This has been signally illustrated in the case of Abraham Lincoln, the last, and least, of the Presidents of the United States. Desiring to retain the border slave States in the Union, and to induce the seceded States to return, be has foolishly adopted the only policy that was certain to defeat his purposes. Had he evacuated Forts Sumter and Pickens, and refrained from any attempt to collect the revenue in the seceded States, it is morally certain that the border States might have been retained in the Union, at the nominal cost of such unmeaning concessions as would have served them as a decent pretext for submission, while it would have been easy to provide for a peaceful separation from the other State, if they had steadily refused to return to the Union. In attempting “To put down the foot firmly,” Abraham has committed a slight mistake. He has “put his foot in it”
The Oxford Intelligencer, Oxford, MS, April 24, 1861