Arkansas true Democrat., 1861-02-28
For the True Democrat.
Under Which Flag?

Under Which Flag?
 There is no disguising it. The question is narrowed down to this under which banner will the sovereign State of Arkansas range herself-that of the fanatical North, or the standard of independ- and equality lately raised by her sisters of the | South. She cannot be neutral. If she is not with the South she must be against it, and march at the tap of the abolition drum. Nor can she | pause long to calculate the consequences-to ru- | minate on ezpediency. The hour for immediate and decisive action has arrived, and it is only the immediate cooperation of Arkansas and the other southern States with the glorious seven that have already declared their independence that can av er the storm now breeding over the land Otherwise, we shall soon hear upon our borders and in our midst
 loud march, the deafening beat of drums, The shattering blast of the brass throated trumpet The din of arms, the onslaught and the storm And a swift death.p
 If the voice of Tennessee and Arkansas has been indeed raised for the the Union !" it is thing to be deplored forever. It will do more to accelerate the black republican ball as it rolls onward crush ing out the life-blood-she independence of the South, than anything that could have transpred And these Union looing, Union shrieking gentry would still have us wait In the name of common sense how long will they cry wait7 When will they get ready! Never, I fear until the black re- publican cohorts are laundering at our very doors There have been times ere this when the South should have efaced all party lines but now, to be divided is shameful in the last degree The southern rights party believe that the black repub- licans design to subjugate the South under the forms of the constitution, and under the operation the law that they intend to seize upon the federal government for the accomplishment of this purpose; that after having reduced the South to imbecility and defencelessness within the Union, they will proceed to attack her domestic institutions, and will never retire from the assault until they shall have overthrown slavery in all the States in which it now exists and until the South shall present an exaggerated picture of the horrors of St. Domingo and the degradation of Jamaica. They believe that the election of Lincoln is the first step in the development of this purposes; that the submission of the South would be destructive of all our rights in the present and all our hopes in the uture that to prepare for defense by unconditional submission would be just as absurd to begin a campaign by
 
 these evils against these accumulated horrors, the Union shreking submissionists, their 1peakers and presses, set off half the value of the public buildings and of the navy, and half the surplus funds in the treasury.
 They speak of 'the mail facilities (leaven save the mark it, the Union, gives us at an annual cost of over $30G,000 and above the revenue derived" Great God and has it come to this, that the rights and liberty and honor of the South are to be estimated in dollars and cents? that they are fit objects of barter and safe? Patriotism is not to be measured by dollars and cents The rights of the South are not to be sacrificed for twice the value of the navy and the public buildings and the public lands The efforts of these men to reduce them to such standard only prove that in all countries there are persons willing to give up liberty, and rights, and honor itself, provided that they are permitted to pursue peaceful path to unmolested and degraded opulence.
 But the appeals to the pocket, made by these submissionsts, will not stand the test Their pre- mises and inductions are alike false. In the year 1859 the exports of the South amounted to two hundred and fifty millions of dollars; those of the North to only one hundred and twenty millions. Our country was twice rich in it's labor as the North. What man saues at the end of the year is what he makes. The same thing is true of nations. What they have to spare is the guage of their wealth. If we go out of the Union we shall produce as much then as now. The North now lives on our labor-we raise cotton. The North cannot make as much by agriculture as by manu- tactures, and therefore she devotes herself to manu factories Blot out the statute books of the federal government and the North would be the loser, not 
 With that class of southern men who are continu- ally crying 'swait for an opert act,'' I have no patience. They ask us to wait for Lincon's mes sage. Well, doubtless it will contain something for them to clutch at-some fair promises. Impa- tient for the spells; expecting to increase the tariff, improve their rivers and harbors build a railroad to the Pacific by difficult northern route by extravagant contracts with and gifts of land to companies composed partly of the abolition gang and partly of those who cheated us at Charleston; to pay the expense of these undertakings by the robbery of the South and finally, to open the door of the South to abolition, agrarian mob, and make unsafe the tenure of property. Such is the pleasing vista of the " overt act '' illusion in the foreground, but as the eye follows its dinner and more distant outlines it perceives spectral group, wearing the form of legal life, but with no heart beat of constitutional vitality truth. According to this reasoning which must have emanated from the arch Machie, Seward himself, we must ever yield to oppression; for name, if you please, Mir. Union-Saver, any act which in your opinion would justify secession. l
 But these tmd Union n-croakers ask eff war comes could we sustain ourselves?' With eighteen hundred thousand men fit to bear arms in the South, the question is ouy one of finance. The sources of our large revenue itis agreed, are in the South What wepay to maintain and enrich the North would keep constantly two hundred thousand men in the field The peace and obedience of our servile popoution seldom endangered would be even more perfect when we are armed and alert, Our only danger is in being found like Col Washington, at Harper's Ferry, asleep and unarmed.
 MOREAU.