Secession movement at the South.
letter from Secretary Cobb--Union Movements at the North--the call of the Mayor of Philadelphia for a Union meeting, &c,Col. Philip St. George Cocke, of Powhatan county, Va, has written a letter to the Richmond Examiner on the present state of affairs. After recounting the injuries inflicted on the South by the North, he says: ‘ What, then, shall we of Virginia and the South do?. We should promptly and with one voice say to the North--You have violated the spirit and broken the letter of the great constitutional compact which our fathers made unto your fathers. You have set at naught the laws of God and man; and you have broken all the bonds that can bind man to his fellow man. You stand convicted of sedition, perjury and treason. You have rendered it impossible that we of the South can consent longer to live under the same government with you. You have subverted the Constitution of your country. You have destroyed the union of these States. ’ The supreme law of self-defence and self-preservation — our duty to ourselves and our property — to mankind and to God--require that we should separate from you peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. Let, us, then, boldly, promptly and unitedly exercise the inalienable rights of freemen.--Let there be no discord and divisions amongst us. If we hesitate, or are divided, our enemies will triumph, and we shall soon be made to bend the neck and pass under the yoke of slavery and despotism of Northern masters, who will quickly inaugurate in our midst a reign of terror of which history has as yet recorded but faint and feeble prototypes in the massacres of St. Domingo and the horrors of the French revolution. If, on the contrary, the South is true to herself — true to her posterity — true to man and to God--she will arise in the majesty of her might. She will shake off her enemies! She will defy them! And she will roll back upon the demon of Abolitionism, of Red and Black Republicanism, a withering and a damning defeat! Let us of the South, then, invoke the spirit of our fathers of the first American Revolution, when they declared themselves independent of Great Britain. Let us instantly prepare ourselves, and let us, in due time and form, proclaim our separation from the North, and our separate and independent existence as a people; and let us, like our forefathers, pledge to each other in the maintenance of that position our lives, our fortunes, and sacred honor.
Nov. 30, 1860.
N. B — I am not to be understood as advocating or advising what is called immediate secession, nor indeed any precipitate or aggressive action that might invite or provoke a physical contest with the North.
We are in the right — let us by all means continue to occupy that position.
We have only to know our rights, and to be determined to maintain them.
We must, however, take time for conference, for deliberation, for preparation, for arming and organizing our military, and for framing the Constitution of our new Confederacy.
No Southern State can, without great imprudence, danger and injustice to all the rest, move until all are ready to move, and should, in the meantime, get ready to move, especially ready in a military sense, before political measures shall precipitate us, while as yet, unarmed, into civil war. Upon these points I may hereafter ask to be heard.
In Caroline county, Va., on the 10th inst., a meeting was held, which adopted resolutions advising a convention in this State, denying the right of coercion, and asserting the right of secession.
The letter of Secretary Cobb to the people of Georgia has just been printed, and will be dispatched South at once.
After referring to the origin and purposes of the Black Republican party, he says: ‘
Can there be a doubt in any intelligent mind that the object which the Black Republican party has in view is the ultimate extinction of slavery in the United States?
To doubt it is to cast the imputation of hypocrisy and imbecility upon the majority of the people of every Northern State who have stood by this party through all its trials and struggles to its ultimate triumph in the election of Lincoln.
I am sure that no one can entertain for them individually or collectively less personal respect than I do, and yet I do give them credit for more sincerity and intelligence than is consistent with the idea that in obtaining power they will refuse to exercise it for the only purpose for which they professed to seek it. I do believe that with all their meanness and duplicity they do hate slavery and slaveholders quite as much as they say they do, and that no argument addressed to their hearts or judgments in behalf of the constitutional rights of the South would receive the slightest consideration.
What might be effected by an appeal to their fears and cupidity I will not now stop to discuss. ’
In the nomination of Mr. Lincoln for the Presidency the Black Republicans gave still more pointed expression to their views and feelings on the subject of slavery.
Lincoln had neither the record nor the reputation of a statesman.
Holding sentiments even more odious than those of Seward, he was indebted to the comparative obscurity of his position for a triumph over his better known competitor.
By the boldness and ability with which Mr. Seward had advocated the doctrines of the "higher law" and the "irrepressible conflict," he had exhibited to the public a character so infamous that even Black Republicans would not hazard the use of his name.
To find a candidate of the same principle and less notoriety was the great work to be performed by the Chicago Convention.
That only was successfully discharged in the selection and nomination of Mr. Lincoln.
He closes as follows:-- ‘
The facts and considerations which I have endeavored to bring to your view present the propriety of resistance on the part of the South to the election of Lincoln in a very different light from the mere question of resisting the election of a President who has been chosen in the usual and constitutional mode.
