NamSouth

[btownsend]

From the Charleston (South Carolina) Tri-Weekly Mercury, Saturday, April 20, 1861

For What Are We Contending?

For more than thirty years the people of South Carolina have been contending
against the consolidation of the Government of the United States.

Created a Confederation of Republics whose central power, authority and
jurisdiction, were carefully limited by the compact of the Constitution, and made
conformable to, and within its proper limits, co-ordinate with the original
and reserved powers, authority and jurisdiction of the several States of
which it was composed, the United States Government has steadily usurped powers
not granted – progressively trenched upon States Rights. Not a bald,
irresponsible, unchecked, vulgar democracy of mere numbers, was organized by the
Instrument of Federation between the States; but a well adjusted, duplicate
system, harmonious and complementary – the central common Government performing
its allotted functions within its prescribed sphere, and each State
Government performing all other functions of government not expressly yielded to the
other. If that government became practically omnipresent, it was clear that
it must be a most fearful despotism- despotism of one section of the Union
over the other- despotism of Manufacturing over Agricultural States- of Free
States over Slaveholding States. Earnestly and faithfully have our public men
at Washington contended against this fatal consummation. It was not for
free trade only in 1833- it was not against anti-slavery fanaticism only in
1853- it is not now against our preclusion from our Territories, or the vulgar
crew who fill the high places at Washington, that we have set up for
ourselves a separate destiny. These are all effects of one great cause- the
consolidation of the Federal Government. As facts, we have been obliged to meet
them- but the facts themselves were comparatively insignificant. They were like
the ship money which HAMPDEN refused to pay- like the three pence a pound
on tea, which our fathers resisted. They proved to us that we were slaves of
a consolidated despotism- that self government, and the security which self
government alone can impart- and liberty, and the priceless self –esteem
and proud repose, which liberty only can inspire- were no longer our
inheritance or possession. It was in vain that South Carolina endeavored to prove
that this despotism existed. We had the forms of a free representative
government. There was a party in the Northern states professing those principles of
limitation and restriction, which might yet be restored to ascendancy in the
government, and make it again a free government. There was a deep reverence
and attachment to the Union which blinded the understanding of some of the
brightest intelligences of the South. These all conspired to carry the South
on in the chains of a sectional despotism, which looked, in its final
consummation, to nothing short of our absolute subjection and ruin. South Carolina,
by her secession, forced the test of the nature of the government under which
we lived. It has proved itself. As one scale of hypocrisy after another
fell off of its poisonous surface, it stood forth a pure, fierce monster of
despotism. The National Intelligencer, of Washington, for forty years the
central organ of consolidation, identifies its policy with the New York
Tribune. BLAIN, the mouth-piece of JACKSON Democracy in 1838, and JOHNSON of
Tennessee, its modern prototype, and DOUGLAS and BUCHANAN, now join with LINCOLN
and CHASE and SEWARD in the grand effort to establish, by the sword, what has
long existed as a policy- the despotism of a consolidated government under
the Constitution of the United States. The matter is now plain. State after
state in the South sees the deadly development, and are moving to take their
part in the grand effort to redeem their liberties. It is not a contest for
righteous taxation. It is not a contest for the security of slave property.
It is a contest for freedom and free government, in which everything dear to
man is involved. Shall we submit to the sectional and remorseless despotism
of a majority of the Northern States, with no restraints on their lawless
will, no checks on their omnivorous rapacity? That is the question. Every man,
every boy in the South answers No! And they will fight the foul usurpers and
tyrants, if they dare the issue of war, as long as the streams run and the
sun shines on our vallies.