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34.--Southern opinions.
The
Charleston Mercury thus discusses the power of the Southern Congress:
In the first place, has this convention any authority to elect a President and
Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy?
Excepting in
Mississippi, it is doubtful whether any other State convention in the
South thought of any such project.
What good can result from this convention assuming to elect the
President and
Vice-President of the
Confederacy, without at the same time electing the
Senators and Representatives of the
Congress?
Mississippi has already exercised the right to elect her
Senators and Representatives to the
Congress.--Surely the other States should exercise the same right.
It will not do for her to appoint her Representatives by her convention, and then come here and appoint ours besides.
But there is a graver matter than its absurdity behind this scheme.
Is it any thing else than the policy of reconstructing the
Union?
Take the
Constitution of the United States as it is, with all its constructive powers, and get the frontier States in the
Confederacy with us, and will the
Constitution ever be altered?
And if not altered, will we not have the same battle to fight over again with them, after a few years, which we have been compelled to fight with the
Northern States?
But will a Southern confederacy exist at all with such a policy?
Will not all the
Northern States come again into a Union with us?
Why should they not?
They are satisfied with the
Constitution of the United States as it is, open to their interpretation.
It establishes a capital despotism under their power.
Of course they will seek to reconstruct the
Union.
And will it not be done?
Yes, certainly, under this scheme.
After all, we will have run a round circle, and end where we started.
The
Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle recommends
the Hon. A. H. Stephens as provisional
President, because he bears no “stain of the prevalent corruption,” and because he is “Southern by birth and education, patriotic beyond question, calm, sound, and mature in judgment, with a reputation that was national when we had a nation, and a favorite, at one time or another, with all parties.”
Such a nomination, the
Chronicle says, would reconcile the feelings of our friends at the
North, and also the
Union men of the
South.
It then says:
Disguise it as we may, the greatest danger to the new confederacy arises, not from without, not from the
North, but
from our own people. We have only to refer to recent speeches in Congress, such as those of
Clemens,
Etheridge, and
Nelson, to show that the indications are growing stronger
that organized if not armed opposition to the new order of things may arise in States or parts of Southern States not vitally interested in the Slavery question.
Such discontent is to be allayed if possible.
Our position has ever been that
all the
Southern States should unite in action, and we have advocated separate action and an independent State Government by
Georgia only because we saw no hope for united action by all the
Southern States.
We have invariably been consistent in our desire for cooperation.
When our hopes seemed about to fail, and separate State action was an “accomplished fact,” we thought it better that
Georgia, powerful in resources beyond any of her neighbors, rich and prosperous, should set up for herself, and not link her fortunes to a confederacy ruled by disorganizing charlatans, without the talent to construct, though potent to destroy; governed by chimerical schemers, without a particle of practical common sense or business knowledge, in which she would have to bear more than her share of the burdens, and incur more than her proportion of the financial and commercial disadvantages.
But with
Stephens at the helm (for he has brains)
Georgia and the
South are safe.