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 ↗

Next post: Baltimore Patriot, reprinted Dec 26, 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."

A letter to the sitting President, which the archive credits to the Baltimore Patriot, reprinted in Chambersburg by the Franklin Repository, A.K. McClure's Republican paper (se-002): leaving the Charleston forts to a mob puts Buchanan himself among the rebels against the authority he is sworn to defend. The opposite of the Herald's no-coercion doctrine (se-015). The Valley of the Shadow archive marks the piece "Origin of Article: Baltimore Patriot"; it does not record who wrote the letter or when the Patriot ran it, so the date shown is the Repository's. The archive transcribes this sentence of the letter and links to newspaper page images.

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