State of Parties and the Country [pp. 1-53]

State of Parties and the Country.
versaries spoke truly, there were 110,000 musket-bearing
men, in four States only, ready for the dissolution of the
confederacy! Five years before, there were no Disunionists recognized any where out of the single State of
South-Carolina. These, tlhen, have been made to feel
their hostility to the confederacy, in consequence of the
wrongs and trespasses, the insane rages and unwise action, of
the abolitionists and government, in the brief period of five
years! To what shall we be brought with another struggle
of five years like the preceding? Let the honest citizen
and the thinking statesman ask the question of their own
hearts! We believe that the dissolution of the Union is desired by very few; the grandeur, the power, the uses and
benefits of such a confederacy, properly administered, with
strict justice, mildness, and a perpetually watchful regard to
the Constitution, are evident to all and everywhere acknowledged; but there are paramount considerations to which
these claims must yield. Liberty before all! The rights
guaranteed under the Constitution before all; and a studious
forbearance with regard to our sectional interests. Nay,
more; the Union must not simply guaranty our rights of property; it must provide security for those of pride, sensibility and feeling. We must not only be left unrobbed, we
must be secure against outrage of any sort. The Congress
of the United States, the government officers, and agencies,
and press, must be taught that the idea of any permanent
Union, requires sympathies for harmony; and love, and kindly feelings, no less than a regard to all legal rights, as the
necessary cement of States. We may be bound together
by force, but this is not the Union that was contemplated by
our ancestors, or will be long tolerated by their sons. Any
bonds but those of mutual regard, mutual sympathy, mutual
forbearance, and mutual security, are liable to be sundered
at any moment. The first conflict of the Federal Government with a foreign power, would afford to dissatisfied sec:
tions an opportunity of which they would avail themselves,
perhaps even more decidedly than was done by New-England in the war of 1812, for asserting the rights of which
they had been deprived, and for avenging the wrongs under
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[July,