The Union and the South.
We are thoroughly convinced that never for the last thirty years has there been such an opportunity of placing the Union of these States on a firm and immovable foundation as is now presented, if the South will be but true to herself, and, in being true to herself, true to the North, and true to the country.--"To thine own self be true — thou canst not then be false to any man," says the great dramatist, and never, outside of the Bible, were wiser words ever uttered. If the Southern States will now meet in convention, and place before the North, as invited by recent resolutions in a Northern city, what they require as essential to the preservation of the present Government, we solemnly believe it will be yielded. We predict that every pledge will be made and every guarantee given which mutual justice and harmony demand. And this will be done, not from the want of either physical or moral courage, for the man who imputes any inferiority in either to the North is a hopeless idiot, but because the interests involved are too immense to be sacrificed for the sake of an empty abstraction. We mean no derogation to the North in saying that they are governed by their interests where no principles demand the surrender of their interests. Every people are thus governed, and most individuals, and none as much so as those who make the loudest pretensions to generosity and self-sacrifice. The North cannot afford to give up the Union, and if the South convinces it that either the slavery agitation must be eternally ended, or the Union is gone, depend upon it, the practical, money-making North will seize the anti-slavery fanaticism by the throat, and choke it to death without an hour's delay. But in order to do that, it must be convinced that the South is in earnest, which it never has been fully yet, and never will be till we give up party and local dissensions, and, with a solid front, demand that the national compact shall be observed, both in letter and spirit, (for the letter without the spirit is dead,) or else that, having ceased to be binding upon the North, it shall no longer be binding upon the Southern States.The prompt and thorough settlement of this subject is a question in which every man has a vital interest; the non-slaveholder as much as the slaveholder; the poor as much as the rich; the Northern citizen as much as the Southern. Whatever other abstractions may be connected with slavery, there is one abstraction which is real, which the industrious and hard-working men of the country are now suffering — an abstraction of the means of life; of the rewards of industry; of food and clothing for their wives and children. People talk about the horrors of war. In Heaven's name, do you not take away a man's life when you take away the means whereby he lives?--What is there in half-a-dozen battles, compared to the agonies which tens of thousands of men in this country now suffer who go to bed at night not knowing where they shall procure the next morning's food for their families, and who spend the day in prowling about the streets in search of labor — any kind of honest labor — to keep the wolf of starvation out of their doors and save themselves and these who are dearer to them than life from the woes and curses of hopeless poverty? What an awful spectacle, these famished multitudes, with the pangs of hunger gnawing their bodies and the vulture of despair devouring their hearts! Death on the battle field is Paradise compared to such purgatorial pains. Yet this is the condition of immense numbers, North and South; of men who have had no influence in bringing about the present state of things; of the innocent dupes and victims of those miscreant politicians and demagogues, who, to secure their own personal or party purposes, are ready to involve their fellowmen in any kind or amount of misery.--And this is a condition which occurs not at remote intervals, but over and over again, and which may happen a year hence, and happen every year, until men have no more security, confidence or peace, than people who live on the borders of Vesuvins. We believe that the time has come when the American People will insist that the great object of all Government the security of life, property, order, must be had at all hazards; if not by peace, then by war; if not in the Union, then out of it; if not under a Republic, then under a King;--Stability, Peace, Property--these must be Ensured. These we may have, in our poor judgment, under our present confederated Government, not, however, by the application of temporary emollients, but by a bold, thorough and compact demonstration of the whole South, demanding that now and forever the slavery question shall be put beyond the reach of further agitation, and placed in such a position that neither the fanatics nor demagogues of either section shall be able again to make it a hobby for their absurd and selfish schemes.--Let the Southern States, then, meet in Convention, and lay broad and deep the foundations of a real and enduring Union. We feel convinced that the Conservatism and Patriotism of the North will meet the South half-way; that the Property of the North will join hands with the Property of the South; aye, that the Labor of the North will rise in its power and demand that its own rights, which are involved in the quieting of this eternal turmoil, shall be respected, and find, in guarantees to the South, the best and surest guarantees of its own interests.
If, however, in all this we are mistaken; if the just and reasonable demands of the Southern States shall be refused, then we shall have at least the advantage of disclosing to a certainty the opinions and purposes of the Northern people, and of governing our own course accordingly. If we cannot live together in peace and justice; if we are to go on forever chafing and fretting like unequally yoked oxen, we would better separate. We do not believe that separation is necessary; we are sure that a powerful minority in the North is ready to back up the South in peace or war, if it will only banish discord from its own ranks and define its position. But, as we have before said, better dissolution, better war, than a perpetuation of the present state of chronic discontent, uncertainty, and of enormous suffering among the great masses of the people. Out of the chaos some new system may arise, and if it does, let us devoutly hope that, warned by the lessons of the past, it will avoid alike the concentration of great power in Executive hands, and the universal voting of everybody for everything, which has proved one of the greatest curses of the Republic.
