Disunion Feed

"The three hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five Slaveholders in the Republic, accomplished day before yesterday a great success -- as shallow men estimate success. They converted the Supreme Court of Law and Equity of the United States of America into a propagandist of human Slavery."

The Journal was Thurlow Weed's paper and the closest thing New York Republicans had to an official organ. Counting the slaveholders — 347,525 in the 1850 census — is the Republican argument in miniature: a minority interest capturing a national government.

Read it in the original — Albany Evening Journal, Mar 9, 1857 ↗

"Thus has a politico-legal question, involving others of deep import, been decided emphatically in favor of the advocates and supporters of the Constitution and the Union, the equality of the States and the rights of the South [...] A prize, for which the athletes of the nation have often wrestled in the halls of Congress, has been awarded at last, by the proper umpire, to those who have justly won it."

The semi-official organ of Virginia Democrats — the same paper that would later call Harpers Ferry the best argument for disunion. Here it treats the Court as an umpire whose ruling settles a wrestling match, a framing the North rejected within days.

Read it in the original — Richmond Enquirer, Mar 10, 1857 ↗