The Daily Dispatch: February 6, 1861., [Electronic resource]

"Coercion or Compromise."

If there be, indeed, no choice but between secession and civil war, what true Republican can hesitate to acquiesce in secession? The latest aspects of the situation are sufficiently gloomy to make the question a very practical one.

South Carolina is now de facto a separate State, with its own Legislature, Judges, Magistrates and Tax-Collectors — its own flag, its own army, and its own Ambassaders at the seat of the Government from which it has revolted. It is true that a body of United States troops occupy a strong fort on the Carolina territory. But that they do so has occasioned several vacancies in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet. the Secretary at War holding his honor engaged to the Commissioners from the seceding State that there should be no change of military dispositions — whereas the commandant has only surrendered a weak position to occupy a stronger. Is the State whose independence has been treated with these marks of respect to be re-conquered? Are we to hear of heated shots to be poured from Fort Sumter upon the city of Charleston — of a Federal army shooting down the Southern husbands of Northern wives; and instigating, by its very presence, a slave insurrection in a State where the colored population is greater than the white? Is the Government of a great Republic to imitate the foolish and wicked usage of old-world monarchies, by attempting to substitute the rule of force for the authority sustained by common consent? Even were it not certain that the fratricidal conflict would spread until every one of the thirty-three States was engaged on one side or the thirty-three States was engaged on one side or the other, and the struggle became as universal as obstinate, its initiation would be an act of madness. There can be no pretence of necessity for compelling even a solitary seceder to re-enter the Union. Solitude would soon prove intolerable, and readmission be sought as a favor. And if six or seven States have not the right to constitute a separate federation, we know not on what principle of right the American Union constituted itself by separation from the British Crown. It is certainly true that the Union has exercised over the Southern States no such oppression as the British Crown attempted upon the Colonies.--But every community must be the judge of its own grievances, and the imaginary wrongs of the South will be rendered very real by the least attempt at coercion. We deplore the infatuation which impels the Cotton States to a course so unjustifiable and dangerous — a course exposing them to that great peril of servile insurrection from which they were safe while in the Union, and hurrying them into collision with the whole civilized world upon the ocean which they desire to traverse with slave ships. We sympathize with our brethren of the North in the trial of principle and temper to which they are subjected. But while we warn the South that they are rushing on their own destruction, we adjure the North to do nothing in violation of the true Republican principle, that every community is its own master; and nothing that may stain with blood the banner that will be the more glorious when, with hall its stars, its stripes have lost all their sinister significance.

This is the language of a London paper, a paper which sympathizes with the Republicans, but cannot blind its eyes to the injustice and wickedness of coercion. In fact, the whole London press cry out, with one voice, against coercion. Great Britain has relinquished it against her own colonies, and in the case of the immensely valuable Australian gold fields, to which the right of the crown was indisputable, she acted promptly and gracefully upon the liberal policy which she learned from the results of her experiment of force with the thirteen American Colonies.--We need not point out the errors into which the Star has been led, as well as all the foreign press, in regard to the negro population.--There is not a more true and loyal population in the world than the slaves of the Southern States. The experiment of John Brown illustrated that fact, but it has been demonstrated on a larger scale in South Carolina.--A member of the Virginia Legislature, who has recently returned from that State, informs us that the blacks are as unanimous as the whites for secession, and quite as anxious for a fight. Even the New York Tribune is forced at last to admit this fact. The Star's protests, however, and those of the whole London press, against coercion, are significant. Let it be tried, and we shall see whether or not England can dispense with cotton.