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