"The toadies of a Southern aristocracy, many of whom claim to be Democrats, are just now assailing the North for its aggressions upon Southern rights. When asked for particulars, they mouth words about personal liberty bills, etc., as tho' the North were really censurable for their passage. We find in an exchange a few charges on the other side, which are tangible and true. In the first place, the understanding from the commencement, and on all hands, South and North, was that slavery was tolerated as a temporary necessity, which was to be gradually, steadily and utterly eradicated. That understanding and a virtual agreement the South first ignored. In the annexation of Texas, in defiance of the strongest remonstrances, they inaugurated the policy of making slavery perpetual. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a further step in the same bad faith. Some of the provisions of the fugitive slave law were most unchristian, intolerably offensive to non-slaveholders, and unnecessary to the maintenance of that law - yet modification was refused. The extradition or lynching of our citizens on mere suspicion, not only without proof, but in defiance of proof to the contrary. The illegal imprisonment of our coloured seamen. The banishment of Judge Hoar, in defiance of all law and courtesy. The brutal assault on Senator Sumner, who, however unwise, was entitled to the protection of the law - the worst thing ever done in intimidation of government and law."
"For the folly that is now kicking up its rampant heels in the South, one portion of our Northern population is to a great extent responsible. So far as any causes for the secession movement can be fixed, it is found in the continual waivings of principle which the Democratic party have bargained to the South, for power and the spoils. If the unjust demands made by the slave interest had been as firmly resisted during the last ten years as they were in the old time, the idea of secession would have been a mere myth. The desire for a separate government has been the final object of that section - for which the demands for additional advantages were to furnish a pretext. The Democracy of the North, in the hope of retaining the strength of the South in national elections, have uniformly thrown their influence and their votes in favor of these unjust demands. Increasing in enormity every year, the schemes of the revolutionists at last arrived at such a pitch of absurdity as to exceed the utmost gullibility of our people. The triumph of the Republican party was the inevitable consequence. now that this has been the result, in spite of the cries of the opposition, prophesying the immediate destruction of the republic, in case of any success - save their own - they give themselves up to wailing, and sing premature dirges over the Union. They are obstinate in their sorrow. The poor old man, wandering like a ghost among the shadows of the White house, his eyes fountains of tears, his childish treble calling upon Heaven for the help that lies in his own hands, is but a picture of the state of that party of which he was once at the head. The voice of rebellion, fostered by their acts, has arisen; and they, afraid to stem the tide - refusing to lift an arm for the integrity of this our goodly heritage - refuse also to be comforted. We believe that the secession movement will end in gas. The necessities of the South preclude the idea of its separate independence. But if this movement had been thirty years ago, it would have been quenched as that other treason was. The crowning glory in the history of the Democratic party was the action of its President in the nullification excitement. The remains of that party can save its credit by taking the same stand now. There is no danger of a test of their sincerity in the position. Let them dry their tears, and make their declining days as honorable as those of their primal strength."
We notice taht a number of Democratic sheets, and their attendant demagogues, are assailing the Republican party as lacking in conservatism, because its leaders refuse to accept the thousand and one plans of accommodation prepared for them by the Constitution tinkers at Washington. Some have even gone so fare as to aver that if civil war is the result of the present complications, the guilt thereof will fall on the Republicans. Under any other circumstances a charge of this character would deserve only contempt, but at the present time the prevalence of such an idea, ridiculous as it is, may possibly have serious consequences. Still, we have very little to say in reply, more than this: Conservatism is not cowardice - it does not mean desertion of fundamental principles of right and wrong - it does not imply the surrender of the Government into the hands of a vicious and rebellious minority - and more than all, it does not mean a giving up of the future destinies of this great and free republic to the domination of a clique of slave breeding oligarchs. So far as we can see, nothing less than entire and eternal submission would satisfy the demands of the secession leaders. They will have the whole or none. They will rule or ruin. This being the case, we believe that the Republicans, and the more reasonable Democrats, are prepared to fully endorse the firm and manly position of their representatives. Such submission as the South demands is out of the question, and such concessions as we could reasonably grant, without a sacrifice of honor or principe, would be unavailing - therefore we must stand firm. If nothing but a fight will answer the purposes of the revels, much as all true patriots would regret it, a fight they can have. if they must attack United States forts, ships, arsenals and custom houses, the Government must defend the national property and punish all rioters and rebels with due severity. States, as States, are not recognized in this quarrel. There is not, and cannot be, any such thing as `coercion of a State' - Government deals altogether with individual men, owning allegiance to the United States."
"We want concession remarks the Springfield Journal. We want the Southern States which are clamoring about concession and compromise, to concede that ours is a Government proper, and not a compact between States. We want them to conceded that State cannot dissolve its connection with this Union at will. We want them to concede that this Government has a right to enforce its laws and protect its property, even if it becomes necessary to hang or shoot every traitor in the United States, to do it. We want them to conceded that it is the duty of this Government to retake from Southern traitors its stolen forts, arsenals, etc. We want them to concede that ABRAHAM LINCOLN, having been constitutionally elected President of the United States of America, has a right to take his seat without any opposition from any quarter whatever; and that if armed opposition is offered, it is the duty of the Government to put down or overcome such opposition at every hazard. We want the South to concede that after ABRAHAM LINCOLN has taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, it is his duty to observe it. We want them to concede that the seceding States have violated the Constitution - taht they are in rebellion against the Federal Government, and that it is the duty of this Government to put down rebellion. We want them to concede that the taking of Federal forts and firing upon the Star of the West, are insults that should be atoned for. We ask them to concede taht northern creditors have aright to sue for and collect their demands in Southern courts. We ask them to concede that Slavery is the creature of local law.
