April 5, 1861; The Harrisburg Pennsylvania Telegraph
“The delay in the aggression of the secessionists and the pause in the action of the Federal administration, have left all sections of the country in a state of perplexity, in which they cannot exist much longer and preserve their equanimity. With all due respect to the administration we now think, with thousands of earnest Republicans, that it is time some definite policy was proclaimed, so that the country may prepare itself for any emergency which might grow out of such declaration of design or action. If secession has arrayed itself in impregnable defenses, and it is no longer possible to maintain the federal authority in the seceded States, the States that yet cling to the old confederation should be apprised of the fact and proper means at once taken for the safety and preservation of what remains of the Union. It is no longer just to deny that the Union has been dissolved, because the facts of dissolution are too apparent in the insults which are daily heaped on our nationality by the States that are antagonized. To all intents and purposes, the Union is dissolved. The theory of dissolution was fully established by John C. Calhoun before he died. Its practical realization began six years ago – and now that it has burst upon the country and the world with all its force and fury, it behooves us no to shrink from any of the terrors which it presents, but to meet it boldly, and, if possible, cope with and conquer all the difficulties which it has cast in our way.
For many years, there has been a bitter antipathy growing up between the South and the North. This feeling was produced entirely by jealously, because under the influence of free labor, one section excelled the other, so immensely in augmented interest and growth, that political, financial and business inferiority stared them in the face as their inevitable doom. The admission of new States with free institutions as the basis of their government, did not assist in allaying this feeling, while the result of the late census has unmistakably fixed the political inferiority and subordination of the slave States, in any union of commonwealths imbued with freedom and free labor. Southern statesmen understand and appreciate this condition of affairs, and have long since beheld their doom in the mighty progress of free labor, and consequent destruction of slavery in North America.
Why is peaceable secession not practicable? Why, if the people of the slave States are determined to organize a government of their own, should the people of the free States object? When rebellion first showed itself in South Carolina, it was within the power of the federal authorities to have reduced the rebels to subjection – but as the federal government was then in the hands of those who sympathized with secession, the movement was permitted to go on until it has become one of formidable proportions and strength. War with the seceded States will not bring them back into the Union – it will not inspire them with fresh allegiance to their old attachments, nor can its results be other than sanguinary and mournful to one, and, perhaps, fatal to both parties. Why, then, should not the cotton States be allowed to remain where they are, adrift among the nations of the world, until they discover their own folly, and of their own volition seek again an association in a union with their old friends and neighbors? Such a recognition of peaceable secession would not increase the danger and difficulties by which we are already surrounded, nor would it affect any more than they have been affected, the destiny and development of the free States. In the present juncture, a resort to arms seems utterly impracticable. And yet the complication of affairs seems so completely to perplex those who are without official information on the subject, that we most patiently wait until the wisdom of the administration has devised some plan to rescue the country from its impending ruin.”