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

Let the devil take the hindmost.--Let us see who shall get South fastest — farthest--first. Now that the word to bounce is come, let us know who can jump the biggest summersault with the most prodigious energy. Of all Secessionists that were ever seen, it is certain that the Union-shriekers make the best. Beyond other fire-eaters, are Submissionists fierce. Those who have risked every thing and dared every thing in the late struggle for Liberty and Independence — and long before it was begun, for Southern rights and Virginia's honor — are utterly confounded and struck dumb by the fiery enthusiasm of those who were lately denouncing them as rebels ripe for hemp, Southern rights as sedition, and State sovereignty a blasphemy against the Constitution. The natural congratulations of the conquerors in the fight are drowned in the shouts of triumph raised by the vanquished; and the world has lived to see that Lost Principle,--to the victors belong the spoils,--displaced by this other, that from the victors shall the spoils be taken! Long was belief, and deep was once the conviction, that the shriek of “Union” was the winning cry; and just so long as that belief endured, it was written in the Book of Judas that Davis was a Traitor, Disunion was Treason, and the Southern Confederacy a conglomeration of every thing that was weak, wicked, and absurd. But no rapping spirits ever turned the tables like those that Lincoln's Proclamation evoked from the vasty deep of revolution. The cannon of Fort Sumter announced to all the world that the Baboon of Illinois had no more nuts for Virginia monkeys; and when once fully up to the idea that henceforth the star of empire had taken a Southern track; that there were patrons in Montgomery; that place and pay, if anywhere, must be searched on this side of the Potomac, and earned by devotion to State Rights — there was a revival in the church politic such as no camp meeting ever saw. When McDowall Moore can sign himself “sinner saved” at the bottom of an Ordinance to unite Virginia to a rebel Confederacy of slave-owners, and Bursted Baldwin inspects the troops that are to take Washington and march on Boston — who may despair of getting to glory? No heard — of bison ever went over a precipice with precipitancy like that of our mummied Federalists and galvanized Submissionists plunging into the Southern Confederacy. It is a race to Montgomery — office is at Montgomery — and the devil take the hindmost.--Richmond Examiner.