The national Republican., 1861-01-03
ADDRESS OF THE HON. HENRY WIN.
TER DAVIS.

TER DAVIS.
To tie Voters Of the Fourth Congressional
District in Maryland:
1t is my right and my duty, as your Repre-.
sentative, 10 warn you Of the danger which
threatens the destruction Of the Government,
and to overwhelm you beneath its ruins.
The first act of the drama Of revolution " as
opened in South Carolina.
Ambitious and restless men, avaiing them.
selves of factitious fear which they have inspired,
and sectional passions which they have in.
famed, are conspiring the overthrow of the
Government. They hope to found Southern
Confederacy on the fragments of the United
States Of america.
Maryland has been formally asked to Join
Southern Confederacy. The advocates Of ruin
speciousy disguise their reasonable plans
under the forms of Southern prejudice, and ask
II 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 a
Southern Confederacy must be preceded by the
destruction of that Government. Till it is
broken up, and its armies defeated, there can
Uc ho ooutheiu SOuteucEdCy. mdTylhuu 1b
therefore asked, not whether she prefers to
enter Northern or Southern Confederacy,
but she is asked to form a 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 Maryland will, in few months,
be trampled by armies struggling for the Ma.
tional capital. The only question is, will you
fight to maintain or to destroy the existing
Government?
The interests of Maryland are iudissolubly
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, wbeth.
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.
II 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.
If 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 a large standing army for all the
conditions Of present security will be gone, and
a 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 natural boundary, always overrun
at the first sound Of arms, incapable of being
defended by the weaker Power of which she
will be q part, whose natural line of defence
must be the Potomac, and on this side of
which no Southern army would venture de.
cisve battle.
The hope that Baltimore will be the empo.
rum Of such Republic is delusion too ridic.
ulous to need refutation. 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 Of
New York.
Isnot Southern Republic new to Maryland?
Joining a Northern one is equally SO, if
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 cut
off at Harper's Ferry, and Baltimore becomes
tributary to the Central Pennsylvania road
All her Southern and Southwestern trade is
gone, and her foreign commerce can seek the
ocean only by the favor of Virginia, or under
the guns Of a powerful navy. In war; still we
are the frontier, and our soil will be desolated
by the contending armies.
Our manufacturing industry will be better
secured; our military frontier will be better
protected by the Potomac our foreign com.
merce will have the protection Of a maritime
Power; and we shall be free from the humia.
tion Of an European protectorate but the
sudden and absolute destruction of the slave
holding interest, and the radical change in the
relations Of our population, will give shock to
our internal quiet and prosperity, that neither
this nor the next generation will recover from.
But there can be no such division of this
Contederacy by existing State lines. The pres.
ent Territory has been acquired and divided to
BE- used as a whole, bound by the common ties
of the Constitution and the course of trade is
arranged accordingly. Break it in any part
and it will fly into thousand pieces like q
Prince Ruperts drop. Western Virginia be-
longs to the valley Of the Mississippi. Virginia
can never withdraw from the existing Confed-
eracy undivided. Her western boundary will
be the Blue Ridge. Maryland will be swayed
by adverse forces, which will probably give
her northern apd western counties to Pennsyl.
vania, her peninsular to Virginia, unless civil
war shall first have desolated and subdued
them.
Whatever the Sympathies of her commercial
emporium may be, in the present political