Although unqualifiedly opposed to Secession, the Sun did not believe that military coercion was the best way to prevent it. It saw the temper of South Carolina and other Southern States, but thought that it saw, too, a diplomatic way of curing the disorder. South Carolina, it said, had a greater capacity for indignation than any other political body in the world. Here was the way to stop its wrath:
Open the door of the Union for a free and inglorious egress, and you dry up the machine in an instant.
This was somewhat on a plane with Horace Greeley’s advice in the Tribune—“Let the erring sisters go in peace.” The Sun, however, was more Machiavellian:
Our proposition is that the Constitution be so amended as to permit any State, within a limited period, and upon her surrender of her share in the Federal property, to retire from the confederacy [the Union] in peace. It is a plan to emasculate Secession by depriving it of its present stimulating illegality. Does any one suppose that even South Carolina would withdraw from the Union if her withdrawal were normal?
This was printed on December 8, 1860, some weeks before the fate of the Crittenden Compromise, beaten by Southern votes, showed beyond doubt that the South actually preferred disunion.
With mingled grief and indignation the Sun watched the Southern States march out of the Union. It poured its wrath on the head of the mayor of New York, Fernando Wood, when that peculiar statesman suggested, on January 7, 1861, that New York City should also secede. “Why may not New York disrupt the bonds which bind her to a venal and corrupt master?” Wood had inquired.
The Sun had more faith in Lincoln than most of its Democratic contemporaries exhibited. Of his inaugural speech it said:
There is a manly sincerity, geniality, and strength to be felt in the whole address.
The day after the fall of Fort Sumter the Sun found a moment to turn on the South-loving Herald:
We state only what the proprietor of the Herald undoubtedly believes when we say that if the national ensign had not been hung out yesterday from its windows, as a concession to the gathering crowd, the issue of that paper for another day would have been more than doubtful.