the Constitution.
One of their first acts is to establish a battery of cannon upon
the banks of the Mississippi, on the dividing line between the
States of Mississippi and Tennessee, and require every steamer that
passes down the river to come to under their guns to receive a
custom-house officer on board, to prescribe where the boat may land
and upon what terms it may put out a barrel of flour or a cask of
bacon.

"We are called upon to sanction this policy. Before consenting to
their right to commit such acts, I implore you to consider that
the same principle which will allow the cotton States to exclude
us from the ports of the gulf, would authorize the New England
States and New York and Pennsylvania to exclude us from the Atlantic,
and the Pacific States to exclude us from the ports of that ocean.
Whenever you sanction this doctrine of secession, you authorize
the States bordering upon the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to withdraw
from us, form alliance among themselves, and exclude us from the
markets of the world and from communication with all the rest of
Christendom. Not only this, but there follows a tariff on imports,
levying taxes upon every pound of tea and coffee and sugar and
every yard of cloth that we may import for our consumption; the
levying too of an export duty upon every bushel of corn and every
pound of meat we may choose to send to the markets of the world to
pay for our imports.

"Bear in mind that these very cotton States, who in former times
have been so boisterous in their demands for free trade, have,
among their first acts, established an export duty on cotton for
the first time in American history.

"It is an historical fact, well known to every man who has read
the debates of the convention which framed the Constitution, that
the Southern States refused to become parties to the Constitution
unless there was an express provision in the Constitution prohibiting
Congress to levy an export duty on any product of the country. No
sooner have these cotton States seceded than an export duty is
levied, and if they will levy it on their own cotton do you not
think they will levy it on our pork and our beef and our corn and
our wheat and our manufactured articles, and all we have to sell?
Then what is the proposition? It is to enable the tier of States
bordering on the Atlantic and the Pacific and on the Gulf, surrounding
us on all sides, to withdraw from our Union, form alliances among
the