minds are not constructed alike, and that which seems evil to one is to
another good. The foulest of all theories, the basest of systems, the
most suicidal of policies, will at all times find sincerely honest
adherents and supporters. Individuality of mind admits a million of
shades and degrees of right and wrong. Moreover, an idea once broached
before the people, no matter how detestable it may at first appear, is
already halfway advanced upon the road to execution. Thousands of
criminals have been executed for crimes their minds would never have
conceived save for the suggestion of some artful apostle of evil. Give
me but a precedent once firmly established, I care not how bad it may
be, and I shall revolutionize the world.

And what is the precedent against which we have to contend? It is that
of separation. If secession would stop where it has begun, if the result
of our defeat were to be but two great republics of the North and South
upon our continent, there would still be room for the development of
both, and we might even look forward to such a peace with some degree of
complacency, and with hope for a future of happiness and prosperity. But
it will not stop here. As surely as that an overruling Providence
directs the affairs of men, the movement will go on until there are as
many separate and hostile republics as there are States in our Union.
The mutterings of separation--which have already been heard in the West,
are but the precursors of the storm which can only be forever allayed by
the triumph of our arms in the present contest. The slightest
disagreement between the East and the West would soon be made a pretext
for secession: the least dispute or conflicting interest between any two
great portions of our country would find a speedy remedy in separation.
The West would divide from the East, the Atlantic States from the Lake
States, the Mississippi States from the Pacific, the North Pacific
States from the South Pacific, and where would be the end? Already the
great West has learned her own gigantic strength, which before she knew
not that she possessed, and if the time should come when her interests
should apparently point in a different direction from those of the East,
with such a precedent before her, would she not avail herself of that
new-found strength? Already the soldiers of the West have begun to sneer
at the achievements of those of the East, and to consider themselves the
braver and the manlie