The Charleston Mercury,
April 25, 1861
Since the foundation of the world, we do not suppose there has been a more wicked and causeless war than that proposed by the Northern upon the Southern States.
The Southern States, in common, with the Northern States, won, by a seven years’ war, their independence of the British Crown. In the treaty of peace extorted from Great Britain, they were each of them acknowledged to be free, sovereign and independent States. On account of their weakness amongst the nations of the earth, the union of the States, begun in the war, was continued after the war ended, and was afterwards modified by the present Constitution of the United States. From the commencement of the Government, the Northern States used the Constitution of the United States, and the common Government it established, for their enrichment at the expense of the South. They obtained bounties to make their fisheries profitable. They established a monopoly of the whole coasting navigation, to encourage their shipping interests. No foreign vessel could take a cargo from one portion of a State to another, or from one State to another. They used the power given to Congress to lay duties on foreign importations—designed only to raise revenue—to prohibit importations by the heavy duties imposed;—and thus to force the people of the South to consume their substituted productions, thereby virtually exacting enormous tribute from the people of the South. They seized the money in the Treasury thus unconstitutionally and iniquitously levied, to promote their interests in various ways—by pensions; by internal improvements; by profligate contracts; enriching their cities, and aggrandizing their section of the Union, by the expenditures of the Government.—They used the funds of the common Government to establish centres of credit at the North. By these means they made their section of the Union the great region of commerce and manufactures. The South, in all its sources of trade, became tributary to them. Our cities ceased to grow, or lingered in their prosperity mere suburbs to the cities of the North. The Southern States, to all intents and purposes, became colonies to the Northern States. With this state of things, one would suppose the Northern States would have been satisfied. But they were not satisfied. Our submission only fostered their impertinence and intermeddling arrogance. We became not only the subjects of their commercial gain, speculation and cupidity, but of their philanthropic, humanitarian intervention; and their consciences being burdened with our iniquities, they proposed to relieve them by the purifying process of insurrection and blood. For thirty years have they been making war on our institutions. Our political association with them has been one continual strife—they assailing us, and we endeavoring to defend ourselves—until, at last, they unite as a section upon the issue of a continuance of our domestic institutions, and seize the Government of the United States to overthrow them. We withdraw from a political association with them. We take nothing from them. Their property, their liberties, their lives are unassailed by us. We simply separate ourselves from them, and keep our own, and for daring to do this they muster their hosts together to conquer and subdue us. We, in South Carolina, send two Commissions to seek a peaceable adjustment of our relations with them. The Confederate States send also Commissioners, by peaceable negotiation, to settle every claim of interest or of honor they may have upon us. Our Commissioners are rejected and treated with indignity. They avow the determination to seize and keep the fortresses in the South, erected for our defence against foreign powers—to harass and subjugate us by military violence. And now, the President of the United States calls forth seventy thousand men to carry out these flagitous and unhallowed purposes. We resist them. We will resist them to the last. We have broken the chains of our ignoble vassalage to the North; at last, we are once more free; and will meet their wanton and insulting hostility with an energy and devotion, worthy, we trust, of the great cause of Independence and Liberty. But where in history can there be found a more causeless, wicked and detestable war than that which the North now proposes to wage upon the South? It has scarcely its parallel for ingratitude, perfidy and folly in the annals of the world. It is hideously unique.