Letter to the Citizens of the Greenville District
For the Southern Enterprise.
To the Citizens of Greenville District.
[p1]
Fellow Citizens - By a portion of your
own number, we have been requested to
address you on a subject of vital interest. --
Some of you have less means of information
than others; we therefore use great plainness
of speech.
[p2]
Years ago the State of South Carolina entered
into a compact with other States for the
accomplishment of certain purposes, equally
important to them all. That compact is
known as the Constitution of the United
States. The purposes of that compact were
"to form a more perfect union; to establish
justice; to insure domestic tranquillity; promote
the general welfare; and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity." These were wise and noble purposes,
and the Union of States to accomplish
them was a wise and "glorious Union."
[p3]
But in the hands of wicked and even of
foolish men, the wisest and best things are
liable to be abused. It has been so here. --
The Union of the Southern States with the
Northern has been the occasion of serious
evils to the Southern States -- and is about
to become the occasion of boundless disaster
and ruin, unless the Southern States apply
the remedy. We are not denying that
the South has, in common with the North,
derived advantages from this Union, particularly
in the earlier years of our history. --
But in the case of the South these advantages
are outweighed by the disadvantages to
which she has been subject, and they are
a the mere dust of the balance in comparison
with the mischiefs she must yet experience,
unless she takes the remedy in her own
hand. The system of taxation under which
we have been living, has given to the North
annually the benefit of millions upon millions
drawn off from the profits of Southern
labor. By a high tariff they have shut off
the fair competition, in our own markets, of
those who buy our products, and thus they
have made for themselves a market for their
manufactures, where they have been receiving
such prices as have made them rich. --
This is the secret of Northern wealth. --
Their large cities, their immense manufacturing
establishments, their enriching commerce,
never would have existed but for
their connection with the South. This has
drawn to them an immense population from
abroad - and so they have been swimming
on upon a tide of wonderful prosperity. --
Meanwhile, they have forgotten the hands
that fed them, and after having refused to
listen to the complaints of the South, they
have come to feel for her a contempt which
they express through their press and their
pulpits, and the men who speak for them
on the floor of Congress. In the halls of
Congress -- common council chamber -- as
much ours as theirs, a representative of a
Northern State has dared to say of the
South, she "can't be kicked out of the
Union." Only within a few days, a leading
Boston paper recommends a certain treatment
of South Carolina, in order that she
may know "whom she belongs to," and a
leading Pennsylvania paper proposes "to
slay South Carolina." This is the natural
insolence of ill-gotten gain. It is like the
effrontery of the highwayman who rifles his
victim, and when he complains, smites him
on the face. 'Tis true these things have
been done under the forms of law, but they
did not "establish justice," they did not
"promote the general welfare," unless justice
consists in taking away the profits of
one party in a firm to give to the other
party -- unless the general welfare means the
sin of the greater number at the cost of
the smaller.
[p4]
Facts like these, Fellow Citizens, led far-seeing
men long ago to ask "what is the
value of the Union." But up to this time,
the people of the South have chosen to
abide by the compact rather than break it
up. A veneration for our honored ancestors,
and the hope that certain false opinions
at the North would, like a sweeping
prairie fire, burn out, have kept our people
true to the Union. Conscious that they desire
an unequal advantage (and be it remembered
that the North has never pretended that
the South ever asked an unfair advantage)
men have indulged the reasonable expectation
that the North would at length desist
from a trespass on Southern rights. This
expectation has been bitterly disappointed;
nay, more -- he must be blind who does not
see how these rights are now laid in the
dust, unless the South has the spirit to
defend them, if need be, even to the death.
