And what is the precedent against which we have to contend? It is that of separation. If secession would stop where it has begun, if the result of our defeat were to be but two great republics of the North and South upon our continent, there would still be room for the development of both, and we might even look forward to such a peace with some degree of complacency, and with hope for a future of happiness and prosperity. But it will not stop here. As surely as that an overruling Providence directs the affairs of men, the movement will go on until there are as many separate and hostile republics as there are States in our Union. The mutterings of separation--which have already been heard in the West, are but the precursors of the storm which can only be forever allayed by the triumph of our arms in the present contest. The slightest disagreement between the East and the West would soon be made a pretext for secession: the least dispute or conflicting interest between any two great portions of our country would find a speedy remedy in separation. The West would divide from the East, the Atlantic States from the Lake States, the Mississippi States from the Pacific, the North Pacific States from the South Pacific, and where would be the end? Already the great West has learned her own gigantic strength, which before she knew not that she possessed, and if the time should come when her interests should apparently point in a different direction from those of the East, with such a precedent before her, would she not avail herself of that new-found strength? Already the soldiers of the West have begun to sneer at the achievements of those of the East, and to consider themselves the braver and the manlier of the two. Are these not the signs of the times? And do they not betoken a future of anarchy in the event of the establishment of this most pernicious and monstrous of doctrines? And is it to be expected that these many republics, monarchies, aristocracies, or whatever form they may take, will long remain at peace with each other? Ask the muse who presides over the pages of history how often has her pen been called upon to record the circumstance of separate nations, of the same blood and antecedents, lying quietly and peaceably beside each other. Family quarrels are proverbially the most bitter of all on earth, and family hatreds the most unrelenting. It was but the ties of kin that lent such a character of ferocity to our wars with England and to the present contest with the South.