In all this we do not ask the South concede a single thing that is not demanded by the Constitution of the United States. Until they concede all this they ought not to expect that the North has any concession to make. The flag of our country, the glorious stars and stripes, has been insulted by traitors - our vessels have been fired into - the free navigation of the Mississippi has been interrupted - and today a large body of traitors lie in wait to take Fort Pickens. We are in hourly expectation of the sad news that some brave defenders of the American flag - the flag of Washington - have been struck down in death in an effort to uphold it on American soil. The telegraph tells us today that South Carolina has determined to attack the noble Anderson if Government does not surrender Fort Sumter to the traitors! Away with compromises at an hour like this! Let us first establish the fact that we have a Government - a Government able to protect itself and punish treason. We should not talk about compromise while the flag of the traitors floats over an American fort, and the flag of our country trails in the dust. The flag that a Washington and his war-torn, weary soldiery kept flying at Valley Forge - the flag that Jasper replaced on the walls of Fort Moultries at the cost of his life - the flag that our heroic Revolutionary fathers carried triumphantly through the war for independence - the flag that is honored the wide-world over, has been torn from American forts, arsenals and navy yards at home - has been trampled under foot by traitors in our own land, on American soil! Until that flag is unfurled over Moultries, and over every other stolen fort, arsenal, custom houses and navy yard - until the laws of this Government are obeyed and its authority recognized, let us never man to yield up his conscience, his manhood nor his honor. The border States tell us that they are devoted to the Union and the Constitution. We ask them, then, to concede that the one shall stand and the other be obeyed. We are asked to concede that slavery shall go into the Territories by authority of this Government. Before we talk about such a thing, we want it settled that we have a Government. Before compromise of any kind is made or even talked about, on the subject of slavery, we want to see the rightful authority of this Government recognized and respected. Let the stolen forts, arsenals and navy yards be restored to the rightful owner - tear down your rattlesnake and Pelican flag, and run up the ever glorious Stars and Stripes - disperse your traitorous mobs, and let every man return to his duty. Then come to us with your list of grievances, and whatever manhood, honor or patriotism can yield, shall be fully accorded."
"The promised end of secession is a Southern Confederacy, founded on the system of slavery as a corner-stone. The various machinery of this Confederacy is now occupying the attention of the seceders, somewhat impracticable, it is true, as each State expects under the new Government perfect freedom and license for itself, but still complimentary to the Government of our fathers, as the general opinion is, that for a basis the United States Constitution should be taken, altered only in a few unimportant particulars. Yet even in their present weakness, a few of the indications of the intractable spirits of the different sections are appearing shadowing forth very plainly the anarchy and confusion which will continually embarrass their government.
Alabama insists on the perpetual prohibition of the slave trade, which has been the great motor with the rabble of South Carolina. Louisiana will ask that, in following the lead of here sisters, she shall not lose the duty which is the salvation of her sugar interests; while South Carolina is committed to free trade so deeply, as in 1833, as to make the tariff a cause of disunion. Georgia has adopted a more liberal policy as the commerce and the mails, so as to make Savannah over-reach her rival, Charleston, and already cause a bitter jealousy in the latter city. Georgia, also, finding herself the only State of important in the entire movement, has, through some of her newspapers, expressed a willingness to fight battle alone, unless her demands are recognized by here sisters. South Carolina, hardly as powerful, but fully as unyielding, will insist upon the precedence she has already taken, in any new government. Indeed she has a host of patriots who are willing to fill all the offices which the new government has to grant, and her newspapers are insinuating the very possible fact that the other seceders are already shrinking from their folly, while she remains immovable. Thus a mutual jealously must soon be engendered and bring all the other States at loggerheads with South Carolina, giving deeper root to the fear already existing that a union with her is a rope of sand, which sooner or later she will break.
Yet, unless the whole scheme dies out of dry rot before their Convention meets, unless their patriotism and love of Union becomes revivified through the infallible medium of the stomach and packet; we expect there will be some Union formed, upon the model of our Constitution. A legion of Presidents are proposed - Jefferson Davis, Yancey, Cobb, Toombs, Benjamin, Clay, not to mention all the great men of South Carolina. Davis is the Magnus Apollo, and the probable winner, since Hunter or Breckinridge cannot induce their States to hurry into such a Confederacy without first calculating the cost. We of the North need only look on as disinterested spectators, only expected to pay the postal bills of the new government, and provide arms and ammunitions in the arsenals. We are to see the unlimited credit extended to King Cotton by the capitalists of Europe. No war will be made, it is promised, if we consent to all the terms proposed to us, except New England, with which the case is hopeless. We shall watch with some interest the development of the experiment."