[p5]
A false opinion, which contradicts
common sense, contradicts all history,
contradicts the Bible, has rooted itself into the
Northern mind. It is taught in their schools
and colleges; it is enforced in their pulpits;
it is the Gospel of Northern fanaticism. --
That false opinion is, that every man is
born free and equal. The abettors of this
doctrine differ somewhat in the extent of
the inference they draw from it. Some of
them, (the most honest and consistent of
the class,) seeing it is virtually contradicted
by the Constitution of the United States,
(for that does not treat slaves as free, and
equal to white men,) denounce the
Constitution as a "covenant with death and an
agreement with hell;" and, therefore, they
are for dissolving the Union because it is
founded, in their judgment, on a rotten
compact. The larger class, however, are
for holding on to the Constitution, because,
by the use of their power under it they can
finally abolish slavery. Give them the
Presidency and its patronage; the millions of
money it has to dispense; the control of
the Post Office, &c. and in a few brief years
the slave States bordering on the North
will have to abandon slavery as the source
to them of endless vexation and loss, through
the interference of Abolition emmisaries,
while no new States will be admitted but
such as are free -- and then, by a vote of
Congress, their great idea will be carried out --
universal emancipation will be declared.--
Then every negro in South Carolina, and in
every other Southern States, will be his own
master; nay, more than that, will be the
equal of every one of you. If you are tame
enough to submit, Abolition preachers will
be at hand to consummate the marriage of
your daughters to black husbands! Nay,
nay! we beg pardon of South Carolina
women for such a suggestion. If their fathers
and their brothers have not the spirit to
break loose from a government whose elected
Chief Magistrate aims to establish such a
state of things, the daughters of South
Carolina would die for shame at the dishonor
of the men.
[p6]
Fellow citizens, this is no picture of fancy.
It is a stern reality, which must arise
in the future, unless the infatuation of the
Northern mind is checked by a miracle, or
unless you yourselves apply the remedy.
Truth has its natural limitations, error has
none. A conscientious errorist is the most
hopeless errorist with which you can treat.
A conceited errorist, especially if prosperity
feed his conceit, is the next bad case.
John Brown and Henry Ward Beecher, the
one an infidel and the other a Christian
preacher, belong to the first class. No
defeat, not even death itself, would change
the opinion of such men as these, and many,
many such, are in the ranks of Northern
Abolitionism. The other class is the more
numerous. They glory in being wise. --
They claim to be political philosophers, or
pride themselves on following in the wake
of such. They utter and echo the veriest
inanities in a style befitting discoverers of
truth. Calmly ensconced in the sense of
their own security, they give currency to
theoretical opinions which they cannot but
see must damage others at a distance, without
sufficient foresight to perceive the
reaction of their own mischief on themselves,
like a silly boy who sets fire to a neighbor's
haystack, and flying to his father's house,
feels that he is safe when the door closes,
until the lurid flame licks its hot tongue
against his own bed curtain. The North is
full of these shallow philosophers, a famous
New Yorker at their head. Of these men
there seems to be no hope except from the
actual experiment of their schemes. If the
first class labor under an incurable malady,
like disease of the heart, wherein the patient
can't be cured, the other labor under
brain fever, which nothing can cure but the
lancet and the blister. If the Union is dissolved,
we answer for it, Mr. Seward will
in a short time be a much wiser man, with
very changed opinions. Let the Union
continue, and he, with all his disciples, will
remain as madly bent as they now are, on
universal emancipation.
[p7]
But let us look more directly into the
face of the danger before us.
[p8]
A citizen of the North has been brought
forward by a party at the North as Candidate
for the Presidency, on the undisguised,
nay, the avowed ground, of his opposition
to slavery. A great political organization,
known as the Black Republican party, based
upon the theory that the negro is the
equal of the white man, had chosen Abraham
Lincoln as their candidate for the
Presidency. The election has just been decided.
A majority of votes had been given for
this man.
[p9]
Now, what does Mr. Lincoln intend?
Hear his own language: "I believe," he
says, "this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do
not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do
not expect the house to fall, but I do expect
that it will cease to be divided. It
will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest
the further spread of it, and place it where
the public mind shall rest in the belief that
it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or
its advocates shall push it forward until it
shall become alike lawful in all the States,
old as well as new, North as well as South."
[p10]
This extract proves two things in regard
to this man. It shows, first, that in appealing
to popular prejudices he is not incapable
of disingenuous and gross misrepresentations
of others. When, in three quarters
of a century, have the Southern States, or
any single Southern State, or any citizen of
a Southern State, made any effort of any
kind to engraft slavery upon a Northern
State? The suggestion is an artful, and
mischievous misrepresentation, intended to
act upon a factious mass, eager to justify
their own impertinent intermeddling with
the business of other people. The other
point which this extract reveals is Mr. Lincoln's
abandonment to that false opinion of
which the whole Abolition agitation is
founded. He tells us again, "that he hates
slavery as much as any Abolitionist."
