They Mean not only War but Subjugation

Months ago, when we and others urged that Lincoln’s inaugural meant war, we were told by those who have since been “awakened,” that the President did not mean to coerce, and that we should save the Union, or separate peaceably. So it seems—in a horn. The N. Y. World of May 1st, says:

“We don’t suppose that a sterner, more inflexible purpose ever existed in the human breast, than now possesses the northern people to subdue the South into a return to its duty. The purpose is as fixed as fate—as fixed as your purpose to subdue the man who is scuttling the ship on which you float, or is putting the torch to the house in which you live. It is as restless as the impulse of self-preservation; and the South cannot too soon understand its exact nature. The enemy to our existence may call it subjugation if he likes; he may put on the incredible impudence of pretending that it is tyrannical to over master him, but the compulsion will none the less come. Since reason has not availed to make him abandon his destructive work, the strong hand shall. The North has found it hard to believe that it would come to this. It has forborne to the last probability. It will now try force—sheer brute force, since the South will have it so. We know that we are the strongest, and we intend to use our strength in the very way in which it can be made most effective—active aggressive war. Short of that there is no obedience on the one part, nor safety on the other.”

The Tribune of the same date in the same strain tells us the same thing. Here that old devil, Greeley:

“Therefore shall we imitate the South no more in war than in peace. But, nevertheless, we mean to conquer them—not merely to SUBJUGATE them—and we shall do this the most mercifully, the more speedily we do it. But when the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the field, and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes. They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers and the rags of children.”

These are the leading organs of the administration in New York City and no doubt speak the views and purposes of the administration. So they mean to subjugate us if they can; so we implore the people of the South to take Lincoln at his word this time and make every possible preparation to meet his advancing slaves.

SOURCE: “They Mean not only War but Subjugation,” Newbern Weekly Progress, Newbern, North Carolina, Tuesday Morning, May 7, 1861, p. 3