January 18, 1861, The New York Herald
The ultimatum of Mr. Buchanan to the warlike requisition of South Carolina, through Colonel Hayne, for the surrender of Fort Sumter, has concentrated the public attention upon the issue thus made up of peace or war. Anticipating a bloody collision, which may summon the whole country to arms, we apprehend that our readers of all parties are thus brought to the opinion that prompt sacrificing the honor or the prestige of the general government, are much more important now than any sectional movements, propositions or concessions for the salvation of the Union.
Admitting the force of this opinion, but still entertaining the hope that war in the interim will be avoided, so as to leave the incoming administration free to make its election between conciliation and coercion, we have the whole field of the argument – peace or war, conciliation or coercion, Union or disunion – still open before us. Our republican contemporaries admonish us that first question to be decided is whether we have a government or not. They demand, too, that the rights and the integrity of the government of the Union shall first be vindicated in the enforcement of the laws, before any propositions involving further concessions to slavery can be entertained. Nor can it be denied that the moral strength of this government materially depends upon its capacity to enforce, if necessary, its constitutional rights against domestic usurpations, as well as in resistance to foreign aggressions.
The powers of the federal government are well defined. They are the powers surrendered by the States for the general welfare; and so far they make the United States a single sovereignty. Furthermore, as there is nothing in the constitution recognizing the right of a State to secede from the Union, and as there are no exceptional constitutional provisions, making any discrimination between acts of rebellion against the federal government under State authority and similar acts without any such authority, we must concede the power of the federal government to enforce the laws of the Union not less today in South Carolina than in New York. But the exercise of this power, and the conditions and the extent of its exercise, at a crisis like this, and considering all the stubborn facts with which we have to deal, involve us in duties and dangers of the most difficult and delicate nature. There is the duty of executing the laws; but there is the danger of precipitating a civil war, in which all laws, all political rights, all safeguards of society, federal and local, may be destroyed.
The framers of the constitution never dreamed of the possibility of a sectional revolutionary imbroglio such as this; but for all causes of State or sectional complaints against the general government the needful remedy was provided in the ways and means ordained for the revision of the constitution. This brings us to the main proposition of this article, to wit: that if we maintain relations of peace between the general government and each and all of the Southern States for a month or two longer, we may arrive at some manifestations directly from the people of the North which will bring the administration of Mr. Lincoln and the republican party practically to the work of such concessions to the South as will save the Union.
A State election will come off in New Hampshire on the 12th of March; in Connecticut on the 1st of April, and in Rhode Island on the 3d of the same month, comprehending in each case the election of members of Congress. Beginning with New Hampshire, let the advocates in that State of concessions to the South for the sake of the Union prepare, upon this issue, for a trial of strength with the republican party and their Congressional candidates. Let the friends of a compromise in New Hampshire begin with adopting something like the Crittenden propositions of pacification as the platform of their Congressional ticket; and we believe that upon this test the people of that State will do their duty for the Union. We believe they will give a verdict in favor of a Union saving compromise that will create at once a general Northern reaction, and convince Mr. Lincoln, his Premier, his Cabinet and his party, that if they would save themselves they must sacrifice their offensive anti-slavery abstractions upon the altar of the Union.
Upon the test and with the result indicated in New Hampshire, it is morally certain that a similar response would follow the same appeal to the people of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The pressure of this fearful crisis of suspense and suspension, of political derangements and business disasters, has brought the people of New England to some appreciation of the cash value of the Union, and of the south under our general government. We therefore conclude that after another month or two of this crisis they will be in a proper frame of mind to abandon their impracticable doctrines of freedom and negro philanthropy, for the sake of that rich southern market for their more substantial Yankee notions, which will be lost the separation of the South from the Union.
We have appealed to the President elect and to his appointed Premier to come forward to the rescue of the country. They have responded in vague and indefinite promises of conciliation, and in dark and ominous hints of coercion, in which we find very little of hope or encouragement. We have appealed to Congress, and both houses of Congress have practically confessed their inability to grasp or to understand the causes, the tendencies or the dangers of this novel, startling and incomprehensible southern revolution. We have appealed to the State authorities of the great central States of New York and Pennsylvania to call in each a State Convention in behalf of the Union, and the only response we hear is the of the laws. Meantime, the strong opposing currents of Union and disunion are approaching each other, and how are we to turn them aside into the channels of peace?
We have only left us this last resort of a direct appeal to the people of the North. We can reach them through these approaching New England State elections. Let, then, the issue indicated be made in New Hampshire, and the result there may be decisive, either for a restoration of the Union, in a liberal compromise from the North, or for the division of the Union into two, three or half a dozen petty and belligerent republics.