University of Virginia Library

TO DANIEL DRAKE.

Dear Sir The copy of your "Discourse on the
History character, and prospects of the West,"
was duly received,[158] and I have read with pleasure,
the instructive views taken of its interesting and
comprehensive theme. Should the youth addressed
and their successors, follow your advice, and their
example be elsewhere imitated in noting from
period to period the progress and changes of our
country under the aspects adverted to, the materials,
added to the supplies of the decennial Census,
improved as that may be, will form a treasure of
incalculable value to the Philosopher, the Lawgiver
and the Political Economist. Our history, short as
it is, has already disclosed great errors sanctioned
by great names, in political science, and it may be
expected to throw new lights on problems still to be
decided.

The "Note" at the end of the discourse, in which the
geographical relations of the States are delineated,

merits particular attention. Hitherto hasty observers,
and unfriendly prophets, have regarded the
Union as too frail to last, and to be split at no distant
day, into the two great divisions of East and West.
It is gratifying to find that the ties of interest are now
felt by the latter not less than the former: ties that
are daily strengthened by the improvements made
by art in the facilities of beneficial intercourse. The
positive advantages of the Union would alone endear
it to those embraced by it; but it ought to be still
more endeared by the consequences of disunion,
in the jealousies & collisions of Commerce, in the
border wars, pregnant with others, and soon to be
engendered by animosities between the slaveholding,
and other States, in the higher toned Govts. especially
in the Executive branch, in the military establishments
provided agst. external danger, but convertible
also into instruments of domestic usurpation, in the
augmentations of expence, and the abridgment, almost
to the exclusion of taxes on consumption (the
least unacceptable to the people) by the facility of
smuggling among communities locally related as
would be the case. Add to all these the prospect of
entangling alliances with foreign powers multiplying
the evils of internal origin. But I am rambling into
observations, with proof in the "Discourse" before
me that however just they cannot be needed.

With the thanks Sir which I owe to your politeness
in favoring me with it I tender my respectful &
cordial salutations.