Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off?  No, sir!  No, sir!  I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see as plainly as I can see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold character.

Peaceable secession!  Peaceable secession!  The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great Republic to separate!  A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other.  Why, what would be the result?  Where is the line to be drawn?  What States are to secede?  What is to remain American?  What am I to be?  An American no longer?  Am I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of Congress?  Heaven forbid!  Where is the flag of the Republic to remain?  Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground?  Why, sir, our ancestors, our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives, would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the Government and the harmony of that Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude.  What is to become of the army?  What is to become of the navy?  What is to become of the public lands?  How is each of the thirty States to defend itself?  I know, although the idea has not been stated distinctly, there is to be, or it is supposed possible that there will be, a Southern Confederacy.  I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that any one seriously contemplates such a state of things.  I do not mean to say that it is true, but I have heard it suggested elsewhere, that the idea has been entertained, that, after the dissolution of this Union, a Southern Confederacy might be formed.  I am sorry, sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of, in the wildest flights of human imagination.  But the idea, so far as it exists, must be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side, and the free States to the other.  Sir, I may express myself too strongly, perhaps, but there are impossibilities in the natural as well as in the physical world, and I hold the idea of the separation of these States, those that are free to form one government, and those that are slave-holding to form another, as such an impossibility.  We could not separate the States by any such line, if we were to draw it.  We could not sit down here to-day and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country.  There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could.