Disunion Feed

"The citizens of the free States are not prepared for civil war, nor will they consent to imbrue their hands in the blood of their brethren at the South. [...] We have drifted to a point where the problem has ceased to be, whether the Union can be saved; and, in answer to the still more important question, shall the South be permitted to go out peaceably? every conservative, right minded man at the North has already given, in his heart, an affirmative response. [...] Far better that the Union should be dismembered forever, than that fraternal hands should be turned against one another to deluge the land in blood."

The day after the Montgomery delegates convene, the largest-circulation daily in America answers the question the new nation poses to the North: let them go. The editorial is built around the Seward-Mason exchange in the Senate — Seward's readiness to "stand or perish" against Mason's plea for "the counsels of peace." The Herald sides with the Virginian. Non-contiguous sentences from the one editorial joined with [...].

Read it in the original — New York Herald, Feb 5, 1861 ↗

"We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, invoking the favor of Almighty God, do hereby, in behalf of these States, ordain and establish this Constitution for the Provisional Government of the same [...] The importation of African negroes from any foreign country other than the slave-holding States of the United States, is hereby forbidden; and Congress are required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same."

Four days after the delegates sat down, a nation exists on paper. The preamble names its six states one by one — Texas, which seceded Feb 1, has not yet sent delegates. The slave-trade clause is the wager underneath the new government: the African trade is banned, which protects the market value of the slaves already held in the South. Non-contiguous passages from the one document joined with [...]; verified against the Yale Avalon Project.

Read it in the original — Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, Feb 8, 1861 ↗