For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the Independence and Liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those, which apply more immediately to your interest. Here, every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the Union of the whole.
The _North_, in an unrestrained intercourse with the _South_ protected by the equal laws of a common Government, finds, in the productions of the latter, great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The _South_, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the _North_, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the _North_, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The _East_, in a like intercourse with the _West_, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find, a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The _West_ derives from the _East_ supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the _secure_ enjoyment of indispensable _outlets_ for its own productions to the weight, influences, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as _one_ nation. Any other tenure by which the _West_ can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.