Doc.
62 1/2.-views of a Southerner.
We are permitted by a friend in
Charleston to publish the following extracts from a private letter lately received from a distinguished statesman and able citizen, now in retirement:
I thought also that if only
Georgia would secede with
South Carolina, the
North would see at once the folly of any attempt at coercion, and acknowledge our independence.
But, lo!
after seven States had seceded and formed a new and glorious Constitution, they make war upon us; and after four other States had joined us, and there was scarcely a doubt that three more would soon, they continued war on the largest and most formidable scale.
Interests These people are mad. The reason of it, aside from what I have said, is palpable to any reflecting man who has travelled over
Europe.
If you have not done so, you may hesitate to believe me when I say that the masses of even
Western Europe are less civilized than our negroes.
With greater capacity for it, they lave been forever so ground down that they have no more knowledge, and far less sentiment and polish than even our rice negroes.
Some five millions of them have been precipitated upon the
North in these last twenty years, and have been made, by Sewards, Greeleys,
Beechers, &c., &c., to suck in the hydrogen gas of madness under the name of liberty.
Thus their votes have been secured for their infamous Republican party.
But
Seward and
Greeley split.
Seward wished to keep them in order,
Greeley (insane himself) turned them loose on
Seward, made them put
Soulouque Lincoln on the throne, and compelled
Seward to act as his
Prince of Marmalade.
Now, what next?
“The wind bloweth where it listeth.”
But there is a God over all. And, certainly, He has thus far been with us.
The wealth of the
North, great nominally, is on the surface of the earth.
Cities, machineshops, railroads, ships, stocks, &c., &c. It has no vitality — no power of production, but what labor gives it. But there, as everywhere, all seek to avoid “the sweat of the brow,” and prefer to labor with the brain rather than with the muscles.
Hence their cultivated ingenuity.
Hence the credit system, the banks and bills of exchange, which came in first with the non-working.
Israelites, and after, withal, when slavery began to decay in the old world.
But this credit system is a bubble which floats on till it is punctured, and there's an end.
The wealth of the
South consists in the solid earth from its surface to its centre; in real compulsory labor, and in ample brain to manage
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that and much more.
With this labor, well recompensed, we draw from a bountiful soil, millions and millions of money — real money — year after year; wholly independent of any other power than our good God.
We need no credit from banks and capitalists to sow our seeds and harvest its fruits.
Credit is to us a nuisance, nay, the upas tree, the fatal tempter.
And so far as we, or any one of us, have taken in its fatal poison, just so far we depart from our true policy, and the part assigned us in this world.
Whenever, as from time to time it must happen, that the bubble credit is punctured, all those (and none but those) who have yielded to the temptation are destroyed.
Now, credit has collapsed in the
North, and, I may as well say in the
South, but with this difference: The
North have no rents, no dividends, no freights, no humbug speculations in their future.
The South has already half grown a crop, the surplus of which will command in the markets of the world two hundred millions of specie, and she will have the same or more next year, and the next, unless she is overrun and subjugated, which cannot be done, or her ports blockaded, which possibly may be done.
But in the latter case, this is her surplus, and she can live longer without it than any customer for it can. Our resources then are immense, annually recurring independently of the world, and inexhaustible.
The
North is already nearly used up. The last small loan at 85--the next at, if larger, 50 or 40.
With her grand cities, her magnificent machine shops, her railroads and her vast tonnage, what can they do without the vital current with which our labor has hitherto mainly supplied them?
I don't see how they can ever again bring into the field any thing like the forces they now have, nor how they can sustain these for any length of time.
Now is the time to put forth all our strength.
Our banks should be abolished in favor of individual vidual brokers, who would do all they do for us, and better.
Our Government wants money
now. It wants to anticipate the revenue, and so much of the growing crop as planters can give up. How can it do it?
Your papers are silent on the recent act authorizing a loan.
It is not at all understood in the country, and nobody comes here, as
Stephens in
Georgia, to enlighten the people and stir them up.
We all know that our
all is on the issue, but we don't know how to make it tell.
I know, and all could soon be made to know, that if the Confederate Government goes down
we all go down, and that property, and even life, outside of its success, is
nothing. It is our mission, I think, to come out of this with negro slavery established and recognized, as the true basis of society and government in all staple-growing countries.
I thought the
North would see and follow its interests.
I thought
Europe would do the same, and supposed it had done it when
England agreed to recognize us as “belligerents,” which is all the recognition I want.
But “isms” seem to have the whip-hand of reason and interest.
If
Russell did write what is extracted from his sixth letter, and Lord John did say that our privateers should not carry prizes into British ports, thus changing all that the law of nations has established as to belligerent rights, I give the whole world up to its “isms.”
Without any uselessly harsh expressions, we should quietly take the ground that if our exports are not wanted we can live within ourselves, and it shall be prohibited to send them abroad.
Let them try that, and if
England breaks the blockade for cotton, rice, and tobacco, make her say “Please, sir,” under the guns of our forts before she shall have a pound of any thing.
Among all the extraordinary events of the last few months, the most surprising, the most marvellous, and the most fearful, is the palpable revelation that the people of the free States, high and low, from
Everett and
Cushing to the lowest Zouave, including
Meagher, were fully ripe for a military despotism.
They have accepted it without a moment's hesitation, given their Constitution to the winds, rushed into its embrace, and surrendered themselves without a murmur and without reserve, to the power of a man who is known to have no experience in arms or government, and who has shown himself to be a blackguard, a liar, and a coward.
Such stupidity and baseness are without parallel in human history.--
Charleston Courier, June 21.
