The Attitude of the South [pp. 25-31]

THE ATTITUDE OF THE SOUTH.
The "IUfion and the Constitution" is the specious and stereotyped shibboleth of these shameless traitors, and the cry is
taken up and prolonged by a class of wretched Southern miscreants, who, for the sake of federal preferment and official
power, are base enough to bare their ignoble necks to the
Northern yoke, denominate it patriotism, and, leagued with
incendiaries and assassins, denounce those loyal and honest
Southern spirits who have the courage and the manliness to
tear the veil from the face of the masked Mohannah, and reveal his hideous features to the world. They do forget that
their own great Gamaliel-Alexander Hamilton-looked upon
the Federal Constitution as only a temporary bond of union,
which must, sooner or later, fall to pieces, through the pressure
of its own superincumbent weight; and that the American
colonies expended their blood and treasure, not for the sake of
the Union, but for Independence. Painful as the reflection
must be to every true Southron, it is, nevertheless, a melancholy fact, that the South is her own greatest enemy; in her
own bosom is cherished the fatal foe, that is to hand her over
to the destroyer; in her own mnidst, and among her own people,
are slumbering the elements of ruin and desolation, that are
to make her to walk by the light of conflagrations and seek
safety amid the noise of' falling cities. It is, as it ever has
been, her peculiar misfortune, to be cursed with the presence
and counsels of a class of abject and slavish minds, who, while
professing to maintain the justness and correctness of a principle, have not had the requisite courage to follow it to-its
farthest and extremest consequences; who, while affecting to
uphold a cause, tremble and turn pale when its path is shown
to lie through great perils and dangers, and who are craven
enough to attempt to shelter their cowardice under the shallow
and contemptible subterfuge of a loyal and zealous attachment
and devotion to the "Union of their fathers;" when, too, it
is manifest that this cherished "Union of their fathers" puts
all its powers to work to compass the destruction of their
fathers' children. This vaunted reverence for the empty
symbol of the Union, when indulged at the expense of selfrespect, and every sentiment of heroic courage and manly
honor, ceases to become a virtue, and becomes, at once, a
crime-a crime against the State, a crime against society, a
crime against the sanctities of home, and all the hallowed ties
that cluster around the family altar. And these poor, timid,
calculating fabricators of Southern opinion, and controllers of
Southern action, are so lost to every sentiment of shame, as to
base their attachment to the Union on the disgraceful and
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