March 16, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
After flirting along in the fogs of a deluded self sufficiency and bouncing about without ballast and rudderless in the shoals and quicksands of senseless vituperation, bellying out and incontinently swelling of the vast strength, independence and general superiority of the great North, belittling the South as infinitely weak, insignificant and contemptible, it seems that at last the Northern craft and its navigators, as they approximate to the end of their cruise, begin to entertain a shrewd suspicion of the practical result of their brave exertions against this section, and of the watery fate that awaits their piratical enterprise. A downward sinking–an evident feeling of goneness, as if a seasick qualm–is coming o’ the spirit of their epigastric region. Still they have stomach for a fight. But, from appearances, there is danger of such a collapse soon, that those who cannot reach our shores in long boats, will begin to fire minute guns of distress, and appeal, without stint, to our humanity to save repentant sinners, lest they be the deep bosom of the ocean buried–sunk in a sea of deliberately selected disaster.
The New York Evening Post is certainly one of the most thorough going and radical of Black Republican journals. CHASE and SUMNER are its heroes. We, therefore, in the way of preparation for the events that cast their shadows before, commend to our readers the sentiment and logic of an article from that paper, to be found in our columns.