"That portion of the Norther Democratic leaders who are attempting to make an `anti- coercion' issue with the Republicans, are only repeating, in a more flagicious form, the mischief they did during the Presidential campaign. The strength and virulence of the disunion movement is due in no small degree, as all now see, to their perverse misrepresentations of the principles and designs of the Republican party. The great mass of the Southern people undoubtedly believe that the incoming Administration intend to assail slavery in the slave States, and it is this belief that has caused the intense feeling and precipitate action of secession. We speak of the people of the South; the leaders know how utterly false is this opinion. The Northern leaders of the Democratic and Union parties are responsible for this mischief, for they have had the ear of the South, and have filled it continually with these malign falsehoods. Now they are doing still worse. While pretending to be patriotically anxious to save the Union, and calling lustily on the Republicans to sacrifice party to country, they are repeating the same game of falsehood and fraud in an infinitely more injurious form. They now accuse the Republicans of a design to coerce the South, to invade and subdue the seceding States, to desolate them with the horrors of civil war, and the most frightful pictures are drawn of the punishments the Republicans are preparing for the Southern people. What is the natural effect of these falsehoods? There can be no question on this point. Their effect is already seen in the increased determination of the seceding States to resist to the last, and in the avowed purpose of the other Southern States to defend them against `coercion.' It avails nothing that coercion is disavowed; Democratic papers and Conventions and sham Union Meetings continue to repeat the alarming outcry. They seem bent upon exasperating the South to uncontrollable phrensy, as if to precipitate the terrible evils they profess to deprecate. Their eagerness to break down the Republican party, by any available means, completely overrides their patriotism, and under pretence of a desire for peace and Union they are pursuing the very course to destroy both. It is no injustice to these men to say that they are, in effect, the worst enemies of the Union and of the South, and taht they are doing more by their false appeals for peace and conciliation, to prevent reconciliation and to bring war, than any class of men in the South have the power to do."
"Secession is at last enthroned in the Cotton States says the Springfield Journal. Jefferson Davis has been inaugurated as the first President of the Southern Confederacy. He has made his speech and defined the position of his new Republic. True, he calls it merely a `Provisional Government,' but there it is, full fledged according to the idea of those who have at length got it into existence, after the treasonable plottings and sectional agitations of thirty years. But what is it that they want, and what is the pretext for this attempt at overthrowing the government under which they have lived for the greater part of a century in a peace and prosperity rarely paralleled in the history of mankind? Well may call this `a revolution unprecedented in the history of nations,' for never before did this number of sane people thus undertake to destroy a government, the power of which they had felt only in the blessings which it had conferred upon them. Mr. Davis has the audacity to declare that the Union has failed to secure the great objects for which it was professedly established, that is `to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' Yet all the world knows that if the Union has f ailed in any of these objects, it was because those who are now making this charge would have it so. They can not point to a single instance in which the government of the Union has denied them justice, interfered with their domestic tranquility, or infringed upon their liberties. If any of these things have been done it has been by themselves, and their great complaint at this time is, that they are not permitted to make slaves of the white freemen of the North, as well as the black natives of Africa, and their own dusky posterity.
This is undoubtedly the mainspring of the monstrous conspiracy and attempt at dismembering this great and beneficent government; that is to say, that ambitious Southern leaders find that they can no longer be at the head of our National affairs and monopolize the power, honors and offices of this Government, as they have done for the greater part of national existence. Calhoun and his followers became aware of this in 1830 - they then saw the handwriting of destiny inscribed upon the wall of our national edifice in the growing power of the free North which was steadily swelling beyond their power to control. It is notorious that Calhoun's disappointed ambition turned all his feelings to wormwood and shaped his whole subsequent policy for the dismemberment of our national Union. Thomas Jefferson, as with the clear vision of prophecy, has given us the rationale and working of this disturbing element in our national life. In his `Notes on the State of Virginia,' chapter 18, he has pointed out the disturbing influence and danger of slavery in a Republican Government. He there says: `There must, doubtless, be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities... And with that execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half of the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the love of country of the other.'
There you have the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson - not Jefferson Davis - the true origin of the Southern Confederacy. The immortal author of the Declaration of Independence was perfectly convinced that slavery was utterly incompatible with the spirit and existence of a Republican Government. The man who is in the habit of exercising absolute power from day to day, is unfitted for submission to the wholesome restraints of law - regards its application to his restraining as degrading and disgraceful. Hence, we have a solution of otherwise amazing and inexplicable spectacle of whose States, by a common impulse of phrenzy, throwing aside their allegiance to a government which they had so often and so solemnly sworn to support, and the great mass of their population excited to madness against their Northern brethren, ,who had done them no other injury than that of calmly asserting their right to choose for themselves a Chief Magistrate and representatives in Congress who would properly represent their settled convictions of duty and policy. We will not insult the freemen of the North by the suspicion that they will ever tremble at the cracking of Southern whips, or be driven from the course of right and justice by the furious ravings of men who have been utterly blinded by their passions, which have been carefully excited by the leaders for their own ambitious purposes."