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Updated: May 6, 2025
If many in the North were disposed to make the emancipated slaves a bone of contention a means of punishing the States which had wished to secede and to found a Commonwealth of their own they missed their mark and involved the coloured race in much additional suffering which they might well have been spared.
Virginia and North Carolina, which lie north of the region where cotton prevails, and with them their western neighbour Tennessee, and Arkansas, yet further west and separated from Tennessee by the Mississippi River, did not secede till after Lincoln's inauguration and the outbreak of war.
Was it advisable to await the time when the South should have become decidedly the most important part of the Confederation, and when the North, forced to secede, should have left to others the name, the prestige, the flag of the United States?
When, in December 1860, South Carolina seceded, Horace Greeley, who only a few months before had called the disunion abolitionists "a little coterie of common scolds," now wrote in the Tribune, "If the cotton states shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless."
Florida may be unwilling to subject herself to the charge of temerity or immodesty by leading off, but will most assuredly cooperate with or follow the lead of any single Cotton State which may secede. Whatever doubts I may have entertained upon this subject have been entirely dissipated by the recent elections in this State.
But each State, having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute, jointly with the other States, a single nation, can not, from that period, possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation; and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole Union.
They had also ascertained that, by adopting such a course, a single Southern State could force concessions from the fears of the rest of the United States. They had also learned the valuable lesson that the single issue of Free-Trade was not sufficiently strong of itself to unite all the Southern States in a determination to secede, and thus dissolve the Union.
The States cannot commit treason nor screen individual citizens who may have committed treason any more than they can make valid treaties or engage in lawful commerce with any foreign power. The states attempting to secede placed themselves in a condition where their vitality was impaired, but not extinguished; their functions suspended, but not destroyed."
At Prague she might have dictated terms to Europe. But the English did not want peace. To this Merveldt answered that they needed it sorely, but it must be not a truce, but a peace founded on the equilibrium of Europe. As for the Confederation of the Rhine, those States might secede that chose to do so: but never would he cease to protect those that wanted his protection.
The hotel-keeper endeavored to soothe them by promising to give his printing, for the future, to another house. Several loyal guests were roused at this offer, and threatened to secede at once if it were carried out. The affair resulted in nothing but words. On the morning of the 11th of July I left St. Louis, to join General Lyon in the Southwest.
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