Disunion Feed

"Rumors reached this place last night, about 8 o clock, by telegraph, of a negro insurrection at Harper's Ferry. The dispatch was from the operator at Richmond, and stated that the negroes, under the lead of white men, had taken possession of the arsenal, and sent wagon loads of muskets and rifles to slaves in the surrounding country, and that large numbers had been killed.--They had cut and destroyed the telegraph wires."

First-night telegraph report in an Augusta County Whig paper, written before the raiders' identity was known — raw Southern panic at a rumored slave rising. '8 o clock' preserved as transcribed.

Read it in the original — Staunton Spectator, Oct 18, 1859 (Valley of the Shadow) ↗

"While we can see no cause for present alarm, none can blind their eyes to the audacity of the attempt, or fail to regard it as a pregnant sign of the times--a prelude to what must and will recur again and again, as the progress of sectional hate and Black Republican success advances to their consummation."

The South's leading fire-eater organ (the Rhetts' paper), one day after the raid's suppression: not an isolated crime but a prelude proving coexistence with the North untenable.

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