Southern
Temperament regarding Lincoln
(a) The
history of the Abolition or Black Republican Party of the North is a history of
repeated injury an usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of
absolute tyranny over the slave-holding Sates. We have never aggressed upon the
North. They have robbed us of our property. They have murdered our citizens
while endeavouring to reclaim that property by lawful means. They have set at
not the decrees of the Supreme Court. They have invaded our States and killed
our citizens. They have declared their unalterable determination to exclude us
altogether from the Territories. They have nullified the laws of Congress, and
finally they have capped the mighty pyramid of unfraternal enormities by
electing Abraham Lincoln to the Chief Majesty, on a platform and by a system
which indicates nothing but subjugation of the South and the complete ruin of
her social, political and industrial institutions.
New Orleans Daily Crescent, 13 November 1860
(b) Immediate
danger will be brought to slavery, in all the Frontier States. When a party is
enthroned at Washington … whose creed is, to repeal the Fugitive Slave Laws,
the under-ground railroad, will become an over-ground railroad. The tenure of
slave property will be felt to be weakened; and the slaves will be sent down to
the Cotton States for sale, and the Frontier States enter on the policy of
making themselves Free Sates.
With the control of the Government of the
United States, and an organized and triumphant North to sustain them, the
Abolitionists will renew their upon the South with increased courage. The
thousands in every country, who look up to power, and make gain out of the
future, will come out in support of the Abolition Government … They will have
an Abolition Party in the South, of Southern men. The contest for slavery will
no longer be one between the North and South. It will be in the South, between
the people of the South.
If, in our present position of power and unitedness,
we have the raid of John Brown … what will be the measures of insurrection and
incendiarism, which must follow our notorious
and abject prostration to Abolition rule at Washington, with the patronage of
the Federal Government, and a Union organization in the South to support it? …
Charles Mercury 11 October 1860