Semi-Weekly Dispatch
(Franklin, PA)
April 19, 1861
The refusal of the Secessionist mob in Charleston, to permit the return of Lieut. Talbot to fort Sumter, was an outrage exactly in keeping with the general course of the Secessionists. The following, copied from an editorial of the Baltimore Clipper, will show that at least some persons South of Mason and Dixon’s Line hold the same opinion. Speaking of the understanding, that the condition of the forts should remain unchanged, it says:
“As far as the administration is concerned, there has been no change in their condition; but in the meantime the secessionists of the South have been busy in concentrating troops around them by thousands. They have put up new batteries and fortifications at every available point. They have availed themselves of the armistice, if armistice it was, to fortify themselves in every respect, and have openly outraged all the rules of modern warfare. In fact they have acted in bad faith, and have most infamously and cowardly broken the pledges that were proposed. They have said to the United States, let us all allow matters to remain as they are until there can be a settlement, and in the meanwhile they have been levying armies and erecting fortifications, which in a state of actual war the forces of the United States would have been fully warranted in attacking. They have asked a truce and have themselves systematically violated it. They have prayed for an armistice, and under the cover of a white flag have been preparing themselves for operations of both offence and defence. They are as they have been from the beginning the violators of the public peace and the fomenters of a civil war, and now they insolently demand that the stars and stripes shall be struck to give place to their miserable Palmetto and Pelican flags, and that two-thirds of the people of this great nation shall SUBMIT to the dictation of a few disappointed locofoco spoilmongers or fight for the supremacy.”