Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1861-02-01
Disunion and Slavery.

| Ex-Goy Morehead, of Kentucky, has writ
/ ten a letter TO some gentleman in New Or
| leans declaring it to be his settled conviction
that the precipitate dissolution Of the Unior
/ by sepaeate State secession would be severer
| blow to Slavery than all the Abo!itionists o.
| the North could infict in the next twenty
years. He can go d good deal farther than
this, and be perfectly right The dissolution
of the Union-wbether effected by separate
secession or cooperation-inaicts a death
blow upon Slavery. Nc future event is more
certain than this
There are thousands and tens Of thousands
of rejecting men at the North who look with
perfect complacency upon the disunion move
ment because they believe it 10 be the natural
inevitable, Providential process whereby SIa-
very is to be swept from the face of the CON
tinent. They have no special desire that it
should be SO. If it depended upon them, they
wnud do everything of which men are capa-
bic to avert the tempestuous and disastrous
trial. But they regard the frenzy of the
South as Judicial blindness. They believe
them TO be rushing madly upon the fate which
their own wrongs have prepared for them
And they see. in the utter refusal of the South
TO listen to remonstranees or expOstulations,
in their ferocious hatred of every man who at
tempts to moderate or avert their wrath, in
the blind, headlong fury with which they
plunge into the great darkness that lies be-
fore them, convincing proof that they are
obeying an instinct more powerful than their
own wills, and are drawing to the edge OF that
black gulf in which Slavery is doomed to per-
ish They may be right, or they may be
wrong. But such feeling pervades very
considerable portion of the people of the
Northern States, and has no little influence
upon the development Of public sentiment
They believe, as do the great mass or The
people, that in the pending controversy the
North is entirely in the right,-that it has
given the Southern States no just cause of of
fense or of apprehension,-and that it cannot
therefore, be charged with any portion of the
responsibility for whatever course the South
may see fit to adopt. This profound settled
conviction may explain, what many very ex-
celent men at the South seem unable TO COM
prehend the indisposition of the North to Of
fer or tolerate any such concessions as are de-
demanded as the price Of continued union
The fact of making such demands upon men
and States who have done no wrong, IS re-
garded as aggressive and overbearing, and as
Indicating a determination to rule or ruin
The Southern States must understand distinct
ly that the people of the North have no ex-
travagant fears of disunion, or of the conse-
quences which it would entail upon themselves.
1t will not be from any such motive that
they will make sacrifices or concessions for its
preservation. They know that the Union is,
to say the least, quite as important to the
South as to the North, and that if it is to be
preserved by concessions, and surrender of
principle and of feeling, the people of slave
holding States must be prepared to make their
share.
THERE'S another point firmly fixed in the
Northern mind, namely that the Consti1u-
lion OF the United States is the shield and
hulwark Of slavery. 1t is only because that
instrument forbids it that slavery is left un-
touched in the Southern States. IF that be
destroyed, there will be nothing to prevent
raids upon the South except force. The
maintenance of a Southern Conlederacy
against foreign invasion and domestic insur-
rcction. will require standing army of at
least $4,000 ren. The expense of maintain
ing il will be more than those States can bear,
and the style of government which il will in
vove, will provoke incessant revots and con-
tain the seeds of its own destruction.
There are no men in this country to-day
more heartily rcjoiced at the prospect of dis
union than the Garrison-A bolitionists-the
men who have for years been denouncing the
Constitution as a covenant with death and
hell and who have been aiming at lis over
throw as the destruction of the last buIwrrk
of Slavery on this Continent. They are the
natural allies of the Secessionists Of South
Carolina.