Disunion Feed

"The Harper's Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of Disunion, more than any other event that has happened since the formation of the Government; it has rallied to that standard men who formerly looked upon it with horror; it has revived, with ten fold strength the desire of a Southern Confederacy."

Semi-official organ of Virginia Democrats; the editorial framed the raid as proof the South could not safely remain in the Union. Wikisource transcription links the scanned original.

Read it in the original — Richmond Enquirer, Oct 25, 1859 ↗

"The whole movement -- in its origin, in its mode of demonstration, the absurd pretences developed in documents found upon the prisoners and the dead, the weakness of the parties in the attempt to carry out their apparent design, and their miserable end -- is degraded beneath sympathy, and excites nothing but contempt as a miserable caricature of insurrectionary ambition."

The Deep South's conservative commercial voice takes the opposite tack from the Mercury: contemptuous minimization rather than alarm. Verified as the Picayune's own verdict, not part of the Baltimore Sun passage it quotes earlier.

Read it in the original — Furman Secession Era Editorials transcription ↗