February 16, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
WASHINGTON, February 14, 1861.
Abolition newspapers are making merry over the fact that South Carolina gets neither a President nor a Vice President in the Southern Confederacy. They say the RHETT party is much aggrieved. South Carolina will secede again, they contend. The truth seems to be that these people are incapable of comprehending unselfish actions. Whatsoever things that are noble, patriotic, magnanimous, in men or in unions, are far beyond the capacity of the Abolition understanding. The swinish depravity which fanaticism induces in the human mind is horrible to contemplate. How far Mr. RHETT is capable of being influenced by motives of personal elevation, his long career of self-sacrificing, heroic devotion to the South can show. The world well knows that Mr. RHETT never had, and has not now, a party – that is, a personal party. A reserved man, it is said, with few intimates and without those powers of conciliation and flattery which constitutes popularity among public men, he has never been wise in the arts of pushing himself forward to office. Nor has he had personal friends sufficiently interested to do it for him and on his account. Whatever positions he has occupied, they were obtained from the value put upon his services by the public. Certainly, if there be any one who has devoted himself and his political preferment to the cause of the South, regardless of personal consequences, that individual is the Hon. R. B. RHETT. And yet those Northern harpies rejoice at the defeat of what they conceive to be his schemes of personal ambition. But their abuse is praise.
You will have read LINCOLN’S vulgar, insidious, and unmistakable coercion speech, at Indianapolis, ere this reaches you. The wilful ignorance of the federative nature of our government displayed by this man, his filthy allusion to free love, and his method of advocating coercion, would be pitifully ludicrous did they not come from a creature who is a sober and determined fanatic, shortly to be armed with terrible power. If, after this speech, the Government of the Southern Confederacy chooses to wait on Providence, with the idle expectation that Forts Sumter and Pickens will surrender themselves spontaneously, and trust to see their walls fall down, like those of Jericho, at the mere blowing of a parcel of rams’ horns, than an excellent start will have been made towards ultimate submission and the universal contempt of the civilized world. Nations care nothing for sentiment. They adore courage. To obtain their respect you must inspire terror.
SEVEN.