It Is the First Step Which Costs
The Daily True Delta
(New Orleans), November 20, 1860
It is announced that Governor Thomas O. Moore has yielded before the
pressure of Slidell and his rump retinue, and consented to the issuance
of a proclamation convening the general assembly in extra session.
We were aware of the efforts being made by the leader of the secession
jobbers at the Charleston convention to accomplish this object, and
we feared that our weak, irresolute and easily persuaded executive would
finally yield to incessant importunity, and thus lend himself to the
disunion schemes of men who regard him only as a convenient and plastic
tool in their hands. Under this impression we made no appeals to him
on behalf of the great mass of our citizens who utterly repudiate all
disorganising and revolutionary schemes for the redress of national
or state grievances, nor yet in sympathy with the commerce of our city,
which is being paralysed, and with those who conduct it, who are daily
becoming conscious that ruin must soon overwhelm them.
What Governor Moore can imagine of good from an expensive proceeding
like that of an extra session of the legislature, which, in any event,
can only anticipate the regular session by three or four weeks, we are
at a loss to conceive, as we are what he and those who dictate this
course to him contemplate, unless indeed it be to add to the excitement,
distrust and alarm already pervading the community, and which are involving
every man of business to an extent of which the clearest sighted and
most sagacious cannot see the end or prepare for it. If Louisiana allows
herself to be drawn into the wake of South Carolina, Florida and Mississippi
on this occasion; if she follows the lead being prepared for her by
men without principle, talents or patriotism, it will be well for her
citizens of property, position and responsibility to wake up to what
they seem utterly blind not to perceive is certain to befall them. It
is all very well for agents of disunion constituents, for men deeply,
perhaps immensely, indebted to northern houses, for capitalists with
large sums of money unemployed and upon the look-out for sacrifices,
for broken down and characterless politicians, and the large swarm of
beggarly no-account people to be found in all large cities, to clamor
for revolution and the wild license it allows to those who initiate
or direct it while they happen to continue in the ascendant. But it
is far otherwise with our banking, insurance and other institutions,
with our merchants, traders and mechanics, with the industrious, hard-working,
thrifty and law-abiding tens of thousands who constitute what is considered
well ordered society, and to whose ears the howls of the disorderly,
the clamors of the dissatisfied and the thunders of civil war carry
nothing but the knell of prosperity, civil order and political freedom.
Accustomed to great political excitement, many are utterly unable to
comprehend the possibility of revolution, and to this habitude of thought
must the apparent apathy now pervading the conservative masses of the
south be ascribed. The vagaries of ignoble Catilines pass unheeded by
the great body of this hitherto prosperous, contented and free people,
and to this state of the popular mind, and not to real indifference
to the maintenance of the laws, institutions and freedom of the nation,
must the apparent unconcern witnessed be ascribed. That any portion
of this highly intelligent and sensitively honorable population can
share the sentiments daily proclaimed by persons announcing themselves
ostentatiously as the enemies of this splendid and beneficent system
of government under which we all live successful and free, we cannot
believe, for we are utterly unable to comprehend how any but the most
abandoned and wicked can desire the destruction, personally or pecuniarily,
of his fellow-countrymen, however misguided, unjust or dishonest some,
or a majority even, may have been; or how a really honest and upright
man could stimulate political ill-will and state alienation with often
no higher motive than springs from the suggestions of a dishonest intention
to be thus enabled to escape from the payment of an honestly contracted
obligation. Perhaps no member of this community has fewer ties to bind
him to the inhabitants of the free states of this republic than the
writer of these lines, or one who would be more prompt to advise the
adoption of a rigorous course to compel them to do their duty according
to the constitution and the laws; but rather than see a separation take
place, tinctured, touched or contaminated by dishonesty, we would prefer
that the waves of the Atlantic would overwhelm us all. We will never
advocate or vote for a separation of this Union upon any ground less
sufficient than will justify immediate revolution, and no pecuniary
or sordid appeal, such as the organs new, old and hypothecated of disunionism
are in the habit of addressing their few readers, will, we are sure,
ever incline any honest or reflecting man to their standard. The reopening
of the African slave trade, the consequential supersession of the white
labor now employed mechanically and otherwise in these southern states,
the repudiation of our just debts to the people of the free states,
and other inducements of a similar character we daily hear and see addressed
to the cupidity of men, cannot, we are convinced, seduce any good citizen
from his duty to his state, the constitution, the laws and the Union!
If the election of Mr. Lincoln is to be regarded as a just cause for
a dissolution of this confederacy of peoples, before he has entered
upon the discharge of his presidential duties, before he has proclaimed
his views of public policy, or committed an overt act of treason, or
even unfriendliness against the south or its institutions, and when
it is known that a Senate and House of Representatives are opposed to
him and his principles—that the Supreme court of the Union has
judicially decided against, and will continue to decide against themand
that a million majority at least of the popular vote of the republic
will be recorded against him; it follows that no stable government can
ever exist on this continent again; for, it will not be reason or common
sense, but the passions of men and the conspiracies of demagogues that
will determine political conduct. No southern confederacy, certainly,
can ever be formed with the consent of the people, if the reopening
of the African slave trade, or the free trade ideas of Carolina prevail—for
the first will be death to Virginia and the second to Louisiana—were
the decision of the matter exclusively left with the agricultural slave-owners
themselves, and the entire white population of the south, besides, excluded
from a voice. These considerations ought to have suggested doubts to
Governor Moore before he unwisely allowed himself to take his first
step in the march of disunion.
