina, appeared again on the day of
the Presidential election: these nine States alone adopted Mr.
Breckenridge as their candidate.

Here, then, is a profound distinction, which attaches to interests and
tendencies, which has manifested itself already, which will manifest
itself more and more, and which will work, sooner or later, the
salvation of the United States. The border States cannot unite with the
cotton States definitively. They gave proofs of this in the last
election. Five among them, Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, Virginia, and
Maryland, at that time took an intermediate position by making an
intermediate choice: Mr. Bell. Without going so far, Missouri protested
at least against the nomination of Mr. Breckenridge by casting its vote
for Mr. Douglas. Better than this, a declared adversary of slavery, Mr.
Blair, was elected representative by this same slave State, Missouri, on
the day before the balloting for the presidency; and on the next day his
friends voted openly for Mr. Lincoln, while no one dared-annul their
votes, as had been done four years before. Mr. Lincoln thus obtained
fifteen thousand votes in Missouri, four thousand in Delaware, fifteen
hundred in Maryland, a thousand in Kentucky, and as many in Virginia.
The figures are nothing; the symptom is significant. The slave States of
this intermediate region contain in their bosom, therefore, men who do
not fear to attack the "patriarchal institution." Have we not just seen
a Republican committee acting at Baltimore, in the midst of Maryland?
Has not this same Maryland just rejected, by the popular vote, the
infamous law which its legislature had adopted, and by virtue of which
free negroes who should not quit the State would be reduced by right to
slavery? When I remember these facts, so important and so recent, I
comprehend how it is that a Kentuckian holds the South at bay behind the
menaced walls of Fort Sumter, and how the cabinet of Mr. Lincoln has
ministers in its midst, who belong to the border States.

People take the peculiar situation, of the border States too little into
account in looking into the future whic