New York Tribune, November 19, 1860
Bullying the Free States.
Abraham Lincoln has been designated for next President of this Republic by the popular vote of nearly every Free State, and the ruling politicians of the Slave States are not pleased with the selection. We can fancy their feelings, as we felt much the same when they put a most undesired President upon us four years ago. Moreover, we can and do in good faith advise them to do as we did—Bear it with fortitude, and hope to do better next time. There are other courses that may seem more inviting at first, but this will prove altogether safest and wisest in the end.
But the Southern politicians are not so used to adversity as we have been, and they do not at first take it kindly. Everybody among them is expected to tear and rave over this Free-Soil triumph, under the suspicion of being marked and denounced as tin Abolitionist. Of course, the howl throughout the Cotton States is very general—partly in earnest, and partly not. And the life-long Disunionists of South Carolina, and two or three sympathizing sister States, seize upon the excitement as a godsend, by whose aid they hope forthwith to achieve their darling end.
Messrs. Rhett, Ruffin, Yancey, and other leaders in this crusade were just as much Disunionists a year ago as they now are; the circumstances have changed, but they have not. They are intensely busy and noisy just now, because they fear that the golden moment will speedily pass away—that if they do not succeed in dissolving the Union before the excitement cools and Mr. Lincoln is inaugurated, they never will. Hence, the indecent haste with which South Carolina is hurried along the path of treason, without allowing time for reflection or consultation. The Disunionists dare not trust their cause to a general council of the Slave States, nor even of the Cotton States, for they know they would be overruled. Their game is to rush South Carolina into a point-blank collision with the Federal Government, and then call upon the other Slave States to rally to the defense of the champion of their common cause, By thus raising a false issue and appealing to the sympathies rather than the reason of the other slaveholding States, they hope to effect what, on a direct appeal, they know to be impossible. And this, though a desperate resort, is the only one open to them consistent with their resolution to shiver the Union at all hazards.
Now we believe and maintain that the Union is to be preserved only ao long as it is beneficial and satisfactory to all parties concerned. We do not believe that any man, any neighborhood, town, county, or even State, may break up the Union in any transient gust of passion; we fully cemprehend that Secession is an extreme, an ultimate resort—not a Constitutienal but a Revolutionary remedy; but we insist that this Union shall not be held together by force whenever it shall have ceased to cohere by the mutual attraction of its parts; and whenever the Slave States, or the Cotton Stites only, shall unitedly, coolly say to the rest, “We want to get out of the Union,” we shall urge that their request be acceded to.
But one thing we must firmly and always insist on—that there shall be no bribing, no coaxing, no wheedling those to stay in the Union who want to get out. Every step in this direction tends to confirm the Slave States in their mistaken notion that the Union is more advantageous to us than to them—that it is a contrivance to pamper and enrich the North at the cost of the South. And this is to-day the chief source of National peril. It is because the Southern people have been persistently told that the Free States would be pecuniarily ruined by disunion—that our people live by their sufferance and thrive on their bounty—that we are eternally threatened with Secession. Let it be fully and fairly understood that the benefits of the Union are mutual—that we don’t want the south to remain in the Union out of charity to us—and this eternal menace of Nullification and Secession will be hushed forever.
The Herald has a bulletin from Richmond, which foreshadows the part which Virginia is to be induced to play in the drama now opening, as follows:
“I have taken considerable pains to ascertain what the attitude of Virginia shall be in the coming crisis. Her purpose is to maintain a position of armed neutrality until she is prepared to tender her services as mediator, under the official sanction of the Legislature, or a Convention called by its authority. It is known that she will, meanwhile, prepare for the worst, for if the States now threatening to secede shall adopt her programme, and that shall fail to be carried out by non-compliance on the part of the North, Virginia will unite in the secession movement. She will ask the Souther States to go into a Southern Conference with her, and it is understood that they will go, provided she lays down beforehand the programme which shall form the basis of action. This, it is supposed, Virginia will do, and from information communicated to me it will be of a character sufficiently comprehensive and exacting to satisfy the most ultra Southern men.
