Disunion Feed

"Fortunately for us, the precipitation of South Carolina has produced a pause in our movements [...] The one cause of their disturbance is, that their "peculiar institution" of negro slavery is growing less and less secure, and that they see more and more reason to believe that they can neither extend it nor perpetuate it! Is this a reason for us to be alarmed? Is it not, on the contrary, the best news, with one exception, that could possibly come to our ears?"

Garrison — who had long wanted the free North out of "the Union with slaveholders" — reads South Carolina's exit as vindication, not alarm: the slaveholders panic because slavery "is growing less and less secure," which is "the best news... that could possibly come to our ears." Written against a conservative Boston address urging Massachusetts to make concessions to save the Union. "Negro" is the period term, not a redaction. Text from the archive.org scan of the issue; its OCR is rough (column-interleaved) but each quoted sentence was string-verified.

Read it in the original — The Liberator, Dec 28, 1860 ↗

"The event so long and so loudly threatened by the State of South Carolina, and dreaded by the other States, has at last happened, and is matter of history. She has seceded, separated, repealed, quitted, dissolved the Union [...] To speak plainly, South Carolina is out of the Union, just as the non-voting Abolitionists are out of the Union—the former to preserve slavery, and the latter to abolish slavery. [...] The slave population of South Carolina may at last prove the most serious check upon disunion. They are more than equal to the whites in number, and cannot have failed to learn something from passing events [...] they, in some sort, have a direct interest in the controversy between the State and the Federal Government."

Douglass on the first secession — South Carolina is out "on paper, in speeches, letters, resolutions and telegrams" — and he insists on the fact every white editor omits: the enslaved majority of South Carolina, "more than equal to the whites in number," have "a direct interest in the controversy" and may prove "the most serious check upon disunion." Douglass' Monthly was a monthly; dated to the 1st. Fragments from the one editorial joined with [...]. Scholarly citation: Frederick Douglass Papers Project item 13775; text verified against the archive.org scan of the January 1861 issue.

Read it in the original — Douglass' Monthly, Jan 1861 ↗