The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1860-12-20
The Seeding States.

The Seeding States.
There are some note worthy facts in regard
to all of the five States which are set down by
common rumor as ready and resolved TO secede
from the Union. Every one of these States
owes its State existence to that very Union
against which it is now ready, if rumor is to be
believed, to raise parricidal hand. Most of
them are, in addition, indebted to the Union for
special advantages which might be supposed to
inspire some sentiments of gratitude. South
Carolina, chief leader in the secession move
ment, found herself as everybody knows, and
as we have recently shown at some length, to-
tally unable in the Revolutionary war, to main.
tain out of her own resources the State sover-
eighty she had assumed, and the independence
she had declared. Even the large assistance
which she receievd from her more northern sis
ters proved fora time of no avail. Two armies,
mainly composed of troops furnished by North
Carolina, Virginia and Maryland were lost in
the attempt tc save and rescue her. one at the
surrender of Charleston, the other in the defeat
of Camden. For a long time South Carolina
ceased to exist as an INDEPENDENT State and
subsidized into the position of a conquered British
dependency That she ever emerged from that
condition, that she did not remain a British co
ony, to have her Slaves emancipated by act of
Parliament as happened years ago to the other
British slave holding colonies, was entirely due
to the magnanimous aid furnished her by the
Union, itself suffering at the time under the
severest pecuniary embarrassment.
Georgia also as well as South Carolina was
subdued by the British and owed her rescue
from that condition to the conquering arms of
Gen. Greene at the head of an army furnished
by the more northern States, and backed
up and sustained by the capture of CORVALLIS
at Yorktown. Two other of the States named
as co operating or ready to co oper ate in the Sc
seding treason, viz Alabama and Mississippi,
thong n at that time wilderness in possession
Of the Indians, were included in the chartered
limits of Georgia, and had she remained Brit
ish colony, subject to the emancipation legisla-
ton of Parliament, they would have shared the
same fate. The territory of which those two
States consist was conquered from the British
by the arms of the Union, and afterward by the
act of the Union, the territorial claims of Geor-
gia and her light of jurisdiction having been
purchased and paid for out of the treasury of
the Union, they were constituted as Territories,
and subsequently admitted into the Union as
States.
With respect to Florida, that she had not
remained a nominal Spanish colony, but, in fact,
place of resort for runaway negroes and white
desperadoes, was due to the purchase of the
territory out of the treasury of the United States
and to that apprehension of the Union which
alone produced in the Spanish government q
disposition to sell it.
But these are not, by any means, the only
obligations which GeorSia, Alabama Mississippi
ard Florida owe 10 the Union, which they now
propose to leave and if they can to dissolve
and destroy. II is but short time since that
almost the entire territory of those States; in
Guiding the most fertile and valuable portions,
were in the possession of strong and formidable
Indian tribes The Cherokees, the Creeks the
Chickasaws and the Seminoles occupied almost
the entire country in which are now the most
productive cotton fields, and the most populous
and prosperous settlements of those States
That they escaped for the most part the horrors
of Indian war, that instead of long and despe-
rate struggles, and protracted, anxious and ex-
pensive years of Indian hOstiities, like those
which occurred in the older States, the settlers
in those favored regions were able to enter into
quiet possession of their farms and plantations
and to cultivate them at their leisure, was en-
tirely due to the protecting care and generous
policy of the Government Of the Union. 1t was
the power of the Union and the wise system
of Indian policy inaugurated by it, which, in
the earlier days Of the settlements, restrained
alike the jealousy of the Indians and the out
RACES of the whites, both constant provscatives
of Indian war. Afterward, as the settlements
extended and more land was needed, it was
the Government of the Union which conceived
anu carried out the removal p01Cy, which, by
opening vast tracts of rich land to the cultivation
ofcotton, gave to the population and prosperity
of those States so sudden an impulse. 1t was
the United States which negotiated the treaties
They undertook the payment of the large sums
OF money necessary to induce the Indians to re-
move, They supplied the dislodged tribes with
a new territory beyond the Mississippi, and
they at last employed and hired the military
force necessary to compel removal. Every
body remembers the great expenditure of life
and money lavished in Florida in carrying out
this removal policy, an expenditure since fol
lowed up by lavish grant to that State of
swamp lanes, by means of which she has been
enabled to build quite a net work of railroads.
Such are some of the obligations which these
States now propose to repay by doing their best
to break up Union to which they owe SO
much N. Y. Tribune.