To the People of the State of New York
QUEEN ANNE, in her letter of the 1st July, 1706, to the Scotch Parliament, makes some observations on
the importance of the Union then forming between England and Scotland, which merit our attention. I
shall present the public with one or two extracts from it: "An entire and perfect union will be the solid
foundation of lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and property; remove the animosities
amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms. It must increase your
strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, being joined in affection and free from all
apprehensions of different interest, will be enabled to resist all its enemies." "We most earnestly
recommend to you calmness and unanimity in this great and weighty affair, that the union may be brought ....
To the People of the State of New York:
IT IS sometimes asked, with an air of seeming triumph, what inducements could the States have, if
disunited, to make war upon each other? It would be a full answer to this question to say -- precisely the
same inducements which have, at different times, deluged in blood all the nations in the world. But,
unfortunately for us, the question admits of a more particular answer. There are causes of differences
within our immediate contemplation, of the tendency of which, even under the restraints of a federal
constitution, we have had sufficient experience to enable us to form a judgment of what might be
expected if those restraints were removed....
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To the People of the State of New York
THE three last numbers of this paper have been dedicated to an enumeration of the dangers to which we
should be exposed, in a state of disunion, from the arms and arts of foreign nations. I shall now proceed to
delineate dangers of a different and, perhaps, still more alarming kind -- those which will in all
probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and
convulsions. These have been already in some instances slightly anticipated; but they deserve a more
particular and more full investigation.
A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should
either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might
be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other....
To the People of the State of New York:
ASSUMING it therefore as an established truth that the several States, in case of disunion, or such
combinations of them as might happen to be formed out of the wreck of the general Confederacy, would
be subject to those vicissitudes of peace and war, of friendship and enmity, with each other, which have
fallen to the lot of all neighboring nations not united under one government, let us enter into a concise
detail of some of the consequences that would attend such a situation.
War between the States, in the first period of their separate existence, would be accompanied with much
greater distresses than it commonly is in those countries where regular military establishments have long
obtained....
 
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