Charleston Mercury
April 18, 1861
The News conveyed to our despatches this morning is important. While the LINCOLN Administration is rapidly concentrating the hungry hordes with which it proposes to subjugate the South, and draining the pockets of the anxious stock-jobbers who have staked their all in the success of the mad scheme of coercion, the President of the Confederate States meets the threatened invasion promptly and with vigor. In a Proclamation issued yesterday, he announces that letters of marque and reprisal will immediately be issued, under the authority of the Government, to armed vessels cruising as privateers upon the high seas. Northern cupidity is thus arrayed against Northern fanaticism, and it is not difficult to predict the result.
The valorous Yankee, led by the scent of the rich prey, will not long scruple, under the sanction of the Southern flag, to sweep from the seas the commercial marine of his Yankee neighbors. How long the shipping interest of the North will care to sustain the terrible risk which begins today remains to be seen.
If, however, this measure should not suffice to check the impudent pretensions of the abolitionized North to hold a free people in subjection, the Confederate States are ready to try other and more direct remedies.