itt Clinton knew. The wiseacres of the city of New York
nicknamed his canal 'Clinton's Ditch.' It was the first ditch in that
series of continental 'parallels' by which the people of the North have
approached the citadel of the Slave Power. They have dug in those vast
intrenchments for forty years, to such purpose that in 1860 the great
guns of free labor commanded every plantation in the Union. Pardon them,
then, O lieutenant-generals of the slavery forces, if they still think
well of the spade that has dug their highway to power. The Northern
spade is a slow machine--but it will yet shovel the slave aristocracy
into the Gulf of Mexico as sure as God lives!

Glance over this field of industrial and material growth in the free
portion of the Union, as it appeared in 1860.

At that time the Free States had increased to nineteen, while the Slave
States were fifteen, containing eight hundred and seventy-five thousand
square miles. The people had nine hundred and fifty thousand square
miles organized into free-labor States, with eight vast Territories,
containing one million square miles, an area equal to twenty-four States
as large as New York. In this vast extent of States and Territories,
including two thirds the land of the Union, there were not a hundred
slaves. _The Government holds all those States and Territories to-day._

Look at the position and value of these possessions of freedom. In 1850
liberty secured the great State of California, and in 1860 the State of
Kansas. These States insure the possession of the whole Pacific coast,
the entire mineral wealth of the mountains, the Indian Territory, and
the vast spaces of Northwestern Texas to freedom, and open Mexico to
Northern occupation. In the East, freedom had already secured the best
harbors for commerce; in the Northwest, the granary of the world; the
inexhaustible mineral wealth of Lake Superior, and the navigation of
thousands of miles upon the great inland seas that separate the republic
from the Canadas. From the Northern Atlantic and the Pacific it
commanded the trade of Europe and Asia. This region embraces the best
climates of the continent for the habitation of a vigorous race of men,
and contains all the elements of imperial power.

Freedom had secured, in 1860, a population of twenty millions, while the
Slave Power had reached but twelve millions, one third of whom were
slaves. From 1850 to 1860 the Union _gained_ almost as much in
population as