Such, in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathers bequeathed to us.  Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity?  Yes, yes, the heart responds, and the judgment answers, the task is easily performed.  It but requires that each should attend to that which most concerns him, and on which alone he has rightful power to decide and to act.  That each should adhere to the terms of a written compact and that all should cooperate for that which interest, duty and honor demand.  For the general affairs of our country, both foreign and domestic, we have a national executive and a national legislature.  Representatives and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts affect the whole country, and their obligations are to the whole people.  He who holding either seat would confine his investigations to the mere interests of his immediate constituents would be derelict to his plain duty; and he who would legislate in hostility to any section would be morally unfit for the station, and surely an unsafe depositary if not a treacherous guardian of the inheritance with which we are blessed.

No one, more than myself; recognizes the binding force of the allegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, but that State being a party to our compact, a member of our union, fealty to the federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows from the allegiance due to one of the United States.  Washington was not less a Virginian when he commanded at Boston; nor did Gates or Greene weaken the bonds which bound them to their several States, by their campaigns in the South.  In proportion as a citizen loves his own State, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and her fame free from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations, and to fulfil her duties to her sister States.  Each page of our history is illustrated by the names and the deeds of those who have well understood, and discharged the obligation.  Have we so degenerated, that we can no longer emulate their virtues?  Have the purposes for which our Union was formed, lost their value?  Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime?  Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United States?  Shall the South not exult in the fact, that the industry and persevering intelligence of the North, has placed her mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilized world—­that our mother country, whose haughty minister some eighty odd years ago declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the colonies, which are now the United States, was brought some four years ago to recognize our pre-eminence by sending a commission to examine our work shops, and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite for their