The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-08-16
90
COLUMBIA.
: Thursday Morning, August 16, 1855.
South Carolina Unionism.

South, and Ticknor & Fields, of Bos
ton, have done mp what he has to say
in a volume entitled "The South
since the War" Fourteen weeks
among the ruins of the South to
write book, giving an accurate
statement of the political feeling of
her people! He calls North Carolina
Unionism 50 cheat, will-o'-the-
wisp," and says ''any man who trusts
it will meet with an overthrow
That of Georgia he calls ''a sham
Unionism," but s.'a cold federation
for the idea Of national sovereignty.
He pays his respects to South Caro-
lima as follows:
''In South Carolina, there is very
little pretense of love for the Union,
but everywhere passionate devotion
to the State; and the common senti-
ment holds that man guilty of trea-
son who prefers the United States to
South Carolina. There is no occa-
sion to wonder ut the admiration of
the people for Wade Hampton, for
he is the very exemplar of their spi-
rit-of their proud and narrow and
domineering spirit. 1T is our
duty he says, in letter which he
has recently addressed to the people
Of the State, it is our duty to sup
port the President of the United
States so long as he manifests dis
position to restore our rights as q
sovereign State That sentence will
forever stand as model of cool arro.
gance, and yet it is in full accord
with the spirit of South Carolinians.
The war has taught them that the
physical force Of the nation cannot
be resisted, and they will be obedient
to the letter of the law; but the whole
current of their lives flows i'm direct
antagonism to its spirit"
The people of South Carolina do
entertain passionate devotion to
their State, and we honor them for it;
it is their highest badge of honor,
their proudest characteristic, and wo
be to them when they fall from grace
in this respect, and become like the
migratory Scribes and Pharisees who
hail from "the hub," and whose
home is wherever the dollars are
made most easily, and whose affec-
tons centre only where that load
stone of attraction is found. No love
of home, no State pride, but an AFRO
CANT assumption of super-excellence
for the Puritan race and their de-
scendants, ever enter into the sterile
hearts of these rowing scribblers, So
strictly Puritan are they that they
will whip their children to death if
they do not rhyme out with the true
Puritanic nasal twang, their set rou-
tine of meaningless word prayer.
It is union with these people that
the native-born Southerners feel
repugnance to-and they have good
cause for such dislike. For quarter
of century they have been the mar
plots of the peace of the country;
they have meddled with everything
pertaining to society, manners, politi-
cal institutions and social relations, in
communities which never could COM
mingle with them, or assimilate them
selves to their standard of religious
Oh civil duties. The two peoples are
as far removed in these respects from
each other rs are the antipodes, and,
in all probability, throughout time
will remain so.
But when these mendacious writer's
confound our aversion to them or
union with them, with q repugnance
to the institutions of our Govern
ment-when, because we will not
embrace them and their political
tenets, their spurious morality, their
rampant radicalism and all the other
isms generated on New England soil
they undertake to class the people
of these States as unfriendly to the
Constitution and the Government Of
the United States, then do they either
wilfully malign us, or they have not
sense enough to discriminate between
true patriotism and mouthing Union
ism, such as is INDUCED in by Brown
low, and was the wont among the old