States would contain but a fraction over three millions of square miles, and without Texas that would be cut nearly in twain by a narrow slip extending to the 42d degree of north latitude, which is the parallel of Boston. If it be wise policy, and the United States extends her dominions to the 28th degree upon the Pacific, then Texas becomes absolutely necessary to her. Then the Texas wedge, making into the centre of her square and compact surface, will appear obviously wrong. It would be a severance of her entirety, which few would be willing to reconcile; and without a union of the two countries, a conflict of interest would inevitably grow up between the separate nations, detrimental certainly to one, and probably to both. This conflict would beget countervailing laws, such as are at present in the bud, and would produce estrangement to the advantage of European powers, which would profit by the quarrel.

Secondly, This boundary, viewed with reference to the amelioration and ultimate destiny of the negro population of the United States.[418]

Though I believe that so good a political institution does not exist in any nation for the government of its poorer or more dependent population as slavery in its general character in the south and southwestern portion of the United States and Texas; and while I believe that it is the reverse of either a "moral or political evil," viewed as it is at present, yet the day may come, and probably in the lifetime of that generation now coming into the world, when, either from individual interest or public policy, the white and black man can no longer occupy the same soil. Does it not, then, behoove the politicians of this day and time to cast about for the solution of that difficult problem before which all other questions of public policy must sink into utter insignificance? What is to be done with the black? is that difficult problem.

In the solution of this question, I hold it to be self-evident, that the abolition of slavery in the United States will not take place till it becomes the interest of the owner, and not then until there is a separate country to locate them upon.

Both those who advocated the re-colonization of the black race in Africa, and the fanatical abolitionist who preached the doctrine of equality in its broad sense, were far ahead of the question - the colonizationist, because of its impracticability, and the abolitionist, because neither public justice nor public safety would permit it. The first commenced the work without a due estimate of its cost, and the latter [419] without regard to the political safety and moral operation of the measure upon those immediately concerned. While the first met the approbation of many leading political philanthropists of the country, all the means which their most sanguine expectations could hope for would not transport to their native country a tithe of the blacks' increase; and from fanatical impulse, the latter looked to the successful precedent of the Northern States as