I speak from and for the capital of the greatest of the States of the great West.  That potential section is beginning to be appalled at the colossal strides of revolution.  It has immense interests at stake in this Union, as well from its position as its power and patriotism.  We have had infidelity to the Union before, but never in such a fearful shape.  We had it in the East during the late war with England.  Even so late as the admission of Texas, Massachusetts resolved herself out of the Union.  That resolution has never been repealed, and one would infer, from much of her conduct, that she did not regard herself as bound by our covenant.  Since 1856, in the North, we have had infidelity to the Union, more insidious infractions of the Constitution than by open rebellion.  Now, sir, as a consequence, in part, of these very infractions, we have rebellion itself, open and daring, in terrific proportions, with dangers so formidable as to seem almost remediless. * * ’

I would not exaggerate the fearful consequences of dissolution.  It is the breaking up of a federative Union, but it is not like the breaking up of society.  It is not anarchy.  A link may fall from the chain, and the link may still be perfect, though the chain have lost its length and its strength.  In the uniformity of commercial regulations, in matters of war and peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, coinage, copyrights, tariff, and other Federal and national affairs, this great government may be broken; but in most of the essential liberties and rights which government is the agent to establish and protect, the seceding State has no revolution, and the remaining States can have none.  This arises from that refinement of our polity which makes the States the basis of our instituted labor.  Greece was broken by the Persian power, but her municipal institutions remained.  Hungary lost her national crown, but her home institutions remain.  South Carolina may preserve her constituted domestic authority, but she must be content to glimmer obscurely remote rather than shine and revolve in a constellated band.  She even goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereign convention, content to lose by her isolation that youthful, vehement, exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY!  She foregoes the hopes, the boasts, the flag, the music, all the emotions, all the traits, and all the energies which, when combined in our United States, have won our victories in war and our miracles of national advancement.  Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugural, regretfully “looks back upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, and fails to find language to express the feelings of the human heart as he turns from the contemplation.”  The ties of brotherhood, interest, lineage, and history are all to be severed.  No longer are we to salute a South Carolinian with the “idem sententiam de republica,” which makes unity and nationality.  What a prestige and glory are here dimmed and lost in the contaminated reason of man!