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 ,^ .V- APPEAL FROM A COUNTRYMAN 
 
 TO THE 
 
 v^ UNION MEN OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 Fellow Countrymen, the hand of God is upon us for our sins, 
 and for the sins of our race. Whether through venality, or for cruelty 
 practised on the inferior race, aboriginal to our fathers, we are now 
 threatened because of our differences of financial pplicy and our 
 relations to another subordinate race, with political dissolution. 
 
 There are those who a short time ago were physically strong in 
 that Union most needed for their protection, who, in the eloquent 
 words of Mr. Calhoun : " We have pulled the temple down that 
 has been built three-quarters of a century. We must clear the 
 rubbish away, and reconstruct another. We are now houseless and 
 homeless^ and must secure ourselves from storms." 
 
 This is the work of no Samson, who in his death has extin- 
 guished a host, but rather of a community, who are willing to sur- 
 vive a great nation, perhaps under the dominion of a foreign despot 
 whose El Dorado is peopled with countless naked savages, coveted 
 as bondmen, at a price not higher than that of a donkey, to be ob- 
 tained alike against the will of civilized mankind and the instinct 
 of self-preservation of our race, which have forbidden their further 
 importation. 
 
 It is indeed too true, that of late use has been made of sectional 
 diversity for political ends, affording sad pretext for this most de- 
 structive policy, ,but now, in the moment of their triumph, and of 
 the apparent downfall of our nation, the Republicans have repented 
 them of the evil, instructed by success, they refuse to be guilty of 
 parricide. Will you also learn in time, or does your honor render 
 it necessary that you should suffer all things which civil strife may 
 inflict upon you, that like the Chinese ruler you may punish these 
 Republicans at whose doors the cotton States may be considered to 
 have committed suicide? 
 
 Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State to the President elect, has 
 
^440 
 
 spoken in the Senate; he has given pledges, which, from our per- 
 sonal knowledge we assure you, the people of these cities, and of 
 the States to which they severally belong, will see fulfilled. 
 
 Remain with them beneath the shadow of our oriflamme, and this 
 great empire, bound together by equity, as the universe is bound by 
 gravity, shall still firmly stand. To this result, we who sign this 
 do solemnly pledge ourselves. God purposes that it should be; 
 for the shots fired into the Star of the West killed no man. Thanks 
 to His mercy, and the forbearance of the gallant Anderson, who 
 lately with prayer, and on his knees, raised our standard, blood 
 is not yet required of the wrong doers. 
 
 Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, all had such 
 experience of slavery, while the foreign traffic in negroes continued, 
 that they left recorded in the hearts of their countrymen a senti- 
 ment which, in 1831, had almost resulted in emancipation with 
 you. The natural moral consequence of that traffic was the Afri- 
 canization of the West India Islands, in 1836. An act, by some 
 viewed as a financial necessity, by others as an act of simple 
 folly; by wise men charged, perhaps, in some measure, to both. 
 However accounted for, its influence upon us was unquestioned. 
 It gave rise to that storm of unjust moral accusation which, flowing 
 first from fanatics and fools, later in the mouths of politicians has 
 given pretext for the recent course of our more southern neighbors. 
 But Providence sends no evil upon humanity that, manfully borne, 
 will not at last bear good fruit. The abolitionists arousing your 
 minds to opposition, saved you from the commission of a great 
 wrong, in the emancipation of a race quite as unfit as the Indian 
 to maintain an independent existence, in contact with our own. 
 And now the declaration by Mr. Seward, of his willingness, by an 
 unalterable clause of the Constitution, to prohibit all interference 
 with your domestic relations, is a positive admission of an entire 
 change of sentiment here and throughout the North. Nor do his 
 assurances stop here ; he also abdicates the impracticable political 
 position that limits shall be set by man to human increase, as de- 
 creed by God. He is willing, in the manner indicated by himself 
 in the Committee of Thirteen, to appropriate to your use the terri- 
 tory south of the Missouri Compromise line, by making it a slave 
 State, whose area gives you a full proportion in the ratio of square 
 miles to representation. Let us hope that his objection, and that 
 of his party, to Constitutional amendments, in the present excited 
 
3 
 
 state of the country, may yet be overcome. Indeed we believe 
 that the wisdom and experience of Mr. Crittenden will suggest 
 amendments to the Constitution that will be adopted, and it is our 
 most sacred duty to warn you that in a government that permits 
 an appeal to the people for its constitutional amendment, every 
 attempt at rebellion without such appeal is in the highest degree 
 criminal, and must divorce from those who attempt it the sympathy 
 of all good men. How much more will this crime be enhanced 
 when you reflect that example is catching, and that you may pre- 
 sently be called on to visit with extermination inferiors suspected 
 of an inclination to imitate the lawlessness of their masters. 
 
 The incoming administration are not the choice of a majority of 
 the American people — that majority is at heart favorable to your 
 entire protection. The very vote by which Mr. Lincoln was chosen 
 may be considered a practical denial of the Chicago platform, and 
 Mr. Seward boldly avows that the Union, and such measures as 
 may be necessary to its protection, must have precedence over all 
 the obligations of party. 
 
 Do not then destroy your country upon a question which evi- 
 dently must be a question of time only. Eeflect that in the past 
 history of the world, the banks of that great river through which 
 the current of the human race has swept downward into the ocean 
 of eternity are scarred by the floodmarks of successive races, each 
 in its generation sweeping from those cold regions where necessity 
 and its natural accompaniment, monogamy, has produced a hardy 
 and numerous population, gradually overflowing more southern 
 lands. Maintain your present relations of friendship with your 
 race, and so perpetuate an equilibrium for which there is but one 
 analogy— the relation of God's mighty universe. Who is there 
 amongst you willing to have inscribed upon his tomb, "This man 
 survived his country. Born to a name greater than that of a 
 prince, he saw the temple of liberty overturned. Princes and the 
 ambassadors of unknown people came to do honor to the edifice 
 which for nearly a century astonished mankind. The world gazed 
 with awe upon its ruins, and even foreign despots incited by traitors 
 refused to aid in its destruction." Shall it be noted in history that 
 in the same year Italians profited by our former example, in the 
 reconstruction of a nation desolated for a thousand years by discord 
 and its certain accompaniment, foreign tyranny. Companions of 
 our boyhood, friends of our youth, turn back from the fearful 
 
catastrophe — have courage — forget past injustice. The hearts of a 
 mighty people yearn to you — depend upon next year's elections — 
 discard abstract distinctions — they ever force men to bloodshed in 
 the sinful pride of personal opinion. Ask your brethren of the 
 North to do you justice under that common obligation to justice 
 which our venerated Constitution creates, and your request will 
 not be made in vain. 
 
 In conclusion, read the following words as an official declaration 
 from the next administration : — 
 
 " The different forms of labor, if slavery were not perverted to 
 purposes of political ambition, need not constitute an element of 
 strife in the confederacy. Notwithstanding recent vehement ex- 
 pressions and manifestations of intolerance in some quarters, pro- 
 duced by intense partisan excitement, we are, in fact, a homogeneous 
 people, chiefly of one stock, with accessions well assimilated. We 
 have, practically, only one language, one religion, one system of 
 government, and manners and customs common to all. Why, then, 
 shall we not remain henceforth, as hitherto, one people ?" 
 
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