Princeton, Jan. 3d, 1861.
My Dear Sir: — I received last evening a copy of the Southern
Presbyterian, for Dec. 29th, 1860, containing a notice headed “The Princeton
Review on the State of the Country.” The article in the Review thus
denominated, you characterize as “an unfortunate, one-sided and lamentable
attack upon the South.” I think, my dear sir, that it will promote the cause of
truth and brotherly love which we both have at heart, if you will permit the
Editor of the Review to state to your readers in few words the design of
the article on which you pronounce so unfavorable a judgment.
It was intended to produce two effects within the limited
range of its influence; first, to convince the South that the mass of
Northern people are not abolitionists or hostile to the rights and interests of
the South; and second, to convince the North that the course adopted by
the abolitionists is unjust and unscriptural. You say that the writer of the
article in question “affirms that the aggressions or grievances of which the
South complains have no real existence.” The article, however, says that the
South has “just grounds of complaint, and that the existing exasperation
towards the North is neither unnatural nor unaccountable.” It says that “the
spirit, language and conduct of the abolitionists is an intolerable grievance.”
It says that “tampering with slaves is a great crime. That it is a grievance
that would justify almost any available means of redress.” It admits that all
opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves, whether by individuals, by
mobs or legislative enactments, is immoral, and that the South has a right to
complain of all such opposition. It admits that the territories are the common
property of the country, and that the South has the same rights to them that
the North has, and it calls for an equal division of these territories on the
plan of the Missouri compromise. The article does not deny the reality of the
grievances complained of, but it denies that those grievances are justly
chargeable on the people of the North. It endeavors to prove, by a simple
process of arithmetic, that the abolitionists against whom these charges justly
lie, are comparatively a mere handful of the people of the North. Southern men
and ministers of the highest eminence pronounce the abolition party to be not
only Antichristian but atheistic, to be perjured and instinct with the spirit
of the French revolutionists, and then the North is pronounced to be thoroughly
abolitionized. We know this to be untrue. We know this to be a false judgment
pronounced upon thousands and hundreds of thousands of pious, God-fearing
people. We hold it, therefore, to be a solemn duty to all concerned to show
that such judgment is altogether unfounded, in fact. Such is the main design of
the article in question. Whatever may be thought of its execution, the design
must of necessity commend itself to every good man. If Southern men knew the
North as we know it, they would no more think of secession than they would of
suicide. We have done what we could out of a pure conscience to convince the
South that we are not hostile to its rights and interests. If our Southern
brethren take this in evil part we shall deeply regret it, but cannot repent of
what has the full assent of our reason and conscience.
* * * It nowhere advocates coercion in the present crisis.
It deprecates all appeal to force, and urges acquiescence in the recommendation
of a convention of the States, that disunion, if it must come, may at least be
peaceably effected.
Your friend and
fellow-servant,
Editor Of The “Princeton Review.”
SOURCE: Archibald Alexander Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge,
p. 462-3
