Disunion Feed

"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 ↗

Next post: Frederick Douglass, Dec 1, 1860 →

"What, then, has been gained to the anti-slavery cause by the election of Mr. Lincoln? Not much, in itself considered, but very much when viewed in the light of its relations and bearings. For fifty years the country has taken the law from the lips of an exacting, haughty and imperious slave oligarchy. The masters of slaves have been masters of the Republic. [...] Lincoln's election has vitiated their authority, and broken their power. It has taught the North its strength, and shown the South its weakness. [...] Hitherto the threat of disunion has been as potent over the politicians of the North, as the cat-o'-nine-tails is over the backs of the slaves. Mr. Lincoln's election breaks this enchantment, dispels this terrible nightmare, and awakes the nation to the consciousness of new powers,"

Douglass concedes Lincoln is no abolitionist yet argues the election shattered the slaveholders' half-century grip on the Republic and broke the 'enchantment' by which disunion threats had cowed the North. Douglass' Monthly was a monthly, so no day is printed; dated to the first of the month. Verified via House Divided (Dickinson College) transcription of the December 1860 issue (primary scan at NYS Historic Newspapers). Fragments joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Douglass' Monthly, Dec 1860 ↗