It is the duty of the people of North Carolina to possess themselves, at once, of the Forts in this State. The time for inaction has passed. The bloody banner of coercion has been raised by the abolition administration at Washington and the old North State cannot remain passive. Already the earth resounds with the heavy tread of armed legions advancing to murder our Southern brethren. The “overt act” has been committed. Men who were Union four, six, or eight weeks ago have no longer an excuse. The issue is made it is “Resistance to Tyranny” or ‘ignominious Submission.” It is the same issue that our fathers met in 1776. Even as the eyes of the world were upon the struggling colonies in those dark days, so are they upon the South now. Let us prove worthy the fame of our ancestors. Let us lock shields with the South – our own South – and welcome the invader “with bloody hands to hospitable graves.”
Western Sentinel, Winston-Salem, NC, April 19, 1861