sess are the
work of joint councils 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 same 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 a like intercourse
with the _West_, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of
interior communications 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 to 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 which the _West_ can hold this essential
advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength or from an
apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be
intrinsically precarious.

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and
particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find
in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater
resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less
frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations, and what is of
inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those
broils and wars between themselves which