February 1, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
The Israelites of South Carolina are amongst the most faithful and patriotic of the people of South Carolina. On every occasion of difficulty and danger they have exhibited a devotion to the State worthy their well known characteristics of a hatred of oppression, and a dauntless spirit to resist it. With an equal right to enter into all the offices of our Government, they have shown themselves competent to fill the highest. In the late Senate of the United States, they furnished two Senators – being one sixteenth of the numerical power of the Senate, – and both of these Senators were from the South, and both of them have been foremost in vindicating the rights, interests and liberties of the South. Mr. BENJAMIN and Mr. YULEE are worthy to sit in any assembly of statesmen in the world. Indeed, the former, in intellectual ability, was not surpassed by any public man in the late Senate of the United States; whilst his fidelity to the State he represented was as illustrious as the great ability with which he defended her. Recently in New York Dr. RAPHALL has defended us in one of the most powerful arguments put forth North or South. Here, in South Carolina (as, we believe, everywhere in the South), our Israelite fellow citizens have promptly thrown their whole weight to sustain the State in the great contest in which she is engaged, to save her liberties and institutions from the ruthless despotism of the Northern people. They too well understand the Old Testament, and that grandest of all revelations for the conduct of men, the Commandments which God gave them from Mount Sinai, to be carried away by the false philanthropy of a spurious fanaticism, which, born in infidelity and nursed by sectional hatred, has broken up the fairest fabric of free government the world has ever seen. True to their God and true to their native land, they faithfully exemplify the motto of our State, ‘opibusque parati.’ In expressing these opinions, we know that we but echo the feelings of the great body of our people.