“You can’t sleep here,” he said.  “I can do better for you than this.”

“Better!”

He offered us luxury.  How movable a thing is one’s standard of comfort!  A two-roomed pine shanty, board walls, board floors, board ceilings, board partitions not reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a palace.  To have been entertained at Windsor Castle would not have made us half so grateful.

It was late before the “city” grew quiet; and, long after most of the lights were out, and most of the sounds had ceased, I heard one solitary hammer in the distance, clink, clink, clink.  I fell asleep listening to it.

CII.  IMPORTANCE OF THE UNION. (362)

Mr. President:  I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long.  I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject.  But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments.  I can not, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal Union.  It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad.  It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.  That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity.  It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit.  Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life.  Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits.  It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind.  I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder.  I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.