The whole movement — its origin, its absurd pretences, the weakness of the attempt, its miserable end — is degraded beneath sympathy. It excites nothing but contempt: a miserable caricature of insurrectionary ambition.
Original passage & context
"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 ↗