hundred miles of Southern frontier, and but a little narrow strip of eighty miles, or less, from Virginia to Lake Erie bounding us upon the East.  Ohio is the isthmus that connects the South with the British possessions, and the East with the West.  The Rocky Mountains separate us from the Pacific.  Where is to be our outlet!  What are we to do when you shall have broken up and destroyed this government?  We are seven States now, with fourteen Senators and fifty-one Representatives, and a population of nine millions.  We have an empire equal in area to the third of all Europe, and we do not mean to be a dependency or province either of the East or of the South; nor yet an inferior or secondary power upon this continent; and if we cannot secure a maritime boundary upon other terms, we will cleave our way to the seacoast with the sword.  A nation of warriors we may be; a tribe of shepherds never.

No less outspoken were the similar declarations of John A. McClernand, of Illinois, who said the question of secession disclosed to his vision a boundless sea of horrors.

  [Sidenote] “Globe,” Dec. 10, 1860, p. 39.

Peaceable secession, in my judgment, is a fatal, a deadly illusion....  If I am asked, Why so?  I retort the question.  How can it be otherwise?  How are questions of public debt, public archives, public lands, and other public property, and, above all, the questions of boundary to be settled?  Will it be replied that, while we are mutually unwilling now to yield anything, we will be mutually willing, after awhile, to concede everything?  That, while we mutually refuse to concede anything now for the sake of national unity, we will be mutually ready to concede everything by and by for the sake of national duality?  Who believes this?  What, too, would be the fate of the youthful but giant Northwest in the event of a separation of the slave-holding from the non-slave-holding States?  Cut off from the main Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico on one hand, or from the eastern Atlantic ports on the other, she would gradually sink into a pastoral state, and to a standard of national inferiority.  This the hardy and adventurous millions of the North-west would be unwilling to consent to.  This they would not do.  Rather would they, to the last man, perish upon the battlefield.  No power on earth could restrain them from freely and unconditionally communicating with the Gulf and the great mart of New York.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 10, 1860, p. 59.

No further noteworthy discussion occurred for a time, except the declaration of Mr. Cobb, of Alabama, that if anything were done to save his State it must be done immediately.  The election for delegates to the convention would take place on the 24th of that month, and the convention would meet on the 7th of the next month.  His State would not remain in this Confederacy longer than the 15th of January unless something were done.