Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1856-09-11
Doltttital,
From the Richmond Examiner.
DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION.

Certainly there are in all sections and in
all States those who love the Union, under
the actual Constitution, as Washington did,
as Jay, Hamilton. and Madison did; as
jackson, as Clay, as Webster loved it. Such,
even, is the hereditary and the habitual SEN
timent of the general American heart. But
be has read life and books to little purpose
who has not learned that bosom friendships
may be ITO resentment soured, and that no
hatred is so keen, deep and precious as that.
He has read the book of our history to
still less purpose, who has not learned that
the friendships of these States, sisters but
rivals, sovereigns each, with a public life,
and body of interests, and sources OF honor
and shame of its own and within itself, dis
tributed into two great opposing groups, are
of all human ties most exposed to such rup-
ture and such transformation.
Chodte.
When the Union was formed, the Consti-
tuition framed and the Federal Government
instituted, there was perfect equilibrium
between the Northern and Southern sections
Each section then possessed, in that equali-
ty of political strength, ample power to pro-
tect itself against aggression from the other.
The history of the Union shows that so long
as that equilibrium lasted, peace and har-
mony subsisted between the Northern and
Southern families of States; but ceased to
exist as soon as the equilibrium was destroy
ed. The experience of our government has
confirmed the lessons of philosophy and his
tory, teaching that free governments are only
stable under well adjusted system of checks
and balances; and that this equipoise of
strength, this power of each constituent part
to oppose force against equal force if need
full, being once lost, the domineering pro-
pensity of human nature and the grasping
disposition of conscious physical superiority
are sure to demonstrate themselves in the
majority on all subjects and occasions which
diversity of interests or opinions arises to
supply the pretext or incentive for aggres-
sion.
1t is needless to refer at length to the
wanton and malignant crusade which the
North has excited, not only throughout its
own borders, but through all the ends Of the
earth, against the South, on account of her
slavery institution-an institution vital to
her own social organization, but in no man
ner affecting, other than benefcially, the
North or the rest of the world. That the
North has used its preponderance in the
Union for the purpose of ACKNOWLEDGMENT and
wanton aggression upon the South, is too
notorious to be dweltupon-and the problem
whether the continuance of the Union be
much longer possible, depends simply upon
the two questions, whether the physical pre-
ponderance of the North be overshadowing
and still swelling in proportions and wheth-
er it is the temper and purpose of that Sec
tion to use this preponderance for pushing
its crusade against the South to lengths of
injury, insult and oppression, which must
render dissolution welcome, necessary,
an inevitable and a righteous alternative fol-
the injured section.
THE UNION WAS ERECTED UPON TIE BASIS
OF POLITICAL EQUALITY BETWEEN THE
NORTH AND SOUTH.
Let us examine how carefully the equili
brium between North and South was first
adjusted and long preserved by the early
statesmen of the Republic; and how ruth
lessly and for what trucu!ent purposes it has
been destroyed in our latter days. Contrast
the relative weight of the two sections of the
Union, as shown by the census, at the two
periods of 1870 and 1850. "According to
the former, the population of the United
States, including Vermont, Kentucky and
Tennessee, which then were in their incipi
ent condition of becoming States, and were
very soon actually admitted, amounted te
3,929,s27. Of this number the Northern
States had 1897, 1899, and the Southern l,
952,072, making difference of only 49,,
S27 in favor Of the former States. The