The question has been asked, What can the States do, supposing them to be divided--separated into distinct subdivisions or independent sovereignties? Allow me to answer that question in the words of one of the most eminent men whom my State has ever produced: a man of clear and comprehensive intellect, of a sound heart and enlarged and ardent patriotism, who shed a glory around his native State, and whose name is held in just veneration by every one who acknowledges himself a North Carolinian. At another period of our history the same question was asked. In the years 1831 and 1832 it had become an inquiry, a subject of disquisition in my State, and the late Judge Gaston, in an address delivered in 1832 before the Literary Societies of the University, thus treats of the subject: "Threats of resistance, secession, separation, have become common as household words in the wicked and silly violence of public declaimers. The public ear is familiarized with, and the public mind will soon become accustomed to, the detestable suggestion of disunion. Calculations and conjectures--what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East?--sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations--all tend to the same fatal end. What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East? They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world, the _disjecta membra_--the sundered, bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life, and strength, and vigor. They can furnish to the philosophic historian another melancholy and striking instance of the political axiom, that all republican confederacies have an inherent and unavoidable tendency to dissolution. They will present fields and occasions for border wars, for leagues and counter leagues, for the intrigues of petty statesmen and the struggles of military chiefs, for confiscations, insurrections, and deeds of darkest hue. They will gladden the hearts of those who have proclaimed that men are not fit to govern themselves, and shed a disastrous eclipse on the hopes of rational freedom throughout the world. Solon, in his code, proposed no punishment for parricide, treating it as an impossible crime. Such, with us, ought to be the crime of political parricide--the dismemberment of our 'fatherland.'" To me, sir, these sentiments convey a just representation of what will be the future and unavoidable result of a separation of the people of this great country into distinct and independent confederacies. And when I look at the prospect before us it is one so dark, filled with such horrid forms of dread and evil, that I willingly close my eyes upon it, and desire to believe that it is impossible it should ever be realized. * * * * * * * *