March 8, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
Since the days of TITUS OATES, the great model plot maker, there never has been shown so industrious an effort to find a plot, as the Black Republicans display, in the hope, by a plot invention, to excuse the pussilanimous and skulking process by which LINCOLN made his way to the Federal city. We are now told that even at his first starting, there were plots to blow him up, or haul him down. Railway plots, powder plots, assassination plots, by stage, car and steamboat! But the inventions come too late! They will not relieve the tall person, in his slouched hat and military Scotch cloak, of the imputation of the most wretched cowardice. It appears, also, that he left his family to follow him in the very train in which he himself was to be blown up, or blown over! Young BOB, and young BOB’s mother, took the chances–and escaped; which, as the plotters could not have known that the venerable ABRAHAM was not in the train–and, there was no explosion–would seem to show, very conclusively, that there was no plot at all. But, in truth, the Southern people are no plotters. They rarely attempt plotting, or they bungle when they do. Witness the efforts of the Peace Congress, and the laborious plottings, against the safety and prosperity of their people, of the ancient politicians of the Border States! It is only in the land of Abolition and the Puritans that we hear of these plottings and infernal machines. They seem, from the first, to have been born to stratagem, and spoils. It is only in the North that we hear of fights, designed for murder, sent to the innocent and suspecting. A box, from unknown quarters, is received, and while the simple family crowds about it, with blessing on the unknown benevolent, it explodes, and sends its missiles through the flock. We practice none of these horrid plots at the South. We neither Scott nor Plot.