April 5.
We have very exciting news to-day from the South. It is now
almost certain that Mr. Lincoln is going to reinforce the United States forts,
and in that case the Southerners will surely resist. All the vessels in the
navy are being got ready for sea, and several sail from here to-day. Lincoln
has kept his own counsel so well hitherto, that the newspapers have not been
able to get at anything, and have consequently been filled with the most
contradictory rumors. But, now that almost all the important appointments have
been made, and the State elections, &c. are over, it is the universal
belief that something decisive is to be done.
Every other man has a different opinion as to what will be
the consequences. Some think it will drive all the Border States into the
Southern Confederacy, and that we shall all be ruined; and others say it will
encourage the Union party in the South to make itself heard. For my part, I
want to see the Southern States either brought back by force or else recognized
as independent; and, as Lincoln cannot do as he likes, but must abide by the
Constitution, I don't see what he can do but collect the revenue and retake, by
force of arms, the United States property which they have stolen. As for making
concessions, it is only patching the affair up for a year or two, when it would
break out worse than ever. At any rate, we should have this same row over again
at every Presidential election; and if we gave them an inch, they would be sure
to want thousands of ells, as is proved by their history and ours for the last
fifty years. Indeed, they would not be content with anything less than a total
change of public opinion throughout the North on the subject of slavery, and
that, of course, they can't have. In the mean time, they tar and feather, hang,
drown, and burn our citizens who are travelling there, attending to their own
business and troubling no one. I have been a disunionist for two years; but as
there seems to be no way of making a peaceable separation without giving up
everything, I am glad, for the credit of the country, that they will probably
act now with some firmness. A great many people say they are ashamed of their
country, but I feel proud that we have at last taken such a long step forward
as to turn out the proslavery government which has been disgracing us so long;
and they begin to grumble now about the present administration being no
stronger than the last, when it has had barely one month to make thousands of
appointments, put money into its empty treasury, and extricate almost every
department from the infernal state of confusion in which it was left by the
rascals that have been in power for the last four years.
SOURCE: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Editor, Harvard Memorial Biographies, Volume 2,
p. 194-6
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