We feel these things deeply in the Border States. The people of these States bear the most intimate relations to each other. They are closely connected in business. They associate in their recreations and their pleasures. The members of a large number of their families have intermarried. State lines, except for legislative purposes, are scarcely thought of. The people of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, are one people, having an identity of sympathy, of feeling, and of interest. We have in the West a section of country known as the dark and bloody ground. The historical incidents connected with it are of the most sad and mournful character. There is buried under it an ancestor of almost every family descended from the early settlers of the West. But this ground is limited in extent. If we are to plunge this country into civil war--if we are to go on exasperating the sections until they take up arms against each other, then shall we make a dark and bloody ground of all the Border States. We shall desolate all their fields, and carry sorrow and mourning into every family within their limits. Should we not have a deep interest in avoiding war? Should we not labor with, and entreat the people of all sections to help us avoid it? If it comes, we are to be the sufferers. Upon _our_ heads the ruin must fall. We cannot and will not talk about abstractions now. We are impelled by every consideration to do all we can to settle our differences, and keep off the evil day that brings civil war upon our happy and prosperous country, and to prevent the devastation of that country. I wish to say a few earnest words to my brother Republicans. You object to these propositions because they are pressed just now when the new administration is coming into power. You say that there is no need of them, and that they involve submission on your part, as a condition of your enjoying the fruits of the victory you have won. Let me assure you that no one labored harder for the triumph of Mr. LINCOLN than myself; I exerted what little influence I had; I paid my money to secure his election; I now wish to give him an honorable administration. I believe he will make a good President, and I wish to give him a united country to rule. This can only be done by a settlement of our troubles. No one will rejoice over that settlement more than Mr. LINCOLN. Fellow Republicans, the only way that opens before us now to settle them is, by adopting the report of the committee; by permitting the people to adopt it. Can you, dare you, refuse to let these propositions go to the people? Dare you stand between the people and these propositions?