Disunion Feed

"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 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 ↗

"This election of LINCOLN is not assumed to be an actual wrong in itself, but only the crowning and authoritative evidence that the series of outrages perpetrated upon our rights meet with the approval of a majority of the Northern people. [...] Unity was never more essential to a people than to the South in our present condition. It is better that we should act with less wisdom, abstractly considered, than that we should be divided in our action."

A pro-Breckinridge Tennessee paper that treats Southern grievance as settled but argues the remedy is a united Southern convention, not separate-state secession — the Middle-South cooperationist position that the Charleston Mercury's 'Delay' (se-009) attacks directly. The 'minority President... marshaling of sectional hate' clause used in the tweet is verbatim from the same article, a few sentences before the excerpt. Text from the AHA "Sixteen Months to Sumter" reproduction of Dumond (transcription). Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Nashville Union and American, Dec 1, 1860 ↗