CIVIL WAR WILL BE
ABOLITION
(North Carolina Standard,
Raleigh, February 5, 1861)
| This is an interesting editorial from a
major Upper South paper, which takes the position that the outbreak of
hostilities would mean abolition and the end of slavery. In other
words, slavery would be best protected within the Union, not by
attempting to leave the Union (secession). This sort of view was
widely expressed across the Upper South and in the Border States.
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If the difficulties between the North and
South should not
be settled during the next six months, war will be the result. There
will be
three or four Confederacies. It will be impossiblc for the Northwestern
and
Gulf States to avoid war,—the navigation of the Mississippi will lead
to it.
California and Oregon will set up for themselves. The isthmus route to
California may be disputed and obstructed. Some of the Northern States
will
seek an alliance with the Canadas, and this will lead to intervention
by Great
Britain. England, France, and Spain will become interested and
entangled in
American affairs. The flags of the new Confederacies will be insulted
on the
high seas, and privateers will prey on their commerce. War, or
impending war.
or the state of alarm in which the country now is, will arrest
industry, check
commerce, and impair confidence between man and man. If war once breaks
out it
will rage in the interior, on our seacoasts, on the high seas, and on
our
frontiers. One section will let loose the Indians on another section.
Twenty
millions of Northern people will at once become our enemies.—They will
war upon
us along a line of three thousand miles from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. One
section will call in foreign troops against another section. One
Confederacy
will humble itself before the power of Europe to get better commercial
terms than
the other Confederacies. Meanwhile war will rage. Negro property will
cease to
be valuable, because the products of slave labor, and of all other
labor, will
be in a great degree cut off from the markets of the world. The negroes
will
know, too, that the war is waged on their account. They will become
restless
and turbulent. Heavy taxes will result from these wars. These taxes
must be
paid mainly out of slave labor. Strong governments will be established,
and
will bear heavily on the masses. The masses will at length rise up and
destroy
everything in their way. State bonds will be repudiated. Banks will
break.
Widows and orphans will be reduced to beggary. The sword will wave
everywhere
paramount to all law. The whole world outside the slaveholding States,
with
slight exceptions, is opposed to slavery; and the whole world, with
slave labor
thus rendered insecure and comparatively valueless, will take sides
with the North
against us. The end will be—Abolition! There are other
considerations
touching slavery
which we shall not refer to here,—every intelligent mind will at once
understand
us, and will weigh those considerations for itself. It
is criminal to say there is “no hope for the Union.” If five hundred of
the
public men of the two sections could be transported, or confined in
dungeons
for six months, the Union would be restored and reconstructed during
that
period, and it would be more glorious and prosperous than the one now
threatened with destruction. The unionist per se is either a mad
man or a bad man. He who prefers disunion to Union, and who
labors to
provoke and aggravate the two sections against each other, is an enemy
to his
race. He who is for discord instead of concord, for war instead of
peace, for
disunion for disunion’s sake, is guilty of a crime more stupendous
than any
which has been committed since Cain slew his brother. |
Back to Causes of the Civil War (Main page) Back to Editorial Commentary Source: Dumond, Southern Editorials on Secession, pp. 446--47. Date added to website: July 29, 2026 |