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.

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by
the equal laws of a common government, finds, in the productions of the
latter, great additional resources of maritime and commercial
enterprise, and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South,
in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its
agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own
channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation
invigorated; and while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and
increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward
to the protection of a maritime strength to which itself is unequally
adapted. The East, in like intercourse with the West, already finds,
and, in the progressive improvement of interior communication, by land
and water, will more and more find, a valuable vent for the commodities
which it brings from abroad or manufactures at home. The West derives
from the East supplies requisite for its growth and comfort, and, what
is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must, of necessity, owe the
secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the
weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side
of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one
nation. Any other tenure by whic