[p11]
We care not to prove that Mr. Lincoln
would join hands with such a man as John
Brown to carry fire and bloodshed into a
slaveholding State - it is enough for us to
know that he is in full concert with what
the Black Republicans themselves would
consider as the respectable and conservative
part of their own party. Here, then, what
two of the highest authorities among them
have proclaimed. One of them is a Senator
from New York. Senator Seward says:
"Free labor has at last apprehended its
rights and its destiny, and is organizing itself
to assume the government of the Republic.
It will hereafter meet you boldly and
resolutely here. [Washington] * * *
It has driven you back in California and
Kansas; it will invade you soon in Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and
Texas." "The interests of the whole race
demand universal emancipation. Whether
the consummation shall be allowed to take
effect with needful and wise precautions
against sudden change, or be hurried on by
violence, is all that remains for you to
decide." The other representative of this
party is a senator from Massachusetts. In
speaking of what he calls the slave oligarchy,
he says: "Surely, then, in its retreat,
smarting under the indignation of an aroused
people, and the concurring judgment of
the civilized world, it must die; it may be
as a poisoned rat dies, of rage, in its hole.
Meanwhile, all good omens are ours. The
work cannot stop. Quickened by the
triumph now at hand, (the Presidential election),
with a Republican President in power,
State after State, quitting the condition of
a territory and spurning slavery, will be
welcomed into our plural unit, and joining
hands together will become a belt of fire
around the slave States, in which slavery must
die."
[p12]
Here, then, fellow citizens, are the
purposes of the party so plainly avowed that
none may doubt them. Here is a President
elected to carry out these purposes
as a wary man, intent on their accomplishment,
and with a stubbornness which the
madness of his own party cannot bend so
as to hurry his Administration into any
"overt acts" whose flagrancy would arouse
even the most torpid at the South, he will
move on with a cold steadiness of purpose
towards the projected end. He and Seward
and other leaders of the party are
too wise to be betrayed into any action
which would offend those who are tame or
blind enough to submit at all. The tiger
has no "overt acts" before the final spring.
Only let him get his springing place, and
he crouches still and quiet as innocence itself.
The anaconda, once wrapped about
its victim, does not arouse the fated beast
by unnecessary constriction, until its wasted
breath makes its destruction as convenient
as it is sure. Such is the fate, fellow-citizens,
which our Abolition enemies, (longer
to call them brethren would be a bitter
irony,) design for us. And yet we, poor
simple souls, are to wait for "overt acts!"
As sharers with you, in the obligations and
the destinies of South Carolina, we say to
you, stand up for your rights, and through
you, through your votes, let our beloved
commonwealth declare herself dissevered
from all political connection with men who
have "broken the covenant."
[p13]
The Constitution you have striven to
keep sacred, but the States of the North
have trampled it in the dust. It was
established "to promote justice." Abolitonism
has under its protection robbed the
South annually of hundreds of thousands,
and would use it to rob the South of property
worth four hundred millions of dollars.
It was established "to secure domestic
tranquility." What of the domestic
tranquility which Abolition secures? Look
at the secret emissaries prowling about
Southern homes and plantations. Look at
the arms placed in the hands of slaves to
destroy their masters, and their masters
families. Look at the poison (with a fiendish
and cowardly malignity) put into the
hands of the same deluded creatures, for
the same nefarious purpose. Fellow-citizens,
what means the patrol and vigilance
committees, the gallows, and the halters, which
at this strange crisis have of late so often
figured in Southern scenes? These are
parts of the "domestic tranquility" you
owe to the North. Why is it now that
almost every man; young and old, is daily
handling arms? Why are the ministers of
the Gospel, a class of men at the South, who
keep aloof from party politics, registered
on the rolls of Minute Men, and addressing
their fellow-citizens? Is it not the simple
truth that under the Constitution our "domestic
tranquility" has been invaded, and
that a tyrannical proscriptive party, full of
pride, folly and insolence, have, as they
predicted, "assumed the Government," with
the fell purpose to lay that tranquility at
last in absolute ruins?
