The border-state men would give up everything freemen hold dear to keep the Union — or fasten these States on as the tail of the Northern Confederacy. They complain of the "precipitancy" of the Cotton States. But the Cotton States owe it to themselves to secure themselves now.
Original passage & context
"Those in the border Slave States who are willing to give up everything that freemen should hold dear, to maintain the existing Union, and, if that cannot be done, desire to fasten these States on as the tail of the Northern Confederacy, complain bitterly of what they call the precipitancy of the Cotton States [...] The Cotton States [...] owe it to their own citizens and the world to secure themselves now."
A border-state (Kentucky) fire-eater defends South Carolina's "precipitancy" and scorns the conditional Unionists who would make the border South "the tail of the Northern Confederacy." Via the AHA "Sixteen Months to Sumter" reproduction of Dumond's Southern Editorials on Secession.
Read it in the original — Louisville Daily Courier, Dec 20, 1860 ↗