January 4, 1861, Richmond Enquirer
The rush of events is fast hurrying the final dissolution of the Confederacy; the excitement increases as despatch after despatch is made public, and subsides into deeper resentment and more determined resistance. Men ─ who a few months ago were Union men ─ soon become cooperationists, and are now the earnest advocates of separate State resistance. The whole mind of the State is fast accepting the only alternative left ─ that of separate State action. All hope of preserving the present Union has been abandoned by the people of Virginia; and while they earnestly desire that its dissolution may be peaceable, and that reconstruction may speedily follow, they will not be unprepared for war, if that dread alternative is tendered by the North.
Separate State action is necessary before that effectual co-operation can be had, which alone can produce reconstruction ─ and if the Northern people are not hopelessly blinded by the fanaticism that pervades their communities, they will recognize in the peaceable secession of South Carolina and other States the only hope of subsequent reconstruction. The Federal Government, while powerless to prevent dissolution, is not, under Mr. Buchanan at least, without great capacity to effect a reconstruction of the States into a durable and permanent confederacy. It is, indeed, to be hoped, that Mr. Buchanan has realized the fact that dissolution is inevitable, and that his whole duty centres in the preservation of the peace. Had he early recognized the causes of the county’s troubles as existing between the States, and that for their settlement the General Government was powerless, he might have opened the way, first for peaceable dissolution and next for reconstruction.
He has not thought proper to withdraw the forms of law from over those States in which he acknowledges it is impossible to execute them, and yet has declared it unconstitutional to coerce a State. The telegraph announces that, to all the wrongs already perpetrated upon South Carolina, he has superadded insults to her Peace Commissioners. If this be true, Mr. Buchanan has fully gone over to the coercionists, and it matters very little whether they be Black Republicans or democrats. He has driven from his Cabinet the representatives of the South, and taken to his councils Ge. Scott, brim full of malice and hatred towards the people of the South ─ a man who has the vanity to suppose, that in the anarchy which sectional war will introduce, he may become a Dictator, a la Napoleon. Mr. Buchanan has thus assumed the responsibility of inaugurating civil war. If he finds any consolation in this exploit, there will be none to dispute his claim to the execrations with which his name will be embalmed.
Those who desire the re-construction of the Republic and the preservation of the peace, turn now to the Senate. Without its connivance in the folly and wickedness of Mr. Buchanan, the President’s war will still be a failure. Having succeeded in emptying the treasury, he has deprived himself of the sinews of war, and unless the Senate has become also a tool of Gen. Scott, it may not only prevent war, but by adjourning and the returning home of Northern Democrats and Southern Senators, if they cannot succeed in the recommendation of the ‘National Intelligencer’ to withdraw all Federal authority from over the seceding States, they may, by disorganizing the Government, give time and opportunity to mediation which may result in permanent and durable peace. No Southern man, of any party, should remain in Washington, where his presence, by making a quorum, may involve his own people in the horrors of civil war. The Northern Democrats, who no longer have any confidence in Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Buchanan, but who still desire the preservation of peace for the reconstruction of the government, should also vacate their seats, and leave the Government disorganized. The postponement of civil war, and the prevention of the official announcement of the late Presidential election by the Vice President, will give time for the States to assemble in Convention, publish a plan of Union, and submit it to the people of all the States for ratification. Mr. Buchanan’s conduct, if reported correctly by the telegraph, is an effort to enlist the entire North against the Southern States, and to confront the sections in array of civil war. If successful in the well-planned scheme for universal anarchy, he will have earned an infamy unparalleled in the annals of history. ─ Will the Senate of the United States lend themselves to such a treasonable purpose?