[p14]
We despise Abolitionism - for it is most
flagrant injustice. It proposes to circumvent
us, and then by the power of numbers
to deprive us of our lawful property -
possessions many of them derived from the
very men who established the independence
of the United States.
[p16]
We detest Abolitionism because it
trespasses upon our rights of conscience. It
does not allow us judge for ourself the
morality of slaveholding. It intends to
treat the slaveholder and the polygamist
alike, and it demands that we shall not
obey the dictates of our own conscience,
or else shall feel the weight of Northern
displeasure. Every one must see the
haughtiness of its contempt in Mr. Seward,
and its hyena ferocity in Mr. Sumner. --
These are representative men. Their spirit
is the spirit of the class. An Abolitionist
has vastly less regard of the slaveholder's
right of conscience, than a slaveholder has
for the same right in his slave.
[p17]
And we abhor Abolitionism for its
atrocious impiety. It stigmatizes as a gross sin
what God guards in the very Decalogue as
a sacred right. "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's * * * man servant, nor his
maid servant." It assumes to understand
religious duty better than an inspired Apostle.
He sent a runaway slave back to his master.
The Abolitionists encourage him to run
away. "To God's [illegible] it must come
at last." The tirades against slaveholders
-- not for the abuse of their relationships as masters,
but for the relationship itself -- is an
outrage on the authority of God's word.
Southern Christians have honored the
authority of the Bible, in withdrawing from
such bodies as have infected with
Abolitionism. Here is the Divine
injunction -- "Let as many servants as are under
the yoke count their own masters worthy
of all honor. And they that have believing
masters, let them not despise them,
because they are brethren, but rather let
do them service, because they are holy and
beloved, partakers of the benefit. These
things teach and exhort. If any man teach
otherwise, and consent not to wholesome
words, even the words of our Lord Jesus
Christ, he is proud, knowing nothing, but
doting about questions and strifes of words,
whereof cometh envy, strife, railing, evil
surmising, perverse disputings of men, of
corrupt minds, and destitute of truth, supposing
that gain is godliness; from such
withdraw thyself." See 1 Tim. 6:1-5.
[p18]
When Southern States separate from
Northern ones, on the ground of their Abolitionism,
they will be doing it under the highest
sanction that can warrant human action.
[p19]
To you, citizens of Greenville, in common
with the citizens of the State, will the question
soon be presented: What shall the State
do? Shall she remain in a Union thus
attended with danger and dishonor, "to be girt
about by a belt of fire," or driven to die
like a poisoned rat in its hole? Or shall she
assume her unquestionable Independence,
ready to enter, when other Southern States
shall be prepared for it, into a new confederacy
with them? Such a Government must
be formed, for it cannot be that the Southern
portion of the present United States -
the finest country in the world -- is destined
to be sacrificed to the Utopian schemes of
the shallow pretenders and schemers who
are forming new plans for Providence, and
uttering their follies as predictions.
[p20]
Men of Greenville, show yourselves men.
Many of you are Baptists. They know the
relation which the churches and associations
sustain to each other. The churches are the
smaller bodies, and the associations are the
larger; yet the churches make the association,
and if at any time an association should
interfere with the rights of a church, that
moment that Church would secede. Just so
here; the States have formed the General
Government, and the moment that Government
invades, directly or indirectly, the
rights of a State, that moment such a State
owes it to herself to throw off the odious
tyranny.
[p21]
Such, fellow citizens, is the position of
South Carolina. Self-respect, honor, the
safety of our wives, our children, and our
slaves themselves, whose well being is
inseparably connected with the welfare of their
masters all conspire to urge you to sustain
the State in the high position which, if she
is true to herself, she must assume. As your
fellow citizens, we shall be grievously
disappointed if you do not make common cause
with us. The negro is not your equal, unless
the Bible be untrue, or you prove yourselves
unworthy of the name of free men.
The Abolitionists are not our masters, and
though they have "assumed the Government,"
yet they cannot exercise it over you
without your submission. Men of Greenville,
will you submit?
JAMES C. FURMAN,
THOS. S. ARTHUR,
WM. H. CAMPBELL,
WM. M. THOMAS.
Transcribed by Lloyd Benson, Department of History,
Furman University, from the Greenville, South Carolina,
Southern Enterprise, 22 November 1860.