The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Are all the South Carolinians disunionists? It seemed so when I was
there in January, 1861, and yet it did not seem so when I was there in
1855 and '56. At that time you could find men in Charleston who held
that the right of secession was but the right of revolution, of
rebellion,--well enough, if successful, but inductive to hanging, if
unfortunate. Now those same men nearly all argue for the right of
peaceable secession, declaring that the State has a right to go out at
will, and that the Federal Government has no right to coerce or punish
it. These turncoats are the sympathetic, who are carried away by a
rush of popular enthusiasm, and the fearful or peaceable, who dread or
dislike violence. Let us see how a timid Unionist can be converted into
an advocate of the right of secession. Let us suppose a boat with three
men on board, which is hailed by a revenue-cutter, with a threat of
firing, if she does not come to. Two of these men believe that the
revenue-officer is performing a legal duty, and desire to obey him; but
the third, a reckless, domineering fellow, seizes the helm, lets the
sail fill, and attempts to run by, meantime declaring at the top of his
voice that the cutter has no business to stop his progress. The others
dare not resist him and cannot persuade him. Now, then, what position
will they take as to the right of the revenue-officer to fire? Ten to
one they will join their comrade whom they lately opposed; they will cry
out, that the pursuer was wrong in ordering them to stop, and ought not
to punish them for disobedience; in short, they will be converted by the
instinct of self-preservation into advocates of the right of peaceable
secession. I understand, indeed I know, that there are a few opponents
of disunion remaining In South Carolina; but, although they are wealthy
people and of good position, it is pretty certain that they have not an
atom of political influence.
Secession peaceable! It is what is most particularly desired at
Charleston, and, I believe, throughout the Cotton States. Certainly,
when I was there, the war-party, the party of the "Mercury," was not in
the ascendant, unless in the sense of having been "hoist with its own
petard" when it cried out for immediate hostilities. Not only Governor
Pickens and his Council, but nearly all the influential citizens, were
opposed to bloodshed. They demanded independence and Fort Sumter, but
desired and hoped to get both by argument. They believed, or tried to
believe, that at last the Administration would hearken to reason and
grant to South Carolina what it seemed to them could not be denied her
with justice. The battle-cry of the "Mercury," urging precipitation
even at the expense of defeat, for the sake of uniting the South, was
listened to without enthusiasm, except by the young and thoughtless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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