No cause for present alarm — but none can blind their eyes to the audacity of this attempt. It is a pregnant sign of the times: a prelude to what must and will recur, again and again, as sectional hate and Black Republican success advance to their consummation.
Original passage & context
"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 ↗