Here, then, is a profound distinction, which attaches to interests and tendencies, which has manifested itself already, which will manifest itself more and more, and which will work, sooner or later, the salvation of the United States.  The border States cannot unite with the cotton States definitively.  They gave proofs of this in the last election.  Five among them, Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, Virginia, and Maryland, at that time took an intermediate position by making an intermediate choice:  Mr. Bell.  Without going so far, Missouri protested at least against the nomination of Mr. Breckenridge by casting its vote for Mr. Douglas.  Better than this, a declared adversary of slavery, Mr. Blair, was elected representative by this same slave State, Missouri, on the day before the balloting for the presidency; and on the next day his friends voted openly for Mr. Lincoln, while no one dared-annul their votes, as had been done four years before.  Mr. Lincoln thus obtained fifteen thousand votes in Missouri, four thousand in Delaware, fifteen hundred in Maryland, a thousand in Kentucky, and as many in Virginia.  The figures are nothing; the symptom is significant.  The slave States of this intermediate region contain in their bosom, therefore, men who do not fear to attack the “patriarchal institution.”  Have we not just seen a Republican committee acting at Baltimore, in the midst of Maryland?  Has not this same Maryland just rejected, by the popular vote, the infamous law which its legislature had adopted, and by virtue of which free negroes who should not quit the State would be reduced by right to slavery?  When I remember these facts, so important and so recent, I comprehend how it is that a Kentuckian holds the South at bay behind the menaced walls of Fort Sumter, and how the cabinet of Mr. Lincoln has ministers in its midst, who belong to the border States.

People take the peculiar situation, of the border States too little into account in looking into the future which is preparing for America.  They persist in presenting to us two great confederacies, and, in some sort, two United States, called to divide the continent.  If any thing like this could occur, it could not endure.  Doubtless, there are hours of vertigo from which we may look for every thing, even the impossible; and, who knows? perhaps the impossible most of all; nevertheless, the border States cannot attach themselves forever to a cause which is not their own.  By the side of the manifestations which have taken place in Virginia and South Carolina, we have already a right to cite demonstrations of a different kind.  Has not Missouri just decided prudently, that, in the matter of separation, the decisions of her legislature shall not be valid until ratified by the whole people?  This little resembles the eagerness with which States elsewhere rush into secession.  It is therefore probable that the United States will keep or soon bring back into their bosom a considerable number of the border States.  By their side, the gulf States will attempt to form a rival nation, aspiring to grow towards the South.  Such is the true extent of the separation that is preparing.