April 11, 1861; Richmond Enquirer
All doubt as to the intention of the Lincoln Government with regard to the Southern forts is at length removed. The authoritative declaration has been made that Fort Sumter is to be re-inforced at all hazards, and a fleet of seven war vessels is now in Charleston Harbor engaged in the attempt to make good the declaration. It is also announced, by authority, that all forts now in the occupancy of the Southern Confederacy are to re-captured, and that all Southern posts in the possession of the Black Republican Government are to be defended to the last extremity. Thus it appears that Lincoln has defined his policy towards the Southern States in the most unambiguous manner. He defines, by a blood line, the boundary between the Southern Confederacy and the ‘United States’ that acknowledge his authority as ruler.
We have not, at any time, doubted either the willingness or the desire of Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet advisers to adopt the dreadful policy to which they have now committed themselves; because, like our friend of the New Orleans Bulletin, we believed them capable of any enormity; but, like the editor of that paper, we find it difficult to bring our mind to the conclusion that President Lincoln, Premier Seward, and Mars Cameron could conceive such a piece of fatuity and madness, as to take the initiative in an actual hostile demonstration against the South. As a measure of policy it must, in any and every contingency, result most disastrously to them and to the Government of which they are the recognized heads. The resort to force necessitates the withdrawal of the border slave States. The ‘Tyranny at Washington’ undertake to wreak their vengeance upon the seceded States, with a reckless and wicked disregard of all consequences. They will soon be taught to feel quite sensitively the truth of the old adage, is the first step that costs.
We say, that the war declared by the Lincoln administration against the Southern Confederacy necessitates the withdrawal of the border slave States from the abolitionized Union. This is a proposition which does not admit of debate. Those States have now to decide between fighting, literally, with their brethren of the Confederate States, in favor of the institutions of the South, or fighting with the Black Republicans in their war to put down the institutions of the South. Is there, can there be a doubt as to the course which any slaveholding State will adopt?