January 16, 1861, The Charleston Mercury
The Northern papers, just at present, are filled with an amazing quantity of trash. Even those whose antecedents would lead one to suppose that they contained some fair amount of discrimination and common sense, seem now groping about like children in the dark, with gaping mouths, uttering unutterably silly comments, speculations, assertions, threats and propositions. Among other follies we hear it proposed, as a wise and pacific measure, that our ports should be blockaded by an attempt to collect our revenues, but not, in any way, to molest us. Could anything be more preposterous!?
The State of South Carolina is now an independent Republic, or she is not. South Carolina claims and asserts that she is independent, and that she will maintain it. This being the fact, to attempt to collect her revenues is simply war. It is a hostile blockade. It is an armed invasion of her waters. It is war, and nothing but open war. Neither Yankee peddlers nor Federal politicians, nor military braggadocio, nor Cabinet machinations, can make it any thing else but war. The time has passed for this child’s play, hairsplitting, and word quibbling. Facts must be faced. An outraged and long oppressed people must be faced. War or peace must be faced, and must be faced promptly. The people of South Carolina are an independent people, or they are not. Any act committed by any other power against their independence is war. Why need men waste words in quibbling and twaddle? If men or Cabinets mean war they shall have it, by its right name, and in its full significance. But let them not deceive themselves, or others, by the vain supposition that they are playing push pins with idiots or children; or that it is all a game of shuffling politicians, where treachery and trickery are to decide the result.
The insolent assumptions of the Northern people may laugh to scorn alike our rights and our power to maintain them. We shall not pause to define the one or to protect the other. The time has long since passed for the former course; the future must decide the latter point. We are privately of opinion that we know what are our rights, and publicly we intend to enforce them. Those who attempt to violate them will make war upon us, and will be met with war.
A truce, then, to folly. And, whether as foes or not, let the Northern people speak and act like men, and not as quibbling braggarts.