Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1854-10-14
THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH.

! IONS on the OF the NORTH ana the SOutn
| "At no period since we have been people, has
there been greater calm than that which now per-
| vades the minds of the Southern people. The strug
! gle OF 1850 seems to have produced q profound IN
difference, or confident assurance, which is con-
! tent to leave public affairs connected Tlth the
General Government, to drift down the stream of
/ time without an effort to divert or arrest their
course. If the Government was the most benefcent
in the world, and absolutely under our control, we
could not exhibit greater apparent satisfaction with
its operations Little local State matters alone bab-
bic in the State elections tests for the peoples
choice and favor The people seem to be totally I'M
conscious ndiferent,to the black tempest of abo
ton which is gathering in the North, soon to break
in all its fury on the South Throughout the free
States the aspect of things is widely different. There
the profoundest interest and widest fanaticisn ag
tate the public mind Conventions and public meet
ings of all sorts daily taking place. Public speak
ers and public lecturers abroad amongst the peo-
ple stirring up their passions and firing their zeal
in the public service. And what is the great bur-
den of their furious agitations? Savery-the sla-
very of the Southern States-without which the
Southern States must be bowling wilderness, and
their people scattered abroad houseless and home
less. Their disparagcmen in the Union; their degra-
dation and dependency under Northern domination
their ruin, POLITICAL social and physical is the grand
theme of discussion, and the grand aim of Northern
agitation. 1t is not enough, that we have been tri-
butary to them for thirty years. in all the operations
OF our common Government, and have lifted them
to affiuenee and power 1t is not enough that they
steal our slaves and not only will not fui the faith
but murder citizens in attempting to retake
them. 1t is not enough that we have been turned
out of territory acquired from Mexico to be paid
for by Southern treasure and won by the best blood
of the South 1t is not enough, thatwe have patient
ly bowed down under all these multiplied wrongs,
and still cling to Union with them. Their hatred
and contempt, seems to increase with their aggres-
sions, and our submission. They break down the
party ties which have arisen under the Constitution
and organize mighty National Party, whose creed
is hostility to slavery, and the South and whose
policy it is to destroy both. Never before, has such
state of things existed amongst people living I'm
der the same Government. A hostility justifying
among nations, is deliberately excited, and
ried on by one portion of the people against the
other 1t is worse than this. They design to pro-
duce war, intestine war, which will end in eXterm-
nation. They design to produce revolution-revo-
luton which shall entail utter ruin, perhaps, by blood
and massacre. Yet, the South is calnl-very calm
Is her rcpose that of conscious power? Is her ap-
parent indifference the result of settled determ-
nation, which is no longer heard in words? Or is
she dead-dead beyond resurrection by the calls
of selfpreservation, of honor by even the fierce
fires of instruction? We still have confidence in
her destnies but looking to the past and present,
many brave heart might despair of the South.
= To feel and write in this manner is painful du-
ty The tame and sluggish will not thank US for re-
minding them of their unworthiness, for disturb
ing their slumbers; and the brave and indignans
spirit will be only the more chaed when it is point
ed to the insolent attitude of the aggressor, and the
unreSiSting meekness of the victim. But the true
Southern journal is false to its mission, false to its
principles false to ITSELF If, it looks out upon the
political sky, and reads the danger it hesitates to
give the alarm lest towards may raise their depre
eating hands party spoilsm"n tremble for their
gold"
With the Mercury, we shave confidence in the
destinies' of the South She is not dead, neither
sleeping. The calm which prevails is but the evil
dence of the settled determination on the part of
her people to defend their rights, when driven to
their defence, with an energy and frmness worthy
the land of Calhoun, and King, and Macon, and
Henry.
Still the breeze, but dreadful the Storm"
The Mercury will bear in mind that in the con-
test of 1949 and 1850 between the two sections,
those who occupied prominent ground Southern
Rights men, were denounced by Southern
traitors and disunionists. Southern men, for the
most part Wings, united with Northern politicians
in the effort then made to form Union party whose
object to prescribe all of both parties in the
South who were boldly contending for the Union
according to the Constitution. This party, like all
organizations formed idea, soon passed away.
Its test of orthodoxy was the Union at all hazards,
whatever might be the result of the struggle then
going forward. The question of slavery settled,
as was hoped by many, by the Compromise of
1885, yet those public men in the South who staked
themselves to obtain this settlement, and who, by
much to bring the majorities of the non-saveholdng
States to terms retain still lively recollection of
the treatment they received for their at the
hands even of many of the Southern people. They
were in the lead then, and characterized
cessionsts, traitors, disunonss; they are still
they were, and what they were and when the strug-
gle is renewed they will be found neither faithless
nor faltering; but overt act has yet been per-
petratedby the slavehoiding States, which would
justify dissolution, they content to maintain their
position in comparative silence leaving it to time
and events to arouse in their former denouncers the
same feelings which influenced and controlled them
in 1850. The Union according to the Constitution
can be preserved only by union in the South and by
tn aid portions of that party in the nonslayehod
ing States which cast in the House twenty votes
for the fugitveslave law, and fortyfour votes for
the Nebraska bill. Southern Wings, by uniting
with the Democrats, and by doing justice to those
Democrats in the non-slaveholding States who
st true to the Constitutional rights of the South,
may be able to accomplish much for the cause of
the Union in the approaching struggle; but the
South has nothing to hope for from the action of
the Wing party in the non-slaveholdng States. It
is utterly and fixedy against us; and its triumphs
in the elections about to take place, they have
been in other elections of late will be over right,
justice, and the Constitution
2 a. Hon. R. G. Winthrop, it is stated, has Joined
a. T. 49,