Burlington, New
Jersey.—The expedition sails to-day from New York. Its purpose is to
reduce Fort Moultrie, Charleston harbor, and relieve Fort Sumter, invested by
the Confederate forces. Southern born, and editor of the Southern Monitor, there
seems to be no alternative but to depart immediately. For years the Southern
Monitor, Philadelphia, whose motto was “The Union as it was, the
Constitution as it is,” has foreseen and foretold the resistance of the
Southern States, in the event of the success of a sectional party inimical to
the institution of African slavery, upon which the welfare and existence of the
Southern people seem to depend. And I must depart immediately; for I well know
that the first gun fired at Fort Sumter will be the signal for an outburst of ungovernable
fury, and I should be seized and thrown into prison.
I must leave my family — my property — everything. My family
cannot go with me — but they may follow. The storm will not break in its fury
for a month or so. Only the most obnoxious persons, deemed dangerous, will be
molested immediately.
8 O'clock P.m.
— My wife and children have been busy packing my trunk, and making other
preparations for my departure. They are cheerful. They deem the rupture of the
States a fait accompli, but reck not of the horrors of war. They have
contrived to pack up, with other things, my fine old portrait of Calhoun, by
Jarvis. But I must leave my papers, the accumulation of twenty-five years,
comprising thousands of letters from predestined rebels. My wife opposes my
suggestion that they be burned. Among them are some of the veto messages of President
Tyler, and many letters from him, Governor Wise, etc. With the latter I had a correspondence
in 1856, showing that this blow would probably have been struck then, if
Fremont had been elected.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 13-4
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