Daily Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1860-1862, 1861-03-03
The Border slave states.

| In the following article the Baltimore
Clipper tells some truths which should be Sc
| riously considered
In the Presidential canvass all parties in
| the Southern border States proclaimed them
selves for the Union without qualifica alton.
| The Union party men stood upon their plat
| form of the Union, the Constitution and the
| laws; the democrats ridiculed this platform,
and asserted chat they too were in favor of
the Union, the Constitution and the enforce
ment of the laws, and declared themselves
as good Union men as any others. By q
solemn vote in the United States Senate the
Southern men almost without exception had
declared that protection to slavery in the ter
ritories was not needed, and the whole pop
ulatiOn, at least of the border States of the
South, went into the canvass and through it
upon this hypothesis and with this declara-
ton.
The election has resulted exactly as the
disunion faction of the Democratic party de-
sired it should. The Republican candidate
is elected and in few days will be inaugu-
rated. 1t is unquestionably true, that with
his administration the Republican party will
cease to exist as a political organization,
and that parties will hereafter be arranged
as the Union and Disunion party, but all
this does not alter the position of the border
they professed entire satisfaction with the
Union, the Constitution. and the laws. They
saw in them then nothing to justify or even to
suggest disuIion or TO require resort to Sc
cession as remedy for wrongs endured. No
new wrongs were alleged. All that could
be complained of had been endured during
all the four years of the infamous admins
tration of Buchanan, and could by no posi-
bility become any worse or more aggravated
hot f brab T he ~,
ocrats of the South knew full well that they
could not elect Democratic President, and
that the only possible chance of defeating
Lincoln was the election of Bell; but they
fought against Bell with maligDity and fe-
rocity unparalleled in political warfare.
They secured the election of the Republican
candidate and Immediately turned dirt eat
ers," swallowed their own solemn declara-
tons, began to curse the Union, and got a
stampede of the Southern States that had
never suffered one tortieth-no, not one hum
dredth--part as much from the Northern alb
clifton fanaticism as the States that then
stood and now stand as the bulwark of the
safety of the Union and the Constitution.
The Southern Democrats who were wont
to win Presidential elections by proclaiming
themselves Union-savers. turned all of sud
den UniOn-breakers; South Carolina took the
lead, and State after State followed. The
time has come at last for the people TO
pause and ask themselves what it all means.
They are in no more danger of Northern ag-
gressions upon Southern rights noa0 than they
were when James Buchanan was elected.
For twelve months Immediately antecedent
to the Presidential election, they proclaimed
their devoted allegiance to the Union, and
their satisfaction with the existing guarantees
of protection to Southern rights in it. Now
we find them, under the whip and spur of the
secessionists, threatening that if additional
guarantees are not accorded they will-do
what; join the rebels and divide the Union
upon the slave line. This is exactly what the
.dbolitioniSts have for years been trying to
achieve. The madness of our Southern men
is pushing them on to do for abolitiondom
what it could never otherwise accomplish,
and the Southern Confederacy men, those
who have seized upon the present occasion
only as a p-ete1t to carry out their long
cherished plan to crafty their personal am
bition by the erection OF Southern Repub-
lie, are laughing in their sleeves at the Gre
dulity of the Border States, which allow
themselves so easily to be frightened from
their consistency and propriety, and to make
threats of disunion unless they are assured
of obtaining what few months ago they
said was totally unnecessary.
The Border States have been played upon
long enough by these ambitious seceders.-
They will be accorded full justice by the peo-
pie of the North, and their duty to them
selves requires that they shouldlnow begin to
exact justice from the Southern States that
threaten to imperil all their great interests
by senseless revolution, intended only to
destroy the most glorious confederacy ever
established. and all for the qualification of a
parcel of broken down, rule or-ruin demo-
cratic politicians, who are unwilling that the
power and patronage of the federal govern
ment should be taken from them. Let the
men of the Border States think, let them pom
der upon these facts, ald in all that they do
let them at least preserve consistency of con-
duct.