Our telegraphic dispatches convey to us the intelligence of still further stirring events that are occurring in the South. The conduct of Maj. Anderson in spiking the cannon at Fort Moultrie, burning the gun-carriages, evacuating the fort and establishing himself at Fort Sumter, and the seeming approval of his conduct by the President, the resignation of Secretary Floyd, an anti-coercionist, and the appointment in his stead of Secretary Holt, a coercionist, together with the reported departure of a revenue cutter with sealed orders to some of the Southern ports, have determined the State authorities in the seceding States, as an act of self defence, to take possession of the Forts and Arsenals within their respective limits. We see nothing in the North or the South calculated to give us hope of a satisfactory adjustment of our difficulties. The indications now are that the entire belt of States south of us will secede before the 1st of February. The Black Republicans have construed some of the manifestations of sentiment at the South as evidencing a willingness on the part of a portion of the Southern people to aid the Federal authorities in the work of subjugation. Hence we see in the Lincoln journals more. frequent and determined expression, of opinion in favor of the coercion policy. Should such a policy be pursued, and it now seems inevitable, civil war is the immediate result. In such an emergency no one questions the position that the gallant sons of the volunteer State will occupy. They are bound to the South by the ties of interest, affinity and consanguinity, and in a struggle with a Government attempting to subject them by force to the domination of a party whose object is the “ultimate extinction” of slavery, our sister States South of us will not only have the sympathy, but the substantial aid of the people of Tennessee. We have believed from the first, that events which are now upon us might have been prevented by the presentation by the South of a united front to the Black Republicans, and calmly telling them that the Union was but a name, and unless animated by the spirit of the Constitution, it was worse than worthless. Others have thought it best to continue to expatiate upon Hail Columbia and Yankee Doodle. We believe that our present difficulties might have been avoided by responding last winter, in an approving spirit, to the resolutions of South Carolina. We are frank to admit that we did not think so then. We have all been mistaken sooner or later, as to the policy that we should have pursued. There can be no longer any doubt of the necessity of united action in the South. We have been straggling about too long. Let the ranks be closed up — Let are our Legislature furnish speedily the munitions of war, and the men to use them are ready.
Nashville Union and American, Nashville, TN