The Alternative: A Separate Nationality or The Africanization of the South

by William H. Holcombe

The precedent alone would be fatal. Shall we submit to an administration which received not a single vote in ten of our States? We could not be represented in its cabinet, nor in any foreign mission, for what Southern gentleman of proper sensibilities would accept office at its hands? The South would be unrepresented at home or abroad. She would have received a blow, politically, socially and morally, which would ensure her destruction. This is precisely what Seward, Beecher and Greeley are aiming at. We are to be coaxed, cheated, legislated out of our rights and liberties. What cannot be achieved by trickery, will at length be attempted by force. The most hateful feature in the despotism which threaten us is its religious element. If we are outraged because the Constitution is violated and broken, what shall we say of those hypocrites or madmen who have perverted the Word of God to the most detestable purposes of man!

The true test of statesmanship, according to Burke, is to preserve and improve, not to abolish and destroy. We apply this to the institution of slavery, and are willing to accord it to the existing Union: Have we exhausted our Constitutional remedies? Is not the Republican party powerless for injury, and may we not anticipate a thorough reversion of Northern judgment? These questions, and others like them, have been met and answered a thousand times by the able leaders of the South. Nothing but the speedy and universal uprising of the Northern people in behalf of State rights and Southern equality can preserve the Union. They have committed the aggressions, let them make the overtures. Is this miracle to be expected, and are we to await credulously its accomplishment? Compromises and compacts, the temporary make-shifts of politicians and philanthropists, will be useless. With what ingenuity the most sacred compact may be perverted, with what facility the most perfect compromise may be broken! You may put a new piece on the old garment, but the rent will be made worse.

The fact is, the Constitution is dead, for it carried with it the seeds of its own dissolution. The Union has achieved its mission; the last page of its history is written, and it may be safely deposited in the glorious archives of the past. The genius of Anglo-Saxon liberty, when she emigrated to these shores, bore twins in her bosom and not a single birth. The Northern race, bold, hardy, intelligent, proud and free, will receive into its embrace the heterogeneous spawn of European civilization, and mold it to its own shape, and prepare it for its own destiny. The Southern people are brave, courteous and gentle, credulous and forbearing—loving friends, chivalrous enemies and good masters, to whose strong and generous hands alone the Almighty would entrust the tutelage of his most helpless and degraded children.

The time for our separation has come, and let all good men unite to avert the calamity of civil war. But at all hazards the dissolution must come. The evolution of history, according to the laws of Providence, which supervise even the falling of a sparrow, necessitates it and demands it. The diversity of character, opinion, interest, climate and institutions in the two sections is beyond remedy. Each has a separate mission to fill and a glorious destiny to accomplish. In our present relations, we incommode each other, threaten the peace of the world, and retard the operations of Providence. Let us part in peace; let us have an equitable distribution of the public property and the public territory; let us have an alliance offensive and defensive; let us scorn the idea, so mournfully entertained by many, that constitutional liberty will perish because we are divorced, that representative government will prove a failure because it becomes our duty and interest to separate. Let us prove by our wisdom and our courage that those great principles are dearer and more powerful than ever. Let us emulate each other only in the arts of peace, in the cultivation of friendship and in the worship of God.

It is unfair to represent this question as one of secession or submission. The word submission, in the sense of political degredation, does not exist in the Southern vocabulary. There is no man in the South so stupid, so cowardly, so base as to be willing to live in the Union as it is. There is no difference between us as to the fanaticism and tyranny of the North, no difference as to the wrongs and injuries of the South. Some of us would secede at once, unconditionally and forever. Others would give the North a last chance to abandon her false position, to make apologies and amend, and to secure us in the strongest bonds imaginable, against not only the encroachments but the existence of the Republican party. The difference is rather nominal than real, for all the conservatives doubt and many despair of proper concessions from the North. With those concessions, disunion is probable, without them it is inevitable.

