Weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1858-1865, 1860-09-12
The Crisis.

CONSTITUTIONS, CnaC mas ever occurred IN the Union.
And within three months from this date these Elec
tors will have to decide who shall be the next Pres
dent of the now United States of America, or, fail
ing to make choice by the Electoral Colleges, de-
volve this duty on the one or the other House of
Congress, as the case may be, result which the
people of the United States have always heretofore
looked to with the most fearful ts!rbpdings; and
noau more than ever. T. :, u
Under the critical crcunlstances>b{ which we are
surrounded this Presidential election is the most
serions and alarming to the friend Of his country
that has ever occurred in the history of the nation
Thoughtful and wise men believe that the govern
ment itself is endangered-and the most Indifferent
cannot be callous to the imminent perils which
threaten the very existence of the Union, as we'll as
the equality of the States and the equal rights of
the people, who, in their respective sovereign State
organizations, compose this heretofore hallowed
confederacy which weso much desire to be perpetu-
atcd according to tho compacts of the Constitution
(which ordained it
The political horizon is darkened in all directions,
there with portentous clouds, full of fanatical fury
and destruction, ready to burst upon the country,
and here, with the deep and solemn roar of prepa
ration to meet the coming Storm Sectional aena-
ton and bitter hatred have displaced that fra
ternity of sentiment and action on which only a
permanent union of these States can securely rest
Social and political, and even religious animosty
divides the sections Nearly every religious denom-
ination in our country is now rent in twain, and
separated, irreconcilaby by lines of DIVISION North
and South.
For years past, entire communities, through their
public men, the press, their literature, and in one
section, through an equally efficient and even more
mischievous agent for such purpose, the pulpit,
have been necessarily engaged in mutual and exas-
perating denunciaton and systematic elimination
and re-criminaton, UNTIL in one section at least,
looking to the constituted authorities of that portion
Of our country, the Constitution and the Union are
but formal and unmeaning obligations as transient
and as valueless the paper which they are set
forth and proclaimed to the world. A great Sec
tional party at the North under the false gse of Re-
publicanism marshas its hostile hosts in fanatical
crusade against the institutions and the equal rights
of the South, and is continually infamed by theu
just prejudices of people grossly ignorant of
condition, with zeal and pertinacous desire to in
terfere with our Constitutional rights and whatever
else does not concern them, equalled only by the
want Of knowledge and the spirit Of justice suitable
for such task. This anatical zeal is daily stmu-
the pretended aggressions of the South upon the
North, WHILE in truth, the former, numerically the
weaker section, is simply asking "to be let alone"
in the enjoyment of indsputable and adjudcated
guarantees of the Constitution, adopted for the
government Of the whole. This party, impatient
to get control Of the government command its poll
cy, domestic, as well as foreign, and dispose of the
vast revenues of our country, derived from and de-
pendent, chiefly, on the great staples of the South
has boldly and deantly proclaimed that their whole
organization is based the one idea of antisavery
And that the policy of their administration, in all
its departments, must be made subservient to the
success of this one idea This party, pregnant with
the hate Of years against the South with energy
decided as it is deadly to the hopes of the patr
ot and with organization subservient ready, and
complete in all the free States, is uttering defiance
against fifteen States sovereign States of this Union
ard declaring there "shaU necer be another slace
State-not another inch Of Stare Territory" belong
ing to the United States now or hereafter, though
the Territories be, they are, the common proper
ty of all the States of this Union. In utter and
reckless contempt of our Constitutional rights and
their own Constitutional obligatons-in shameless
and inhuman disregard of the future happiness of
the slaves themselves and the social condition of the
white race and with hypocritical pretence of phi
lanthropy and the impracticable theory of the per-
feet equality of the human race, they propose to
surround US with Gordon of free States" falsely
so called in the cant of their political vocabulary,
gradually but surely contracting this limit and per-
hitting no outlet for the increased and rapidly in.
creasing number of the slaves Except through open
encouragement and assistance to escape from the
labor to which they are bound by the laws and the
Constitution) TILL in the progress of few years, il
We could continue so long united under such wan.
ton and wicked violation of our rights, it would be
question whether the country should be abandoned
to the semi barbarian occupancy of the black race,
or these be exterminated by a cruel and bloody de-
struction, for the sake of the whites.
This sectional and fanatical party, encouraged by
our divisions and by the hopes of easy, though
fatal victory, which they so nearly accomplished in
1885, and batting nothing Of their audacity by defeat
is again in the field with even more daring utter
ances of law "hgher" than the Constitution and
demanding that the 'impressole conflict" shall &C
on till slare shall not tread the soil of the United
States They are in open feld-armed for the con
flict-united- confident Of triunph-wth thei,
leaders, chosen in audacious contempt of all nation
atty, from the free States alone-in Convention
where they expressly expurged the word 'nationar
from their political nomenclature where sove
reign States were publicly kissed on mock ant
ironcal call of all the States in the Union. Would
to God, that against such an enemy We could pres
ent an unbroken phalanx! and that the Soutf
and all the friends of Constitutional Union coult
be united and resolved as one man to resist all en-
croachments on our rights, and preserve the Unior