The Free States have a majority of 44 in that House. Under the new census, they would have 53. The cause of the slaveholding States is getting weaker and weaker, and what are we to do? What would the South have to rely on, if the Union were dissolved? Suppose the dissolution could be peaceably … what had the South to depend upon? All the crowned heads [of Europe] were against her. A million of slaves are ready to rise and strike for freedom at the first tap of the drum. If the South is cut loose from their friends at the North … whither are they to look for protection? How are they to sustain an assault from England or France, with the cancer at their vitals? The more the South reflected, the more clearly she must see that she has a deep and vital interest in maintaining the Union.
