Weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1858-1865, 1859-12-14
Message of Gov. Wise.

message Oh OOVs "ASCs
We give below copious extracts from the Message
Of Gov Wise to the Legislature of Virginia, now in
session. At time like this we could not lay any
matter before our readers which would be more in
teresting or acceptable. r..
Gov. Wise has described in a clear and mastery
manner the late outrage at Harpers Ferry, the
means used to suppress it. and the present condition
of Virginia as one of the border slavehodng States
He begins his Message by declaring that
up to late period had fondly hoped to close
nv official term and part from my Executive labors
with naught but cause of congratulation the
diton of the Commonwealth. But, the uppermost
theme in this my last regular message must be, that
our peace has been disturbed; our citizens have
been imprisoned, robbed and murdered; the sancti-
ty of their dwellings has been violated; their per-
sons have been outraged; their property has been
seized by force of arms strong hold in their
midst, with its arms and munitions of war has been
captured, and the inhabitants cut off from the
means of defence; national highway through our
limits, and its locomotive trains and telegraphic
wires have been stopped and State and National
Sovereignties have been nsulted and assailed and
State and Federal troops have been called out and
been compelled to fight, at the loss Of several killed
and wounded, to subdue rebellion and treason, at
IldTpcT EcTTy Ill ttiC Guilty VI cChCiooh, "ithii
our jurisdiction.
This was no result of ordinary crimes, however
highhanded and felonious. 1t was no conspiracy OF
bandits against society in general, with the motives
which usually actuate criminals confined to the in
dividual perpetrators, and to be crushed by their
arrest and punishment But it was an extraordinary
and actual invasion, by sectional organization,
specially upon shareholders and upon their property
in negro slaves. The home to be invaded was the
hoSNn nfd nr IN hn
were the persons of shareholders; the property to
be coniscated was the property in slaves and the
other property of shareholders alone such money,
plate, jewels and other of like kind. which was to
be taken to compensate the robbers for the trouble
and risk of robh,ng the masters of their slaves; the
slaves were not to lie taken to be carried away but
they were to he made to stand by the side of the
robbers and to be forced to fight to berate them
selve; by massacreng their masters; the arsenal
taken to supply arms to servile insurgents: and
provisional government was attempted, in Brit
ish province, by our own countrvmen. united to us
in the faith of cOnfederacy combining with Cana
dans to invade the slaveholdng States of the Uni
ted States and thus the night of the 18th of Oc-
tober last was surprised and the dav of the 18th of
October last startled by the signal guns of ra-
pine, murder robbery and treason, begun at Har-
pers Ferry for the purpose Of stirring up universal
insurrection of slaves throughout the whole South.
been it is not than the rapidity and rancnr
of the causes which have prompted and put it in
motion. 1t is not confined to the parties who were
the present particpators in its outrages Causes
and influences lie behind it more potent far than the
little band Of desperadoes who were sent ahead to
kinie the sparks Of general confagration and
the event. sad as it is would deserve but little
ment. If the condgn punishment Of the immediate
perpetrators of the feonies committed would for the
future secure the peace which has been disturbed
and guarantee the safety which it threatened. In
deed If the miserable convcts were the only con-
spirators against our peace and safety. We might
have forgiven their offences and constrained them
only by the grace of pardon. But an entire social
and sectional sympathy has melted their crimes,
and now rises in rebellion and insurrecton to the
height of sustaining and justifying their enormtv
|. 1t would be pusillanimous to shut eyes and
tn affect not to see certain facts of fearful import
which stare us in the face and of which I must
speak plainly to you, with the firm and manly pur-
pose of meeting danger and with weak and
wicked design of exciting agitation. That danger
exists Of serious magnitude. there can he no doubt
in the minds of the most calm and rejecting, and the
way to avert it in all is to march up to it and
meet it front to front III has not grown too great
already it will retire fro;a collision; and if it has
grown strong enough already for the encounter. it
had better he met at once, for it will not diminish
nv delay I believe, in truth. that the very policy
Of the prime promoters Of this apparently mad
movement is purely tentative: to try whether we
will face the danger which is sealed in blood If
we "take tae dare" the aggression will 5ecome
more and more insolent; and, if We do not, that it
will either truckle meet us in open conflict to he
subdued; and, in either event. our safety and the
national peace will be best secured by direct settle
ment at once-the sooner the better.
For series of years social and sectional differences
have been growing up unhapply, between the
States of our Union and their people. An evil spirit
of fanaticism has seized upon negro slavery as the
one subject of social REFORM and the idea of its
abolition has seemed to madden whole masses of
one entire section Of the country. 1t enters into
their religion into their education into their politics
and prayers into their courts of justice. into their
business into their Legislatures into all classes of
their people, the most respectable and most awless
into their pulpts and into their presses and school
houses into their men, women and children of all
ages everywhere. 1t has trained three generations
from childhood up, in moral and social habits of
hatred to masters of African slaves in the United
States. It turns not upon slavery elsewhere, or
against shareholders in any other country but is
pecially MALIGNANT and vindictive towards its own
countrymen, for the very that it is bound to
them by the faith and sanction of confederate law
To set up that law to it is to enrage it by the sight
of the law because it is bound by it. 1t has been
taught nv the Atheism of a "higher law than that
of regular government bound by constitutions and
statutes 1t has been made to believe in the doctrine
Of absolute individual rights, Independent of all
lations of man to man in conventional and social
form; and that each man for himself has the pre-
rogative to set up his conscience, his will and his
judgment over and above all legal enactments and
social institutions. 1t has been nflamed by prost
tuted teachers and preachers and presses do and
dare any crime and its consequences which may set
up its individual supremacy over law and order 1t
has been taught from the Senate chamber to trust
in the fatality of an "irrepressble con- fict" into
has breathed naught but nsurrectionary wrath into
servants against their masters and has denounced
our national Union as covenant with death for re-
cognizing property in slaves and guaranteeing to it
the protection of law. 1t has raised contributions
in churches to furnish arms and money to such
criminals as these to make war for empire of set
Element in our new Territories It has trained them
on the frontier and there taught them the skill of
the Indian in savage warfare and then turned them