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.