s are then very powerfully interested
in the maintenance of their Union. On the other hand, it is almost
impossible to discover any sort of material interest which might at
present tempt a portion of the Union to separate from the other States.

When we cast our eyes upon the map of the United States, we perceive
the chain of the Alleghany Mountains, running from the northeast to the
southwest, and crossing nearly one thousand miles of country; and we are
led to imagine that the design of Providence was to raise between the
valley of the Mississippi and the coast of the Atlantic Ocean one of
those natural barriers which break the mutual intercourse of men, and
form the necessary limits of different States. But the average height of
the Alleghanies does not exceed 2,500 feet; their greatest elevation is
not above 4,000 feet; their rounded summits, and the spacious valleys
which they conceal within their passes, are of easy access from several
sides. Besides which, the principal rivers which fall into the Atlantic
Ocean--the Hudson, the Susquehanna, and the Potomac--take their rise
beyond the Alleghanies, in an open district, which borders upon the
valley of the Mississippi. These streams quit this tract of country,
make their way through the barrier which would seem to turn them
westward, and as they wind through the mountains they open an easy and
natural passage to man. No natural barrier exists in the regions which
are now inhabited by the Anglo-Americans; the Alleghanies are so far
from serving as a boundary to separate nations, that they do not even
serve as a frontier to the States. New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia
comprise them within their borders, and they extend as much to the
west as to the east of the line. The territory now occupied by the
twenty-four States of the Union, and the three great districts which
have not yet acquired the rank of States, although they already contain
inhabitants, covers a surface of 1,002,600 square miles, *c which is
about equal to five times the extent of France. Within these limits the
qualities of the soil, the temperature, and the produce of the country,
are extremely various. The vast extent of territory occupied by the
Anglo-American republics has given rise to doubts as to the maintenance
of their Union. Here a distinction must be made; contrary interests
sometimes arise in the different provinces of a vast empire, which often
terminate in open dissensions; and the exte