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You may write it down as a settled fact to be reckoned from, that these States will never form an alliance again with the
Abolition States of the
North--never while the world stands.
An army of a million soldiers could not force them back.
They will die to a man first, save, perhaps, here and there one who has neither “cotton nor negroes to fight for,” and who would be glad to see no one better off than himself.
Party lines are now annihilated.
There is no longer any Whig or Democrat, Southern man and
Yankee, but “Southern Confederacy men.”
Tennesseeans are now called upon to decide whether they will fight the
South or the
North.
We rejoice to see the change the political mind of
Tennessee is undergoing--
Nashville is overwhelmingly for secession to-day. All the men I left Union men, I find now thinking with me,
save one--i. e., all I have yet conversed with.
I learn that a similar change of opinion is universal, except in the mountainous districts of
Tennessee.
I regard that the fate of
Tennessee is determined by the next vote that is cast for Governor.
Whoever the man may be, let him be for a United South.
Union men of
Tennessee, with few exceptions, are among the very foremost in the call for arming the
State, and resisting the machinations of the
Black Republican tyrant and his conclave at
Washington.
The
Christian Index, of
Georgia, throws the whole blame of the war “upon
Lincoln and his advisers ;” says that upon the part of the
South it is a war to maintain the right “of sovereignty pertaining to each State of the old Union and of the new Confederacy,” in which “we are but defending our firesides, our families, our honor, and our independence.”
After speaking of the apparent policy of the United States Government, the editor adds:
The tendency of these movements will be to bring Virginia and Maryland into the Southern Confederacy, and also Kentucky and Tennessee, and perhaps Arkansas; and if Lincoln persists in his coercive policy, President Davis will have no other alternative but to conquer a peace by attacking Washington city, and, on the tented field proving the superiority of Southern to Northern prowess.
Thus will we force the ill-advisers of Mr. Lincoln to acknowledge and recognize our secession; we will compel an equitable division of the national property; and while the North will sink at once to the position of a third-rate power of the earth, we, from our Capitol at Washington city, will cause ourselves to be regarded as the valiant American Government that, by martial supremacy, asserted its right to a place among the first nations of the earth, and which, by its liberal policy towards other nations, and its possession of King Cotton, will but bind to itself in friendship all other countries, :and which, by the enlightenment, religion, urbanity, and high-toned principles of its people, will claim and receive the respect, admiration, and esteem of the world.
The
South Western Baptist, of
Alabama, says:
Well, the war is upon us!
We have exhausted every effort for peace which duty and honor demand.
Our peace offerings are spurned, our commissioners sent home from Washington with the insulting declaration that they cannot be received, and now the roar of artillery on our Southern borders announces the purblind policy of an abolitionized government, bent on the ruin of the country as well as its own!
Let it come!
“In the name of our God, we will set up our banners;” and by the blessing of Him who ruleth in the armies of heaven, the sword will never be sheathed until the last invader shall be driven from our shores.
The battle of New Orleans, fought by Southern soldiers, commanded by Southern officers, may suggest to these hirelings of Mr. Lincoln what Southern men can and will do when their wives and children are behind them and an invading foe is before them.
Let no man's heart fail him for fear.
The spirit of our people is aroused, and hundreds of thousands stand ready to fly to the standard of our Southern Confederacy to maintain its integrity or perish in the attempt.
“Let us play the man for our people, and for the cities of our God, and the Lord do what seemeth him good.”
Let prayer be made without ceasing unto God, and the result is not doubtful.
The
Methodist Protestant, of
Baltimore, says:
We make no pretensions to statesmanship, we are no cabinet officer, we know little of state-diplomacy, but we think we know enough of
Christ and his religion to be certain that war, and especially civil war, is a most cruel and wicked thing.
It is anti-Christian, and a nation like ours ought not engage in it. Moral force at an era of civilization like that in which we live, ought to be able to settle State difficulties.
The points of national honor upon which men dwell so eloquently, are as likely to be overrated as the points of personal honor in the ordinary duel.
And what is this war likely to be?
A gigantic duel between the two sections, North and South.
A duel between brothers.
Both are to be injured, cruelly.
Sorrow unspeakable is to be carried into the bosoms of innocent connections — and then, when mutual satisfaction in blood shall have been rendered, amicable relations will be established, and history will find material for another story of wrong and outrage, or the recital of successive battles, of victories and defeats, leaving the quarrel at the end, just where it was at the beginning — a thing to be settled by peaceful diplomacy.
The
Examiner, of New York, says:
War is an evil from which peace-loving patriots have prayed God to save their beloved country.
But there are worse evils than war, and one of them would be a subversion of the ancestral freedom of a great people, by the
