Disunion Feed

"In all human probability James Buchanan will be the last President of the United States. One of the sovereign states of the Union has already declared the compact broken, and her allegiance dissolved."

A Democratic paper in Wisconsin, a thousand miles from Charleston, watching the country come apart and concluding the Union is finished — Buchanan will be its last President. Written the day Alabama seceded (Mississippi and Florida had gone Jan 9–10); by month's end six states were out. Verified verbatim against the AHA "Sixteen Months."

Read it in the original — Kenosha Democrat, Jan 11, 1861 ↗

"Look at the present state of the country! The old Union breaking up daily, its columns falling in every direction—four Southern States already out of it, and all the others busily and openly preparing to follow—"

Garrison counts the cascade in real time — 'four Southern States already out': South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, as of January 18, with Georgia, Louisiana and Texas still to come. To the man who had publicly burned the Constitution as 'a covenant with death,' the Union's collapse was not the catastrophe the compromise-seekers feared. Text from the archive.org scan; the issue OCR is rough (column-interleaved) but this contiguous run was string-verified.

Read it in the original — The Liberator, Jan 18, 1861 ↗