March 25, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
As the new Constitution has been framed, there is nothing to prevent the admission of Northern States into the new Confederation. A vote of two thirds is all that is requisite; and, after the accession of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas, there is likely to be no great difficulty in obtaining this vote. In thus constructing the fundamental law, of course, a struggle has occurred in the secret sessions of the Montgomery Congress, in which those refusing to close the door against the reception of anti-slavery States have achieved a victory. Thus the policy of ultimately admitting the anti-slave States of the Northwest first, and afterwards Pennsylvania, New York, et cetera, is obviously the programme or prevailing idea of the Montgomery Congress. The Union is not to be reconstructed on terms of the old Constitution. It is to be reorganized on the new basis, and we are in danger, if the views of the Constitution makers are carried into practice of being dragged back eventually into political affiliation with the States and peoples from whom we have just cut loose.
Now, some may think us hypercritical and captious in seeing anything disagreeable, or in finding fault at all, when matters appear to be progressing satisfactorily. But, a reference to the future must govern us in the present, if we would control events. It is shortsighted and pusillanimous to cover up and conceal from view stubborn facts which, however unpleasant to know, our future peace and prosperity urge us not to overlook, but to strive and remedy. It has been found that, in the construction of a great ship, the unwise insertion of one stick of worm eaten timber has involved her fate with the loss of hundreds of lives and millions of property. So a defect of grave character, like this of the new Constitution may entail upon the peoples of the Southern States the difficulties and dangers of again going through the same struggle from which we are emerging, and perhaps may ultimately wreck the hopes of republican liberty throughout the world. It is too late, and South Carolina is not the State to resist the embodiment of this imprudent provision in the Constitution. And it is almost hopeless to expect that, after the accession of the Border States, the fundamental law can, without undue commotion, be so amended as to establish the policy of a strict proslavery Confederacy. The plank is in our ship, and we have but to make the best of it. We can only endeavor, by the application of the preservatory preparations of corrective knowledge and the instillment of sound, wholesome and purifying views of statesmanship, to ward off the peril and escape the evils that may result from what has been done and cannot now be avoided.
It is therefore, not to oppose the adoption of the Constitution by South Carolina that we broach the subject but simply, and at once to oppose the idea and policy of this new kind of reconstruction or reorganization, and to build up and fortify public opinion through out the South, as far as we can, against using the discretion that will be given our Congress under the proviso of a two thirds vote. For, if sufficient time be allowed the people of the Southern States to realize, under their own government, the amount of security, prosperity and power attainable, without connection with the North, except by treaty, we have great hopes that they will out grow present proclivities, which we are fain to consider weak and unwise, and will firmly refuse admission to all Northern States, whose people differ from us so radically and in such hostile degree in regard to our domestic institutions, and whose punic faith must render all paper constitutions and parchment obligations utterly nugatory and worthless for all the purposes for which laws are useful.
We will continue the subject in our next.