Disunion Feed

"The election of the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, to the Presidency of the United States, has operated upon the whole slaveholding South in a manner indicative of the torments of the damned. [...] Will they secede from the Union? Will they jump into the Atlantic? Will they conflagrate their own dwellings, cut their own throats, and enable their slaves to rise in successful insurrection? Perhaps they will — probably they will not! By their bullying and raving, they have many times frightened the North into a base submission to their demands — and they expect to do it again! Shall they succeed?"

Ten days after the election and six weeks before South Carolina's ordinance, Garrison reads Southern secession threats as theatrical intimidation the North has repeatedly caved to ('there is method in their madness'). He does not here welcome secession. Verified at fair-use.org (clean transcription; masthead Vol. XXX No. 46). Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — The Liberator, Nov 16, 1860 ↗

Next post: North Carolina Standard, Dec 1, 1860 →

"There is only one evil greater than disunion, and that is the loss of honor and Constitutional right. That evil the people of the South will never submit to. [...] But our honor as a people is still untarnished—our Constitutional rights, so far as the federal government is concerned, are still untouched. If the federal government should attempt even to tarnish the one or to deprive us of the other, we for one would be ready to resist, and ready to dissolve the Union without regard to consequences. But not now! — the non-slaveholder says not now! — the slaveholder, whose property civil war would involve in imminent peril, says not now! — millions of our friends in the free States say not now!"

William W. Holden's paper, the leading voice of North Carolina conditional Unionism — it would resist actual federal aggression but rejected secession over the mere election of Lincoln, absent an overt act. The Upper-South counterweight to the fire-eaters. Text from the AHA "Sixteen Months to Sumter" reproduction of Dumond (transcription). Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — North Carolina Standard, Dec 1, 1860 ↗