February 25, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
Supposing that we are able to hold our own in Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina, there may come, in May, proffers of peace. Here will be our greatest danger. We never feared the issue of the war. Indeed, originally, we did not think that it would take place. The inability of the Northern to subjugate the Confederate States, appeared to us so clear that we did not think the Northern States would attempt it. In this, however, as in some other matters, we gave the Northern people credit for more than they possessed. In our opinion too, as expressed freely and frankly at the time, the policy of temporising, apparent timidity and procrastination, from December, 1860, for over a year, encouraged if it did not inspire the idea of conquering the South in the minds of the Northern people. They have attempted it, and now there is not a man, we presume, in the United States who does not see and deplore the ignorance and folly which induced the mad enterprise of subjugating the Confederate States. Their intense greed and ambition blinded their perceptions, and has dragged down upon them hideous ruin, and suffering yet to come, incalculable. Failing to subject us by force, they will now attempt to circumvent us by diplomacy. They will, most probably, first propose that we should return to a union with them under the Constitution of the United States, with such guarantees as we shall desire. Their second proposition will be, to come into a union with us under our Constitution. These propositions, we have no doubt, will fail. There will come two other propositions far more dangerous in their character: first, that we should enter into a commercial union with them, by which all the commercial privileges they have heretofore enjoyed, and by which we have been practically their dependencies, shall be restored to them; and second, this failing, to admit portions of the Free States into our Confederacy. These are the two propositions which we will have to meet, in our opinion, more dangerous to our real independence and peace than the war itself.
Commercial reconstruction differs from the admission of Free States into the Confederacy, most essentially in the mode of bringing it about. The admission of Free States into our Confederacy can only be accomplished vote of two-thirds of the whole House of Representatives in the Congress of the Confederate States, and two-thirds of the Senate, the Senate voting by States. But commercial reconstruction may be established by treaty, which is made by the President and two-thirds of the Senators present when the treaty is considered. On the admission of Free States into the Confederacy, the People, in the House of Representatives, have a voice, through their Representatives; but commercial reconstruction is an affair of the President and the Senate. By one or the other of these expedients, the most desperate efforts will be made by our Yankee foes to realize for themselves the great objects of their war upon us, although vanquished in the field.
Now, we know very well that if a vote of the people of the Confederate States, in the army and out of the army, could be taken, both of these propositions would be rejected by overwhelming numbers. The people and our soldiery hate our cruel and faithless Yankee foes. Separation, eternal and complete, is their intention and desire. And yet we would not be doing our duty if we did not warn them that there is danger – imminent danger – that one or the other of these expedients of reconstruction will be forced upon them.
For nearly a hundred years the world has been wrong with respect to the institution of African slavery. The war now raging between the United and the Confederate States has done a great deal to rebuke its errors, but it will require time, and the experience of an independent slaveholding country, entirely to extinguish them. The Confederate States are not alone concerned in this great experiment. The most beautiful parts of the world are lying waste and abandoned, awaiting the successful vindication by us of the institution of African slavery. Nor should it be forgotten, that bound up with this institution is the great cause of free government itself, under republican forms of government. The Free States, as they are called (more properly Slave States politically), have proved that they are incapable of preserving their liberties by republican forms of government. Without an effort to save these, they submitted basely and entirely to the very first despotism attempted over them. It has been only after this despotism established over them failed in obtaining for them, by the war, the pecuniary and commercial interests they expected it to win by our subjugation, that they have turned against it. Had it been successful, political liberty on this continent would have been as completely extinguished as it was in Rome under the CAESARS. It failed by our energy, in spite of the unanimous support of the people of the United States. On us of the Confederate States now rests alone the great cause of Free Constitutional Government, in its republican forms, by Slaveholding States and a Slaveholding Confederacy, where the lower stratum of society, the slaves, have no voice in the Government, and where the privileged white man, who exercises the prerogatives of self government, has the opportunities of rising above material wants, into the atmosphere of knowledge, and can afford to exercise judgment and character. Shall we be faithless to our great mission? Shall we not rather accept the high destiny which awaits us, and make a name amongst the nations of the earth, as glorious for its beneficence as for its power?
These are views which affect and influence the republican philanthropist and statesman. They run in the current of American expectations, and touch a vein of feeling and of hope that exists in boldness and unmistakeable substance among our people. But the question is not confined to considerations of benefit to mankind and the world at large, so much as of security and well being to ourselves and our posterity. Not merely our future destiny, but our political status, our peace and our prosperity, are vitally involved in the terms upon which this war shall be closed.