New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-12-10
sECEssIONIsT GRIEVANCES.

pecimen; it lets US good deal into the actual
views and real motives of the Secessionist
eaders.
Mr.. Toombs goes great way back of Mr.
Lincoln's election. He goes far behind the re-
cent agitation of the question of Slavery. lie
bases his Secessonist principles upon the action
of the very first Congress that ever met under
the Federal Constitution. After ALL it is not
the Abolitionsts, if we are to believe Dir.
TOombs. who have been the first or chief aggres-
sOrs upon the rights, property, and political
equality of the South. 1t was the Northern
shipowners and shipbuilders, the Northern mer-
chants, the Northern manufacturers who first
started in the career of aggression, and against
whom Mr. Toombs seems to be full as anxious
70 defend himself and his section against the
Vaccinations of the Abeltionists
According to Mr. Toombs, the unfor-
tunate Southerners have been from the
start an oppressed, abused, and plundered
people. 1t would seem from his version
of our history that the Federal Constitu-
tion and the Federal Government have never been
ANYTHING else but contrivance for enabling the
North to rob and plumber the South "The in
slant the Government was organized says
Mr.. Toombs at the very first Congress, the
" Northern States evinced o general desire and
purpose TO use it for their own benefit, and to
"pervert its powers for sectional advantage, and
" they have steadily pursued that policy to this
/" day."
Among these alleged aggressions on the South
thus early commenced on the part of the North
Mr.. Toombs enumerates the monopoly of the
coasting trade given to American vessels. But
he is mistaken in ascribing this monopoly to the
first Congress, as it was not established till after
the close of the second war with Great Britain
This. and the other slight advantages given by
our laws to American ships but most of which,
under treaty stpulatiOns, are now dispensed
with, had for their end no national advantage
but what was thought then, and is pretty gener-
aly thought now, by all whose heads are not
full of cotton, the national object of building up
our American commercial marine, and thus
| furnishing the means of providing navy az
bulwark of defense against foreign invasion.
The requisitiOn that vessels to be American
must be American built, Mr.. TOombs represents
as securing to the North a monopoly OF the
business of shp-building But how vessel
| is just as much American if built in Georgia as
if built in Maine If in point of fact, the North
has monopoly of ship-building that Is due en-
tirely to her superior sea-cOas and the skill and
industry of her wOrkmen, and not in the least to
any enactment of Congress. Nor is this North
ern industry of ship-buildng, which so much
excites the spleen of Mr.. TOOmbs, without its
advantage to the South as well as the North.
Our sbip-builders employ great quantities of
Southern timber which otherwise would rot UNI
used but for which they pay handsome prices;
and they are also large consumers of naval
stores. which are one of the staple products of
North Carolina.
The establishment of lighthouses on the South
ern coasts, paid for out of the Federal Treasury
is paraded by Mr.. TOOmbs as another piece Of
robbery perpetrated by Northern shipowners and
merchants upon Southern planters. 1--WE pay"
explains Mr.. TOOmbs-as though all the payments
out of the Federal Treasury came out of the
planters pockets" we pay million of dollars
per annum for the lights which guide them into
- and out of your ports. We build and keep up
- OF the cost of at least another Million hospitals
| for their sick and disabled seamen when they
wear them out and cast them ashore. We pay
" half million per annum to support and bring
home those they cast away in foreign lands.
| They demand and have received millions of
public money to increase the safety of harbOrs
@ and lessen the dangers of navigating our rivers.
" All of which expenses legitmately fall upon
9 their business, and should come out of their
- pockets instead of common treasury" Such
is the gratitude of Air. TOOmbs for the great ia
cilities to navigation which access to q common
| treasury has enabled the Southern States to OBJ
tain at triling cost to themselves, and which, by
diminishing the cOst and risks of transportation,
have diminished the cost of every pound of mer-
chandise imported for consumption, and increased
the value of every pound of produce exported for
sale. There is not farmhouse or plantation i'll
all the South which does not daily enjoy in money
value the benefit of these improvements, which
Mr.. TOOmbs charges as a Northern aggression
and which, but for the Union the South GER
tainly never would have enjoyed to anything like
the same extent as now.
But let US suppose Mr. ToOmbs and his brother
stctfslOlnblo tIIuniPh'hV' '|'I uo suPPVoO 1hob III
their sacred rage against Northern aggression, they
put out all the lights sink the light ships, and
tumble the light houses Into the sea- Suppose
they cut the buOys adrift and allow the channels
of their harbors and rivers to fill up and becOm
obstructed. Suppose they pull down the marin
hospitals, made especially necessary by the yel
low fever and other epidemic whichthei