The national Republican., 1861-01-04
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN.
ADDRESS OF THE HON. HENRY WIN.
u.-I TER DAVIS.
To TIE Voters ef the Fourth Congressional
District ;n Mainland. "

1t is my right and my duty, as your Repre-.
sentative, TO warn you Of the danger which
threatens the destruction Of the Government,
and TO overwhelm you beneath its ruins. r
The first act of the drama Of revolution was
opened in South Carolina.
Ambitious and restless men, avaiing them.
selves of Fictitious fear which they have inspired,
and sectional passions which they have in.
famed, are conspiring the overthrow of the
Government. They hope to found a Southern
Confederacy on the fragments Of the United
States of America.
Maryland has been formally asked to Join a
Southern Confederacy. The advocates Of ruin
speciously disguise their reasonable plans
under the forms Of Southern prejudice, and ask
il Maryland will desert the South and join the
North. But that is not the question which
Maryland is called on to answer.
Maryland is now Joined to both the free and
the slave States under the wisest Constitution
and by the best Government the world ever saw.
That Government has never wronged her, OF
failed to protect her. The formation of
Southern Confederscy must be preceded by the
destruction of that Government. Till it is
broken up, and its armies defeated, there can
be no Southern Confederacy. Maryland is
therefore asked, not whether she prefers to
enter Northern or Southern Confederacy,
but she is asked to form q coalition to break
up and destroy the Constitution which Washing.
ton founded, and to plunge into the horrors Of
civil war, for the purpose of creating South.
ern Confederacy.
That is the true question you have to con.
slider; for peaceful secession is delusion and,
if you yield to the arts now employed to delude
you, the soil Of Msrylana will, in few months,
be trampled by armies struggling for the Ma
.ko1 20 al
fight TO maintain or to destroy the existing
Government2
The interests Of Maryland are indissolubly
connected with the integrity of the United
States of America. Any division of the Con.
federacy is to her fatal.
Maryland has not an interest which will sur.
vive the Government under the Constitution.
No matter what new combinations arise, wheth.
er Maryland stand alone, or unite her fate to
any new Confederacy on her northern or her
southern border, she is utterly ruined and pros
trate, for this generation at least. When she
will revive, God only knows.
If the present Government be destroyed,
Maryland shareholders lose their only guaranty
for the return Of their slaves. Every CONNER.
cial line Of communication is severed. Custom
house barriers arrest her merchants at every
frontier. Her commerce on the ocean is the
prey of every pirate, or the sport of every mari
time Power. Her great railroad loses every
connection which makes it valuable. II two
Republics divide the territory of the United
States, Maryland is ruined, whichever she Join
IL the South, her slaves will walk over the Penn
sylvania line unmolested. The African slave
trade will reduce their market value below the
cost Of raising or supporting them and If they
did not abscond, they would be abandoned by
their masters.
Free trade will open every port, and cotton
and woollen factories, and the iron and ma.
chine works of Maryland, would be PROSTATE
before European competition. The expenses
of Government must be doubled by the instant
necessity of large standing army for all the
conditions OF present security will be gone, and
great Northern Power, divided from us by an
air line, will be an ever.impending danger. In
the war Of separation, and ever after, Maryland
will be an outgoing province, without fortif
cation or a natural boundary, always overrun
at the first sound Of arms, incapable of being
defended by the weaker Power of which she
will be a part, whose natural line of defence
must be the Potomac, and on this side o
which no Southern army would venture de
cisive battle.
The hope that Baltimore will be the empo
rum of such Republic is deluson too ridic
ulous to need refutstion. Nothing intended
for the South will ever pass Norfolk; and from
the West we will be severed by custom. houses
duties, and political antipathies, in favor o.
New York.
Is not Southern Republic new to Maryland
Joining Northern one is equally so, i
stated lines define the limits Of the two repub.
lies. The slave interest will be instantly de
stroyed; the great railroad to the West is Gu
off at Harper's Ferry, and Baltimore becomes
tributary to the Central Pennsy lvania road
All her Southern and Southwestern trade il
gone, and her foreign commerce can seek th'
ocean only by the favor of Virginia, or unde
the guns Of powerful navy. In war, still WI
are the frontier, and our soil will be desolatec
by the contending armies.
Our manufacturing industry will be bettel
secured; our military frontier will be bettel
protected by the Potomac; our foreign com
merce will have the protection Of a maritime
Power; and we shall be free from the humilia
ton of an European protectorate but thu
sudden and absolute destruction of the slave
holding interest, and the radical change in tn
relations Of our population, will give shock u
our internal quiet and prosperity, that neithe
this nor the next generation will recover from
But there can be no such division of thi
Confederacy by existing State lines. The pres
ent Territory has been acquired and divided +
bs used as a whole, bound by the common tie
of the Constitution, and the course Of trade
arranged accordingly. Break it in any par
and it will fly into thousand pieces like
Prince Rupert's drop. Western Virginia be
longs TO the valley of the Mississippi. Virgni
can never withdraw from the existing Confet
eracy undivided. Her western boundary wi
be the Blue Ridge. Maryland will be swaye
by adverse forces, which will probably Civ
her northern and western counties TO Pennsy
vania, her peninsular to Virginia, unless civ
war shall first have desolated and subdue
them.
Whatever the sympathies of her commercit
emporium may be, in the present politics
heats, yet when the conditions which gave ris
a. than ara oona With tho nrauant II Enyor,