NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
November-December 1862
From The Missouri Democrat, Tuesday, November 11, 1862.
A GRAPHIC PICTURE OF A SOUTHERN EMPIRE.
What Would Happen if the Rebels Become Independent.
The London Daily News draws this picture of the character of the South and the probable consequences which would follow its achievement of “independence:”
“As far as England is concerned, we may judge from the past. Many people say, in excuse for their state of mind about the war, that they detest the Americans. Very well; and what does this mean? It means an association of ideas made up of troubles about search of slavers at sea, and brag about the Monroe doctrine, and threats of Canada, and slanders about our cruisers in the Gulf, and outrage on San Juan, and the bullying of the General Harneys, and the sharp practice of cabinets at Washington, and aggressions upon our seamen in port, and universal rudeness to our representatives in the States, and to our government through American representatives in England. All this, with impression of filibustering, threats about Cuba, an unrepressed clandestine slave trade, lynch law, marauding in Kansas, brag about liberty together with tar and feathers, cowhiding, slave markets, human stock breeding, and all the rest of it—these impressions combine to make up the sentiment expressed by the avowal ‘I detest the Americans.’ But for every element of this impression Confederate society is answerable. It was the South reigning in Washington, the South importing negroes, the South coveting Cuba and Canada, the South sending Walker and Lopes into the territory of an ally to stir up insurrection, the South sending General Harney to San Juan, the South getting up the Monroe doctrine, the South lynching clergymen and burning alive travelers suspected of disapproving slavery—the South as universal aggressor, bully, braggart, traitor, mischief-maker and thorough bore—that society was getting to detest more and more every year. What follows, if this same South, inflated with pride and revenge, could actually recover her dominion?
“The Dred Scott decision would be actively enforced, and the whole territory of the Union made slave soil. The popular vote would be overruled, or practically precluded, as hitherto in the South; and rights of education, of free speech, and a free press, would be extinguished. Labor being discredited by the extension of slavery, the pauperism and degradation of the free workers of the North would corrupt society to its core. The concubinage of the South would spread beyond the present dividing line, and the morals of the whole nation would be in danger of becoming like those of the slave States, which are grosser than can be conceived of in any other part of Christendom. Every other nation would be perpetually on the verge of war, or engaged in it, because the slave power cannot abstain from aggression, nor maintain its position by the arts of peace. We should see a retrograde period arrive more disastrous to civilization than the advent of the first Napoleon. We should see a buccaneering nation turning the progress of political liberty into a mockery, destroying the freedom of the seas, and the security of territory, and the prosperity of labor. We should see the natural laws of industry and trade tampered with, civilization turned back, a canting paganism set up in the name of Christianity, and the Old World infested with the piracies of the New, in every department of politics, of business, of territorial possession, and of intellectual and moral intercourse. If the Confederates could prevail, and reinstate the spirit and policy of the South at Washington, it would be the greatest calamity that has befallen the world for centuries. But it will not be. The American people will not permit it; and the rest of the world, once aware of the danger, will not endure it.”