January 15, 1861, The Charleston Mercury
That the sole conservative element, in the Government of the former United States of America, was centered in the Southern States of that Confederacy, is now made evident by the present attitude and progress of affairs at Washington. Bereft of that check upon the lawless will of a grasping, vulgar and reckless majority at the North, hitherto imposed upon it is the Congress of the United States by the conservative element derived form the Southern States, through their eminently conservative, social and political home institutions, how quickly have they rushed forward upon the mad march toward unrestrained power and anarchy! Already we hear fierce cries from the North for a military commander in chief of the armies of the remaining United States, with supreme power. The Executive is to be overridden–Congress is to be subordinate, and a military leader is to control the land with the sword and cannon. Already Washington and its neighborhood is made the headquarters of the army, and the Capitol is to be environed with soldiers.
We are not surprised. These things but fulfill our previous views–long since, and frequently expressed. There exists in neither the social nor the political organization of society at the North one single element of permanent order, law or liberty. The whole structure of their institutions, social and political, tends only to license, and can result but in anarchy, and eventually in despotism or revolution at home. It exists without one check or chart–based upon the ever shifting, ungovernable, irresponsible will of the mob. As the late Historian, MACAULAY, has well expressed himself upon this very subject–it is like a ship at sea, dashing forward under full sail, without rudder, chart or compass. Bravely it will bound forward for a time before the gale; but in time the storm will overtake it, and, helpless, it will go down, overwhelmed in the troughs of the sea; or, stranded upon the rocks and sands of popular caprice, will lie a hopeless wreck, to be dismembered and beaten to pieces by the waves of popular passion. We have not his language now before us, but this is his simile, and its exact purpose. His only error was in regarding the North as the United States. He spoke of the government as it stood, and he was right.
The dismemberment of the late Confederacy is neither the result of negroism nor any other ism. The primary cause underlying the whole question and difficulty between the North, and the South, has been and is the organic instability (if we may be allowed the paradox) and disorder of unbalanced, unrestrained power. All regard or respect for constitutions, rights, or creeds, have been cast to the winds. What the majority wanted was their will. They wanted our money, through the ingenious instrumentality and secret operations of the Tariff laws. And they took it, and built with it their great cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. They have flooded their section with our money, and built up immense manufacture upon our submissions. They wanted lands and our territories, and their will made it law to take them. They took them. They want now the soil of our very States – they want our slaves. They will wait a little while, they say; but eventually the want them. They will it. And, if permitted, they will have them. If not prevented, they will have them. If not prevented by arms, they will have them.
And where is all this to end? Does it not seem strange that any man who has ever read a childbook of general history can doubt. ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ sayeth the wise man of old. History is but being reenacted today. How often has the same experiment now at work in Northern society been tried in ages and centuries long since passed! And history has invariably found for it but one solution–despotism. With the stride of a giant, it has already entered the domains of the Northern people, and is rapidly marching over their land, soon to take possession of all.
The edifice of our fathers is about to crumble and fall. And we, their children, have but escaped in time, to save ourselves and our children from being rushed in tis ruins. Let us depart hence, and let the Children of the sun build up for themselves an edifice and home to live in, without the jarring elements to engender confusion and strife. Let them place their house upon the rock of their own conservative institutions–their great products–noninterference with each other–strictly limited powers in their general agent of government – and open commerce with the world.