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It will embrace. first, a repeal of the statutes nullifying the Fugitive Slave law by those States which have passed such statutes, with a guaranty of a faithful enforcement of that law in the future; second, a concession that the Constitution authorizes the carrying of slaves into the common territory, and consequent protection for slave property therein; and third, that neither Congress nor the Executive shall interfere with Slavery in the States, except for protection in the latter when necessary. Some favor a change in the programme to the extent of a demand for the passage of a law by Congress, forthwith, for its protection in the Territories.
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“If this programme shall be adopted by the Conference, and the North show any disposition to compromise upon it, then a National Conference will be called the pending difficulties upon that basis. Should these measures fail to obtain the sanction of the North, secession of all the Southern States will follow.”
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—This is tolerably cool, in faith, considering that is hardly past the middle of November. Those who have been beaten in the late contest propose to graciously forgive the victors, provided they will give up all that was at stake on the issue and a good deal more. We can tell the gentlemen who lost that this programme will not even be considered by the Free States, much less submitted to. If Cornwallis at Yorktown had offered Washington a free pardon in case he would lay down his arms and sue to George for mercy as a repentant rebel, his demand would not have been more preposterous than that above quoted. Those to whom the People have just voted to intrust the Administration of the Federal Government do not believe that the Constitution authorizes the carrying of “Slavery into the common territory,” any more than Jefferson or Roger Sherman did, and they will do nothing to favor such transplantation, but everything in their power to prevent it. Congress will pass no law for the protection of Slavery in those Territories: if the next Congress should, Mr. Lincoln would certainly veto it. And as to the laws of certain States, designed to secure the personal liberty of their inhabitants, those States will modify, repeal or retain them
exactly as their own people shall see fit, and when they see fit—and this will
never be while they are menaced with terrible consequences if they do not promptly comply with the arrogant demands of outsiders. On this point, the Republican Platform adopted at Chicago says, explicitly: ”
“That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States and especially of the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends.”
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—Who disputes this doctrine? Certainly no one who professes to be a disciple of Jefferson and Madison. Read the celebrated Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of ’98 and ’99, and judge how a supporter of the doctrines therein proclaimed would look advocating the above proposition to dragoon the Free States into a repeal of their own statutes.
The simple fact is, that this clamor about the Personal Liberty acts of certain Free States is hollow and delusive. Those acts are not the cause of but a mere pretext for the present slaveholding furor. Those who are fanning the flames of civil discord, hate to own that their only grievance is the election as President of the candidate they most dislike: so they look in every direction for excuses for their treason. That the Personal Liberty acts are only used as pretexts, is proved by the fact that the very Governors who officially inveigh against them do not know which States have passed them. New-York has been repeatedly denounced as a leading offender; Indiana as another; Illinois as a third; when in fact neither of these States has passed any such law! Of all the border Free States, only Pennsylvania has any act on her statute-book that even attempts to protect those claimed as Slaves, and Pennsylvania’s is a weak, flimsy affair. Generally, we may say that the States which have Personal Liberty acts are those into which slaes seldom or never do or can flee. Practically, those acts are of no account except to the Secessionists. If every one of them were repealed to-morrow, not five more fugitive slaves per annum would be caught and returned than are now. And the only effect of repealing those acts at this juncture would be to incite new and more unwarrantable exactions.
If any State has passed an Anti-Slavery act at variance with the Federal Constitution, the Supreme Court, on the proper presentment of the matter, will be ready enough to declare that act a nullity. Mr. Lincoln, as President, will probably feel bound to recognize and enforce the decrees of that Court. Here is a way—and it is the only practicable way—to overrule these acts if they be really exceptionable. All the other States, with the new President and Congress, might command, entreat, implore Vermont or Wisconsin to repeal her Personal Liberty act, yet the act would remain unrepealed and in full force; but let the Supreme Court declare it invalid, and there is in substance an end of it. The Secessionists understand this; but they don’t want those laws repealed—on the contrary, they wish there were more of them, and that they were a great deal more objectionable than they are. Let it be understood, then, that the South has full sway in the Supreme Court, and can there demolish the Personal Liberty acts if she will, If she chooses to have them stand, the reason will be generally understood.