The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1851-03-19

yysns ~ CA~Issts~ JHt*<ssy.
south Casoilna,
SroxesIox.-Om contemporary Of the VIII
mipgtdn Commercial, whoss independent bear
ing In ppIitics makes his oriniop 4lv3ys respect
able, ~ devoted an artieJe 70 4oulh CAROLINA
in hia paper of Saturday, which. We must cay, Is
not qujte up to hin general tons. The Com
msrciat Processes to have been under The con-
viction that this State would make no move
ment towards secession, without the co-opers-
ton Of al, or ut least-e portion Of her sister
States" and TO have been startled from that con-
viction by recent article Of the Mercury. We
do not zee the ground Of this conviction. This
State has, as the Commercial admits, sought BY
every means to secure cooperation, which 10 suf-
6cient proof that she did not desire to sever her
cause from that of the South in general; but,
at the same time, it has been over and over de-
cared, AZ the settled feeling Of her people, that
continuance in the Union under its present cir
cumstances was incomtatible with her safety,
her honor, and her duty. She has sought CO.
operation, because the motives that influenced
her, ought to be felt equally by all the slavshold
ing States because she desired a union with
them, and because the combination Of the entire
South would ensure bloodless triumph to the
cause. But If this cooperation II unattainable,
it does not relieve South Carolina from any part
of her duty to protect her own people; 1t does
not make the federal government any the less
the instrument o1kan anti-slavery majority; 1t
does not make the Union any the less grinding
and insolent tyranny it does not stay the noto-
rious and headlong course Of the North to-
wards the subjugation and degradation of the
South Il does not strip the late compromise
measures of their insulting aggression upon us.
It does not relieve South Carolina Of her SOL
emn pledges bet the world to resist the at
tempts to assign her base and inferior posi-.
ton in the confederacy. All the causes of CON-
plant, all the grounds Of resistance, remain the
same, whether she have the aid Of the other
States, or be left to guard her honor with her
single arm How, them could our contemporary
cherish the belief that her action absolutely de-
pended on the co cooperation Of others? At all
events, we are glad to have been able to remove
the veil from his eyes, and to have given him a
sight of the real position of South Carolina.
The Commercial quotes a passage from our
article, and opens its comments upon it as fol-
lows:
at is here clearly shown that South Carolina
expects to involve the South in the clang of
conflict, and the authority Of the federal gov
eminent is to be put down by the force of arms.
If the South were united in this issue, there
would be no doubt of successful, even peace
full result. But the majority against this hostile
demonstration is immense with the Southern
borders. What then, has South Carolina to
hope :"
There is something like charge here that
South Carolina counts upon dragging the South
into conflict in her defence. Mr.. Webster
makes it still more broadly in his recent letter
to the New York Union Committee 1t is not
fair statement of the point. South Carolina
claims that secession from the Union is her
right that the federal government has no con-
stitutiona power to coerce State by arms; and
that she will give no just cause for complaint
even, much less for war, in leaving the confed-
eracy which she freely entered on stipulations
that have been shamefully violated She does
not demand that any one shall second or accom-
pany her in this path. She is willing to stand
upon her own resources, and to take the re-
sponsibility, alone, of supporting just and eff
cient government within her limits She is
ready the moment she is out Of the Union to
establish the most friendly relations with those
who choose to stay in it. In all this there is no
beginning of civil war; no attempt to drag her
sister States into bloody strife to satisfy her
appetite for trouble. The secession South
Carolina intends is simply the peaceful asser-
ton, by an act of her convention of that original
independent sovereignty in the possession of
which she entered the Union.
But her right to secede has been denied, and
ii has been announced from high quarters that
any attempt to carry it will be quelled by force.
II il the federal government that threatens to
drag not only North Carolina but South Caro-
lima into war, and claims the power Of sending
the citizens of the former to deluge the fields Of
the latter with fraternal blood.
Our friend of the Commercial, we are per
suaded, loves truth too well not to confess that
this il the real state of the case. And we ask
him, what answer will North Carolina make to
such requistion of the Free-soil government
at Washington! We ask him, if we are wrong
or extravagant in maintaining that his own gal
liant and true-hearted State, and every Southern
State, will rise up and Indignantly trample the
federal government under their heels sooner than
they will be its instrument for destroying n
kindred people!