Not only do the South Carolina oligarchs aim at secession and a distinct nationality, but they seek to obliterate the ideas upon which the war of the Revolution was fought and American Independence achieved, and to erase, as with a sponge, from the minds of the people of that rebellions State, all recollections of our National glory and of those emblems and days which are inseparably connected with the achievement of our liberties. One of the first acts of the secession convention was to blot out Independence day from the calendar, and henceforth the Fourth of July, with all its glorious memories, is to be un known in South Carolina, and the Declaration of Independence to become a sealed book to the people. Next followed the national flag, and the substitution in its stead of a palmetto within the coils of a venomous snake. Our national airs—Yankee-doodle and Hail Columbia—were first hissed and then banned forever. The man who should have the temerity to whistle, sing or play, within the boundaries of that State, either of those glorious old tunes to which our fathers were wont to march close up to the cannon’s mouth, would summarily meet a felon’s death. Of course our National history will also be doomed to the same oblivion that has been decreed to the fourth of July, the flag of freedom and our national songs. And to effect this the more certainly, it is reported that a new system of civil tune, similar to that instituted in France, under the first Napoleon, will be established in the kingdom of South Carolina at once. The “year of our Lord,” and “the year of American Independence,” must be abolished along with everything else that might by any possibility suggest human freedom and the inalienable character of human rights, and in their stead some term be substituted that will be significant of an empire whose chief corner-stone is Slavery. By what name the new era shall be designated, appears yet to be a subject of discussion in South Carolina. But it is gratifying to know that no term endeared to freemen or suggestive of liberty will be selected to give significance to despotic retrogression from Republican ideas and Republican forms. Mad as the Secession leaders are, they have not quite forgotten that the white population of South Carolina are sprung from that great Imperial Race which, from the earliest historic period, have fought for ideas. Hence these efforts to uproot and remove everything which, by association, could revive in their minds the recollection of truths and principles for which men have struggled, fought and died.
Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, IL