Disunion Feed

"I am ready to say, if he has violated the law, if he has taken an improper course, if he has been the traitor that the South brands him as having been, and the madman that the North says he has been, John Brown is not to be blamed. I say that the system which violates the sacredness of conjugal love, the system that robs the cradle of its innocent treasure -- the system that goes into the temple of manhood, and writes upon the altar its hellish hieroglyphics of slavery -- the system that takes away every God-given right, and tramples religion under foot - I say that that system is responsible for every single crime committed within the borders where it exists."

Martin, the formerly enslaved pastor of Joy Street Baptist Church, addressed ~4,000 at Boston's execution-day meeting. Source is the American Social History Project (CUNY) Lost Museum transcription of the Liberator printing, via Wayback snapshot (live page returned 500s at harvest); issue scan also at fair-use.org (Vol. XXIX No. 49). Dec 2 is inside the extended window.

Read it in the original — Lost Museum (CUNY) transcription of The Liberator, Dec 9, 1859 ↗

Next post: New-York Tribune, Nov 9, 1860 →

"If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless [...] whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic, whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."

'Let the erring sisters depart in peace' is not in this editorial — that line is a later paraphrase. What the Tribune wrote is 'we insist on letting them go in peace.'

Written by editor Horace Greeley; his celebrated post-election editorial on the right of secession. Verified against Bonner's Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1951) reproduction, which prints the block quote in full and cites the Tribune of Nov 9, 1860. The Tribune's own page is in the Library of Congress (Nov 9, 1860, page 4; the passage starts near the foot of column 2 and runs into column 3). The linked image is that stretch of column 2, which breaks off at 'we shall resist all co-'; the last lines finish at the top of column 3. Its machine-read text is too damaged to match string by string, so each fragment was read by eye against the page image on 2026-09-30: the words match, except that the 1860 page prints 'a republic whereof' with no comma. Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — New-York Tribune, Nov 9, 1860 (Bonner reproduction) ↗

See the page itself — the Tribune’s own column, Nov 9, 1860 (Library of Congress image) ↗