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April 7, 1861 – The War Question

The recent “masterly inactivity” of our new administration has ceased to be a mystery. It is at length understood. Professions and appearances of peace, conciliation and forbearance in regard to the seceded States were all well enough in view of Mr. Secretary Chase’s call upon Wall street for eight millions in the way of a loan, and in view of certain elections in Connecticut and Rhode Island. But those elections being over, and Mr. Chase’s loan having been sufficiently successful to delude him with the idea that, come what may, he has only to ask in order to receive any amount of money from our Wall street financiers, we find that all these late professions and pretences of peace and conciliation were only disguises, which, having served their objects, are now thrown aside. The people of Connecticut and Rhode Island have been deceived, and the sharp and knowing money changers of Wall street have been egregiously humbugged. War, and not peace, it is now manifest, has been all along the fixed policy and purpose of Mr. Lincoln’s administration.

Our new President has some reputation as a joker, and the practical jokes, in the game of hide and peek, which he has been playing with Fort Sumter for several weeks, have certainly been very amusing. Astonished one day by authentic advices from Washington of a Cabinet decision for the immediate evacuation of said fort, and taken somewhat aback the next day by reliable information that there has been no Cabinet decision on the subject, we have been positively assured on the third day that if Major Anderson cannot be relieved he will be left himself to choose between starvation, evacuation or capitulation. Fourthly, all the Washington correspondents concur in the report that though Fort Sumter may be abandoned, Fort Pickens will be held by our government “at all hazards and to the last extremity.”

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April 6, 1861 – Charleston Affairs

The South Carolinians are evidently tiring of the vascillating policy of the Administration, and we expect to hear of some determined action on their part in a few days, if we are to judge from the following paragraphs, taken from the papers of Charleston of Thursday:

It is said now that the last mortar is in its place, and that the ammunition and supplies are all in our possession, so that every means for the speedy reduction of Fort Sumter may be said to be entirely accomplished. There is no possibility of supplies or reinforcements being thrown in from the sea, for there is not the power in the United Stales Navy to do it, and of course the reduction of Fort Sumter is only a matter of time.

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April 3, 1861 – Another Great Principle

Mr. Stephens, Vice President of the “Confederate States” in his recent speech at Savannah, has a great deal to say about the great principle upon which the new revolutionary government is founded—which truth he slates to be this: “ That the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery—subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral (normal?) condition.” He does not tell us what he means by equality, and rings the changes on the word, very much as we have heard it done nearer home. From what he says, however, we presume he means some physical inequality, as he speaks of this, “great physical and moral truth.” We presume that he does not mean to state that any man may be rightfully compelled under the lash, to work for any other who is physically his superior. And so also of inferiority in moral- character or Intelligence—he would hardly assert these as justifying enslavement. Either of these principles put in practice would lead to strange changes. Mr. Stephens himself is physically inferior to the average of men of his age. He must refer to difference of race. For, in speaking of the scientific aspect of his principle and the slowness of its recognition in the world, he says: “Many governments have been founded upon the principle of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race and (so enslaved) in violation of the laws of nature.”

Indeed! The enslavement of the same race then is “in violation of the laws of nature.” What say Dr. Van Dyke, Dr. Thornwell, and Dr. Raphall to this? What becomes of all their arguments from the Bible in favor of slavery? The slaves held by the Jews were white; and so, according to the Vice President of the “Confederate States,” held as such “in violation of the laws of nature.” Mr. Stephens must be immediately excommunicated from the Southern Church, or the sound doctrine of the D. D.s will be in danger of being corrupted. Perhaps,  however, he will hasten to retract so dangerous a statement  

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April 2, 1861 – The Question is not Union or Secession, but North or South

The question now before the people of North Carolina and the other border slave States is not Union or Disunion, for every candid man admits that the Union of our fathers is broken up, disrupted, overthrown. The question then is not whether we are for Union or Disunion that has been decided and notwithstanding all the love for a Constitutional Union which has ever characterized our people, it has been decided against and without us. Seven States of the old Union possessing the bulk of the wealth of the Southern States have left the Union and established a Government of their own; but because they have thought proper to do this we do not urge it as a reason why this State should follow them, not by any means; we desire however that the people of North Carolina should calmly and maturely examine the advantages offered them an their property by the two Governments. Examine the Constitution, the laws, the practices and the rulers of the two and the protection offered you and yours under each, and then say under which you will live. 

With the seven seceded States gone there can be no doubt but the old Government is thoroughly abolitionized for all time, and that if we consent to live under it we must submit to Black Republican Rule now, and finally the abolition of slavery and negro equality. Every act of Lincoln since he ascended the portico of the Capital at Washington to deliver his inaugural to the present time, his inaugural, his appointments and all, go to prove most conclusively that he means to administer the Government upon the principles enunciated in the Chicago platform and as expounded by Greeley, Beecher, Phillips and others of that radical school. It is clear that if we remain under him and his Republican successors that we must consent to remain as degraded inferiors, and not as equals. We appeal then, these things being so, to the people of the border slave States to ponder this matter, and act as becomes freemen and patriots.