CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.—THE PRESENT CRISIS.
The mountain ranges, the valleys, and the great waters of
America, all trend north and south, not east and west. An
arbitrary political line may divide the north part from the
south part, but there is no such line in nature: there can
be none, socially. While water runs downhill, the currents
and counter currents of trade, of love, of consanguinity, and
fellowship, will flow north and south. The unavoidable
comminglings of the people in a land like this, upon the conditions
which the slavery of a portion of the population impose,
make it necessary to peace that we should all live under
the same laws and respect the same flag. No government
could long control its own people, no government could long
exist, that would allow its citizens to be subject to such
indignities under a foreign government as those to which the
citizens of the United States heretofore have been required
to submit under their own, for the sake of the tranquillity of
the South. Nor could the South, with its present purposes,
live on terms of peace with any foreign nation, between
whose people and its own there was no division, except such
an one as might be maintained by means of forts, frontier-