It is the business of the Cotton States to move first in this important matter. They alone are the great conservators of the institution of slavery. The people of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri are unquestionably with us in spirit and principle, but we cannot disguise the fact, that the tenure of our social system in those States is feeble and failing. Those great communities must do as in their wisdom they see best, but we cannot wait for their decision nor promise to abide by it. Whether they go with the North or declare for a separate sovereignty, the mission of the Cotton States must be equally accomplished. We cordially invite their co-operation and believe they will share largely and richly in the benefits of a Southern Confederacy, and in event of trouble, we pledge our lives and fortunes to the defence of their border.

To the professed Abolitionists, that motley crew of men who should be women and of women who should be men; who see in Fred Douglass a hero and in John Brown a martyr, whose venom is proportioned to their ignorance, as some animals are said to be fiercest in the dark; and who are ready to perpetrate the blackest crimes in the name of liberty and under the garb of virtue, we have nothing to say.

The Republican party itself, the best and the worst of it, we charge with having outraged our feelings, violated our rights, and initiated a policy which, if carried out, will be destructive of our liberties. It is not an election but a usurpation, and if we acquiesce, we are not citizens but subjects. The forms of constitutional liberty may have been observed, but the spirit of tyrannic dictation has been the presiding genius of the day. Suppose the people of the North were to repeal their obnoxious laws, to confirm and abide by the decision of the Supreme Court, to divide the territories in an equitable manner, and to recognize the equality as well as the Union of the States, what and where would the Republican party be? Dissipated into thin air, dissolved like an empty pageant, not leaving a trace behind. With the Republican party, therefore, as it exists at this hour we have no parley. If it questions us, we have no reply, but the words of the gallant Georgian. “Argument is exhausted, we stand to our arms.”

To the conservative men of the North, who sacrificed their time, treasure, interest and popularity in our behalf, and who have proffered their blood in our defence, we have no language which can truly express the gratitude of our hearts. Generous and faithful spirits! Stand bravely a little longer in the imminent deadly breach, which is yawning between the North and the South, and stay, if it yet be possible, the bloody hand of fanaticism. Raise your eloquent voices once more for equality and fraternity, for justice and union. If it prove in vain, as alas! it will, keep firm at least to your principles and your faith; work without ceasing as a leaven of good in your infatuated communities; infuse into the contest before us some chivalric element, worthy of yourselves and of us, which, if the worst comes, shall mitigate the horrors of war, and hasten the returning blessings of peace. When we think of you in the future, we will forget the violence of individuals and the disloyalty of State governments; we will forget the calumnies of Sumner and Phillips and Giddings, the blasphemies of Emerson and Cheever and Beecher, and the vile stings and insults of the aiders and abettors of thieves and assassins; we will willingly forget them all, and entwine you tenderly in our memories and affections, with the immortal friends and compatriots of our own revolutionary sires—with Otis and Warren, and Hancock and Putnam, and Wayne and Hamilton and Franklin. And in the fearful troubles which may come also upon your fragment of this dismembered nation, may the sign of our covenant be found upon every one of your door-posts, to ward off the destroying angel from your favored and happy homes!

Southerners! In this great crisis which involves the welfare of the present and the future, let us be united as one man. Let us survey the whole question in all its bearings, immediate and prospective. Let us act calmly, wisely, bravely. Let us take counsel of our duty and our honor, and not of our danger and our fears. Let us invoke the guardian spirit of ancestral virtue, and the blessing of Almighty God. Let us remember that, although precipitancy is a fault, it is better, in a question so vital as personal and national independence, to be an age too soon than a moment too late. If we succeed in establishing, as we shall, a vast, opulent, happy and glorious slave-holding Republic, throughout tropical America—future generations will arise and call us blessed! But if it be possible, in the mysterious providence of God, that we should fail and perish in our sublime attempt, let it come! Our souls may rebel against the inscrutable decree of such a destiny, but we will not swerve a line from the luminous path of duty. With our hands upon our hearts we will unitedly exclaim, let it come! The sons and daughters of the South are ready for the sacrifice. We endorse the noble sentiment of Robert Hall, that he has already lived too long who has survived the liberties of his country!