What We Have To Look For
The Daily Delta (New Orleans),
November 1, 1860
Mr. Yancey, in his speech on Monday night, very justly warned the Southern
people against the danger of resting secure in the conviction that there are,
in the South, no sympathizers with Black Republicanism. Whether or not there
is any large number who entertain Black Republican principles at this moment,
is not material. We rather incline to believe that the number of such persons
must be small. But there are very many, as there must be very many in every
community, who would yield to the pressure of a majority, to the allurements
of office, to the seductions of power. These men, in a short time after Lincoln’s
election, should the South submit to his Administration, would fill the Federal
offices, would wield all the influence of the Federal Government within the
Southern States, and with their followers and friends would compose the Administration
party. In other words, they would be the basis of a Black Republican organization,
having more or less strength in every Southern State. This is the inevitable
result of Lincoln’s election should the South be deluded into submission.
Nor does it require much sagacity to predict from which party the new organization
will spring. No one can doubt that the election of Lincoln will precipitate
upon the South an issue which must be speedily met. The question will then
immediately arise, what course is the South to pursue? The division line between
the party which places the rights of the South and the rights of the States
above all Unions, and the party which considers the Union of more value than
the preservation of Southern rights and the maintenance of Southern equality,
will be run wide and deep. The party which insists on adhering to the Union,
if it triumph in the South, must become the Administration party because the
simple question and the only question will be, submission or opposition to
the Black Republican Administration. From that party must come all the Federal
office-holders. For the same principle which compels submission, demands the
assistance of those who counsel submission, in carrying into operation throughout
the South the whole machinery of the Federal Government. It would be absurd
to say that it is the duty of the South to remain in the Union under Mr. Lincoln’s
Administration, and at the same time to say that it is the duty of Southern
citizens to refuse office under Mr. Lincoln. It is, therefore, very evident
that if the South submit, the instruments of the Black Republican Administration
will be found ready made to its hands. We are conscious that the Bell party
is composed mainly of persons who would sincerely and heartily repudiate the
imputation of Abolition tendencies. We know also that many of them, after
the election is over, and when the course of the South comes to be determined,
will join the ranks of the Southern Rights Party; but it must be clear to
every reasoning mind that the logic of principles, the logic of events, the
pressure of circumstances, must force a portion of the party with which they
are now acting, into a position of antagonism to the South, and of adhesion
to Lincoln’s Administration.
Does any one suppose that when this Black Republican party is formed in every
Southern State, it will be without followers and sympathizers? He who
imagines any such thing has read history to little purpose. Even now
distinguished men proclaim that the question of Southern rights in the
Territories is a mere abstraction; that it is not worth contending for;
that it never can be settled in our favor; that it might as well be
abandoned. And when that point is yielded, precisely the same reasons
can be urged to persuade an abandonment of other rights, not less sacred,
but much more intimately cherished. Even now the very arguments of Helper’s
infamous book have been reproduced in the South by the oratorical champion
of one branch of the Opposition and the newspaper representatives of
the other branch. Respectable leading journals of this city devote themselves
to the task of proving that the South is thriftless, lazy, poverty-stricken.
Mr. Soule, preaching Douglasism to the people of Avoyelles,
declares that nobody but the slave-holder has an interest in the preservation
of slavery. Thus depriving the question of its sectional character,
or rather of its national character, and reducing it to a question,
simply, of the maintenance of the peculiar rights of a privileged class.
Thus endeavoring to stimulate the jealousy of one portion of our population
against another portion, and preparing it for the reception of Abolition
doctrines, and disloyalty to Southern institutions. If these things
are done now, they would be done a thousand times more when the integrity
of Southern sentiment shall have been destroyed; when Southern spirit
shall have been broken; when Southern individuality shall have been
annihilated by submission to Black Republican domination and sectional
despotism.This is what we have to expect. This is what will surely come
upon us. We have been fighting against abolitionism at the North; and,
as a contest of sections within the Union, we have lost the battle.
Let us beware of the day when the struggle shall be transferred to our
own soil; when the slavery question shall cease to be a sectional question,
and shall become a domestic question; when the armies of our enemies
will be recruited from our own forces.