It is not simply that a comparatively obscure abolitionist, who hates the institutions of the South, has been elected President, and that we are asked to live under the administration of a man who commands neither our respect nor confidence; that the South contemplates resistance even to disunion.
Wounded honor might tolerate the outrage until by another vote of the people the nuisance could be abated, but the election of Mr. Lincoln involves far higher considerations.
It brings to the South the solemn judgment of a majority of the people of every Northern State--with a solitary exception — in favor of doctrines and principles violative of her constitutional rights, humiliating to her pride, destructive of her equality in the Union, and fraught with the greatest danger to the peace and safety of her people.
It can be regarded in no other light than a declaration of the purposes and intentions of the people of the North to continue, with the power of the Federal Government, the war already commenced by the ten nullifying States of the North upon the institution of slavery and the constitutional rights of the South.
To these acts of bad faith the South has heretofore submitted, though constituting ample justification for abandoning a compact which had been wantonly violated.
The question is now presented, whether longer submission to an increasing spirit and power of aggression is compatible either with her honor or her safety.
In my mind there is no room for doubt.
The issue must now be met or forever abandoned.
Equality and safety in the Union are at an end, and it only remains to be seen whether our manhood is equal to the task of asserting and maintaining independence out of it. The Union formed by our fathers was one of equality, justice and fraternity.
On the 4th of March it will be supplanted by a Union of sectionalism and hatred.
The one was worthy of the support and devotion of freemen, the other can only continue at the cost of your honor, your safety, and your independence.
Is there no remedy for this state of things but immediate secession?
None worthy of your conservatism has been suggested, except the recommendation of Mr. Buchanan, of new constitutional guarantees, or rather the clear and explicit recognition of those that already exist.
This recommendation is the counsel of a patriotic statesman.--It exhibits an appreciation of the evils that are upon us, and at the same time a devotion to the Constitution and its sacred guarantees.
It conforms to the record of Mr. Buchanan's life on this distracting question — the record of a pure heart and wise head.
It is the language of a man whose heart is overwhelmed with a sense of the great wrong and injustice that has been done to the minority section, mingled with an ardent hope and desire to preserve that Union to which he has devoted the energies of a long and patriotic life.
The difficulty is that there will be no response to it from those who alone have it in their power to act. Black Republicanism is the ruling sentiment at the North, and by the election of Lincoln has pronounced in the most formal and solemn manner against the principles which are now commended to the country for its safety and preservation.
As a matter of course they will spurn these words of wisdom and patriotism, as they have before turned their back upon all the teachings of the good and true men of the land, or else they will play with us if their insidious warfare to delude the South into a false security, that they may the more effectually rivet their iron chains, and thereby put resistance in the future beyond our power.
They have trampled upon the Constitution of Washington and Madison, and will prove equally faithless to their pledges.
You ought not, cannot trust them.
It is not the Constitution and the laws of the United States which need amendments; but the hearts of the Northern people.
To effect the first would be a hopeless undertaking, whilst the latter is an impossibility.
If the appeal of the President was made to brethren of the two sections of the country, we might hope for a different response.
Unfortunately, however, Black Republicanism has buried brotherhood in the same grave with the Constitution.
We are no longer brethren dwelling together in unity.
The ruling spirits of the North are Black Republicans, and between them and the people of the South there is no other feeling than that of bitter and intense hatred.
Aliens in heart, no power on earth can keep them united.
Nothing now holds us together but the cold formalities of a broken and violated Constitution.
Heaven has pronounced the decree of divorce, and it will be accepted by the South as the only solution which gives to her any promise of future peace and safety.--To part with our friends at the North who have been true and faithful to the Constitution, will cause a pang in every Southern breast, for with them we could live forever peaceably, safety, happily.
Honor and future security, however, demand the separation, and in their hearts they will approve, though they may regret the act. ’
Fellow-citizens of Georgia, I have endeavored to place before you the facts of the case in plain and unimpassioned language, and I should feel that I had done injustice to my own connections, and been unfaithful to you, if I did not in conclusion warn you against the dangers of delay, and impress upon you the hopelessness of any remedy for these evils short of secession.
You have to deal with a shrewd, heartless and unscrupulous enemy, who in their extremity may promise anything, but in the end will do nothing.
On the 4th day of March, 1861, the Federal Government will pass into the hands of the abolitionists.
It will then cease to have the claim either upon your confidence or your loyalty; and in my honest judgment, each hour that Georgia remains thereafter a member of the Union, will be an hour of degradation, to be followed by certain, speedy ruin.
I entertain no doubt either of your light or duty to secede from the Union.
Arouse, then, all your manhood for the great work before you, and be prepared on that day to announce and maintain your independence out of the Union, for you will never again have equality and justice in it. Identified with you in heart, feeling and interest, I return to share in whatever destiny the future has in store for our State and ourselves.
