Disunion Feed

"We are decidedly in favor of a united South. [...] No single State could possibly long maintain an independent existence without grinding her citizens to the earth by a weight of intolerable taxation. [...] The Southern States which secede must come together under a confederated government. Hence the question of co-operation and concert of action among the several slaveholding commonwealths scarcely admits of discussion. None oppose it, at the proper time and in the proper manner."

The immediatist answer to the cooperationists (who urged the South move only in concert, not by separate-state secession): concede that a united South is essential — but as a Confederacy built AFTER secession, not as a brake on it. Reframes "wait for a convention" (cf. chapter 1's Nashville, se-007) into a post-secession Montgomery convention. Via the AHA "Sixteen Months."

Read it in the original — New Orleans Bee, Dec 24, 1860 ↗

"Your abandonment of the Federal forts on the coast of South Carolina, to the mercy of a Charleston mob, and your persistence in that policy, place you in the category of the rebels against the just and lawful authority of the United States, of whose Executive power, you are the sworn defender."

The Republican counter to the Herald's forbearance doctrine (se-015): Alexander McClure's paper tells the sitting President that abandoning the Charleston forts makes HIM a party to the rebellion he is sworn to suppress. A week later the fight over the forts began in earnest. Text from the Valley of the Shadow transcription — this is the one fully-transcribed sentence of the editorial; the remainder survives only as page image.

Read it in the original — Franklin Repository, Dec 26, 1860 ↗