oiling and disfranchised masses of the world feel that their
fate is involved in the result of our struggle. In England, especially,
this feeling on the part of the working classes has been manifested in
more than one hundred meetings, and the resolutions in favor of the
Union, passed by the operatives of Manchester, who were the great
sufferers from this contest, indicate a sublimity of feeling, and a
devotion to principle on the part of these noble martyrs, which exalt
and dignify the character of man. (_Cheers._) The working classes of
England, of France, and of Germany, who are all with us, in case of
foreign intervention, must have constituted the armies that would have
been taken to our shores to make war upon the American people. The men
who are for us would have been transported across the ocean to fight
against us in the cause of slavery, and for the degradation of labor.
Can there be any doubt as to the result of such a conflict? It is now
quite certain that this rebellion will receive no foreign aid; but if
any foreign despot or usurper had thus intervened and sent his myrmidons
to our shores, the result, though it might have been prolonged, would
have been equally certain--he would have lost his crown, and destroyed
his dynasty. (_Cheers._) Our whole country would have been a camp, we
should have risen to the magnitude of the contest, and all who could
bear arms would have taken the field. We know, as Americans, that our
national unity is the essential condition of our existence. Without it
we should be disintegrated into sections, States, counties, and cities,
and ruin and anarchy would reign supreme. (_Cheers._) No, the Lakes can
never be separated from the Gulf, the Atlantic from the Pacific, the
source from the mouth of the Mississippi, nor the sons of New England
from the home of their kindred in the great West. (_Cheers._) But, above
all, the entire valley of the Mississippi was ordained by God as the
residence of a united people. Over every acre of its soil, and over
every drop of its waters, must forever float the banner of the Union
(_loud applause_), and all its waters, as they roll on together to the
Gulf, proclaim that what 'God has joined together' man shall never 'put
asunder.' (_Loud cheers._) The nation's life blood courses this vast
arterial system; and to sever it is death. No line of latitude or
longitude shall ever separate the mouth from the centre or sources of
the Mississippi. All the wa