Disunion Feed

"The attitude of the Northern people in this crisis will crimson the cheeks of their children's children with shame. [...] Was ever a people so terribly frightened as are we of the North at this moment? We have been singing and shouting free speech! free speech! on every Northern stump during the last ten years, and yet one rebellious frown of South Carolina has muzzled the mouths of all our large cities, and filled the air with whines for compromise. Boston gets up a mob; Philadelphia shuts her halls; Rochester follows in the humiliating train."

The Black voice of the cascade — and it aims North. As six slave states leave, Douglass's contempt is for the free states' panic: a people who shouted 'free speech!' for ten years, muzzled by 'one rebellious frown of South Carolina,' now filling the air 'with whines for compromise.' 'Boston gets up a mob; Philadelphia shuts her halls; Rochester follows.' (His own Rochester had just closed its halls to an abolitionist meeting.) Douglass' Monthly was a monthly; dated to the 1st. Distinct from his ch2 card (se-019). Fragments joined with [...]; verified against the archive.org scan of the February 1861 issue.

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

"We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America [...] the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free [...] based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery [...] all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights."

The cascade's last state before Montgomery, and the most explicit. Where Mississippi argued economics (se-020) and Georgia counted dollars (se-026), Texas states the creed plainly: slavery 'mutually beneficial to both bond and free,' a 'beneficent and patriarchal system,' and equal rights reserved to 'all white men.' The ordinance passed February 1; this declaration February 2. Non-contiguous sentences joined with [...]; verified against the Yale Avalon Project.

Read it in the original — Texas Declaration of Causes, Feb 2, 1861 ↗