The unhoped for, but not unexpected, struggle between Black Republican fanaticism and Southern patriotism has begun. Where it will end, no living man can tell. The youngest may not live to see the end of the contest. Ephemeral partisan prejudice may attempt to give an erroneous construction to the arts which have brought about this deadly struggle between the North and the South; but the candid severity of impartial history will point with an unerring finger to Black Republican fanaticism and Black Republican perfidy as the causes of the most lamentable and bloody strife which the world has ever witnessed. From the day of his election to the present hour, the President of the United States and his confidential advisers have, now by silence and then by ambiguous givings out, attempted to deceive the people of the South into the belief that he was their friend, that peace was his policy, that no coercion would be attempted, that the revolution in the seceded States would be left to right itself by the tardy, but – as he professed to believe – sure verdict of the people in those States. He has attempted to deceive the Commissioners of the Confederate States, who were sent to Washington to confer with his Administration ; he has perpetrated fraud upon the commanding officers of the Confederate States at Charleston in getting one of his messengers into Fort Sumter under false pretences. Deception has marked the course of the President and his Cabinet up to the present time. They have endeavored stealthily to send their men of war loaded with men and all the implements of war to our Southern coast. The low cunning of the Administration and its hostile acts, in fitting out and sending forth its war vessels, made a demand for the prompt evacuation of Fort Sumter imperatively necessary. The commander of that fortress not only refused to evacuate it but also refused to say that he would not fire the first gun upon the forces of the Confederate States. The first law of Nature, self-preservation, has compelled the South to move. Every true Tennessean will stand by her through weal and through woe.
Nashville Union and American, Nashville, TN