To the People of the United States,
WHEN we first discussed the affiliation of the thirteen states considering UNIFICATION over DIVISION, there were those in the process who lobbied for a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties. At that time, we eventually recognized that the value in our relationship was exactly those things which identified us as unique in each state, but only EMPOWERED us in the World when we came together with those differences,
that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence ha[d] in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.
This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.
Over time, that COMMON Ancestry and Beliefs grew, as our Once Great Nation grew into a “melting pot” of UNIQUE Ancestries and Beliefs that when brought together under our Common Cause and Common Purpose only grew stronger and became a beacon to the World for FREEDOM.
ONLY RECENTLY, have these differences been highlighted by agitators, not unlike those from so long ago, as reasons to hyphenate America. To create new independent districts, with their own governing principles based on small groups of individuals who share a Common Ancestry or a Common Belief, which are often counter to our National Common Cause and Common Purpose. As I said before,
To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.
A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it.
HOWEVER, like in our previous Tribulation, we find ourselves in another Tribulation, where like the first attempt at forming a government was wrought with mistakes resulting from emotional response instead of reasoned deliberation and civil deliberation, our first attempt was
at a time when [our] habitations were in flames, when many of [our] citizens were bleeding, and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and wellbalanced government for a free people. It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer.
AFTER much deliberation, we CORRECTED the mistakes made in Emotional Response.
TODAY, we see DIVISION and LOSS OF TRUST pervading our DISCORSE across the World with respect to who should govern. In fact SOME RECOMMEND either NO GOVERNMENT or ONLY ONE GOVERNMENT.
NEITHER of these is tenable for a fulfillment of FREEDOM as is our Common Cause!
As we UNITE as NATIONS around the World, each brings a richness to the others because of our UNIQUE RESOURCES, which include the Natural, as well as OUR PEOPLE and their Creativity, Ingenuity, and Passions. As EACH are empowered through their identity as a COLLECTION OF FREEDOM LOVING INDIVIDUALS, they can thrive and encourage or enable others to thrive in the Marketplace of the World.
IF there is NO GOVERNMENT, their is NO PROTECTION to thrive, resulting in NO CAPACITY to encourage others.
IF there is ONE GOVERNMENT, there is NO CREATIVITY to empower Invention, and NO UNIQUENESS from which to Provide Purpose and Value.
As President Washington said in his Farewell Address, in September of 1796,
Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the Union of the whole.
The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South in the same intercourse, benefitting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength to which itself is unequally adapted.
The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort—and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
Although tis landscape has matured as our Once Great Nation expanded to it’s current mass, this interdependency is not a weakness, but a strength, which must be nurtured and expressed to remind us that our DIFFERENCES are what make us STRONGEST in UNITY.
When we see our DIFFERENCES as DIVISIONS, as President Lincoln said, prior to becoming President and prior to perhaps our Greatest Tribulation as a Nation to date,
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed -
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Again, like the recommendations for DIVISION so long ago, we are fast becoming a Nation of DIVISIONS based on lines that are political in nature, whether they be racial, ethnic, religious, or personal choices.
I BELIEVE this government cannot endure, any longer half One Party and half The Other Party.
We must UNITE as ONE AMERICAN PARTY of WE THE PEOPLE.
President Washington, again has words of wisdom for us from his Farewell Address.
While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value! They must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same government, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire.
CURRENTLY, we have failed in several of these fronts.
We have DIVIDED our Once Great Nation along Political and Ideological lines, calling one set of States Red and one set of States Blue, as if everyone in each of these states is somehow only one or the other and that these two are opposites. I would argue that BOTH are IDENTICAL in their fulfillment of John Acton’s comment from 2022 Federalist Paper No. 1. They are CORRUPT to the CORE. They pit us, one against the other so that they may maintain control, much like those Tyrants from whom we cast down our shackles when we DECLARED OUR INDEPENDENCE initially.
WE MUST DECLARE IT AGAIN!
In recent decades, our military breadth has become a burden to our very existence. Our expenses in warfare abroad exceeds our expenses in the Creativity, Ingenuity and Passions which make us strong. This has created an internal struggle for the scraps remaining. In NOW WAY was it our Original Intent that the Government should provide the financing of everyday vocations and innovations, rather, WE THE PEOPLE not be burdened with funding a GOVERNMENT OF WARS to the expense of our INDIVIDUAL Pursuits.
WE MUST TAKE CARE OF US AGAIN!
The World will only Suffer if we cannot Thrive as we once did.
As before,
I am persuaded in my own mind that the people have always thought right on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the Union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I shall endeavor to develop and explain in some ensuing papers. They who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies in the room of the plan of the convention, seem clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the continuance of the Union in the utmost jeopardy. That certainly would be the case, and I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet: "FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS."
PUBLIUS