ly more
satisfactory than a nation so unhappily distracted as we are, might
reasonably have apprehended. In the month of June last, there were some
grounds to expect that the maritime powers, which, at the beginning of
our domestic difficulties, so unwisely and unnecessarily, as we think,
recognized the insurgents as a belligerent, would soon recede from that
position, which has proved only less injurious to themselves than to our
own country. But the temporary reverses which afterward befell the
national arms, and which were exaggerated by our own disloyal citizens
abroad, have hitherto delayed that act of simple justice.

The Civil War, which has so radically changed for the moment the
occupations and habits of the American people, has necessarily disturbed
the social condition and affected very deeply the prosperity of the
nations with which we have carried on a commerce that has been steadily
increasing throughout a period of half a century. It has, at the same
time, excited political ambitions and apprehensions which have produced
a profound agitation throughout the civilized world. In this unusual
agitation we have forborne from taking part in any controversy between
foreign States, and between parties or factions in such States. We have
attempted no propagandism and acknowledged no revolution. But we have
left to every nation the exclusive conduct and management of its own
affairs. Our struggle has been, of course, contemplated by foreign
nations with reference less to its own merits than to its supposed and
often exaggerated effects and consequences resulting to those nations
themselves. Nevertheless, complaint on the part of this government, even
if it were just, would certainly be unwise....

There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary,
upon which to divide. Trace through from east to west upon the line
between the free and the slave country, and we shall find a little more
than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and
populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while
nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors' lines, over which
people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their
presence. No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass,
by writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary. The
fact of separation, if it comes, gives up, on the part of the seceding
section, the fugitive-slave clause,