Causes / //,<
cession by coercion, but we hold this position to be utterly unsup- ported by law or reason.
I will also quote an article from the New York Daily Tribune, Friday, November 30, 1860:
ARE WE GOING TO FIGHT?
But if the cotton States, generally, unite with her in seceding, we insist that they cannot be prevented, and that the attempt must not be made. Five millions of people, more than half of them of the dominant race, of whom at least half a million are able and willing to shoulder muskets, can never be subdued while fighting around and over their own hearthstones. If they could be, they would no longer be equal members of the Union, but conquered dependen- cies. * We propose to wrest this potent engine from the disunionists by saying frankly to the slave States:
" If you choose to leave the Union, leave it, but let us have no quarrel about it. If you think it a curse to you and an unfair ad- vantage to us, repudiate it, and see if you are not mistaken. If you are better by yourselves, go, and God speed you. For our part, we have done very well with you, and are quite willing to keep along with you, but if the association is irksome to you, we have too much self respect to insist on its continuance. We have lived by our in- dustry thus far, and hope to do so still, even though you leave us."
We repeat, that only the sheen of northern bayonets can bind the South wholly to the evils of secession, but that may do it. Let us be patient, neither speaking daggers nor using them, standing to our principles, but not to our arms, and all will yet be well.
I will read an extract from an editorial in the New York Times of December 3, 1860:
By common consent, moreover, the most prominent and tangible point of offence seems to be the legislation growing out of the fugi- tive-slave law. Several of the Northern States have passed personal- liberty bills, with the alleged intent to prevent the return of fugitive slaves to their masters.
From Union men in every quarter of the South come up the most earnest appeals to the Northern States to repeal these laws. Such an act, we are assured, would have a powerful effect in disarming the disunion clamor in nearly all the Southern States, and in promoting the prospects of a peaceful adjustment of all pending differences.
