Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

Southern opinions: from the Charleston Mercury, April 30.

The bug-bear of civil war need frighten no one. We are not engaged in civil war, and, thank Heaven! all danger of that most dreadful of human scourges is past. It almost reconciles us to the delay of the Convention. That delay has made Virginia a unit — has made the whole South a unit. The natives of the South are leagued and confederated to repel Northern invasion, and establish Southern independence.

Not for an hour since the first white man set his foot on American soil have the people of the United States been one people. From the beginning, each colony had its separate and distinct laws and institutions, and its separate Government. We have planted and have grown up as distinct and different peoples and nations; and the difference and distinction between us have been increasing and widening from the day of our birth until the present hour. A war between Virginia and Pennsylvania would be no civil war, because we are separate nations; far less, then, is a war between the North and the South. We are socially and politically as distinct a people from the North, as from France or England. The people of the two sections have ever hated each other, not merely because their laws, customs, manners, and institutions are different; but more still, because their races, their blood, their ancestry, were different. The people of the South belong to the brave, impulsive, hospitable, and generous Celtic race; the people of the North to the cold, phlegmatic Teutonio race. We include the old Greek and Roman among the Celtic races;--and also the Anglo-Normans, whose cleanly habits, language, laws, and personal appearance, prove beyond a doubt that they were of Latin origin. The South was settled by Anglo-Normans, Welshmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. These were all Celts, all belonging to what may be classed as Mediterranean people. Few Teutons and few Anglo-Saxons (who are of Teutonic extract) settled in the South. What Teutonio blood did settle in the South, has been diluted and neutralized by frequent intermarriage with our Anglo-Norman families. Every schoolboy knows that the Mediterranean races have almost monopolized the chivalry of the world, and, until within the last three hundred years, quite monopolized its civilization. The people of the South belong to a different and superior race from those of the North.

It suffices, however, for our present purpose to show that we have never been one people, and that [68] the war between us is no civil or fratricidal war, but a very natural, orthodox, and proper war, if there can be any such war. We want to see peace established as soon as possible; and to effect that purpose we should rain down our blows as fast and furious as possible, and not permit ourselves to be unnerved and paralyzed by the raw-head-and-bloody-bone cry of civil war. The people of the two sections generally live at great distance from each other, and have intermarried very little, as well from this cause as from difference of institutions, difference of race, and mutual dislike growing out of those differences.

We wish to make peace with them as soon as possible and to keep peace with them, by having in the future nothing to do with them.--Richmond Examiner.

It is important that we of the South, at least, should understand the nature of this war fully. Many of us are too prone to take our enemies at their word, and look upon this war as one that must be marked with all the terrible convulsions and unnatural horrors of a civil strife. It is time to realize the fact, that we are engaged in a foreign war; that the Government at Washington represents a foreign power, which aims at our subjugation; that we have all the rights, and owe all the duties of an independent people placed in a state of belligerency; and that we have nothing to apprehend from civil war so long as we are a united people, able to maintain and worthy to enjoy our independence.

By doing this we will get rid of much morbid feeling, produced by delusive names and sophistical confusion of ideas in regard to the existing contest. Are we a homogeneous people? Are we free? Are we united? Have we a common Government to which we render cordial allegiance, and which we are ready to defend with patriotic resolution? If so, no civil war can exist within our borders. We know where the enemy is, and who he is. He is on the other side of the Potomac and the Ohio. He is the enemy of our country, of our property, of our institutions, and our homes. Let us front him manfully, and we shall come out of the conflict as safe and triumphant, as he shall come out of it discomfited and humiliated.--New Orleans Daily Delta.