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[10] pp, each page written in neat ink manuscript on recto only. Docketed on verso of final leaf, "Peaceable Secession!" Each page 7-7/8" x 12-1/2." Lacking the conclusion of the speech, despite its having been docketed. Else Very Good. The anonymous manuscript, intended for delivery as a Speech, is an articulate, insightful and intelligent exposure of the terrible consequences of secession. The author, likely a prominent figure in local or national politics, remains unknown. "There are not a few, both in the North & the South, who deceive themselves, or who attempt to deceive others, with the idea that secession and peace are not incompatible. It is of infinite importance that this illusion should be dispelled. To act upon it would be calamitous to the North and fatal to the South. This terrible fact that Secession is War, sooner or later, must not be for an instant forgotten. Were it possible that we should agree on the terms of disunion -- could as brought to consent that the South should separate -- who believes that such a peace would last? Where now there is one cause of complaint between the sections, a hundred would spring up. Injuries and insults which are now borne and pocketed, for the sake of the Union, and because of the Union, would lead at once to retaliation and war. Nothing could avert the fratricidal conflict. "The thought of war, and especially of war between brethren, is indeed dreadful. If we did not shrink from it with horror, we should be less than human. To permit secession, as it is now threatened, would be simply to commit suicide. Why, what would be next? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to remain American?".
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