Posted on 08/01/2004 3:14:02 PM PDT by rustbucket
Here are excerpts from 27 Southern and 12 Northern and Border state newspaper editorials published in the first few days after Lincoln’s first inaugural speech. They give some flavor of how sharply divided people were at that time.
Many of the Southern newspapers called the inaugural speech a declaration of war against the South, while Northern newspapers were split largely along Democrat/Republican lines.
Southern newspapers
The Alexandria (VA) Gazette (Union):
The inaugural will not satisfy disaffected persons in the South.
The Alexandria (VA) Sentinel (secession):
The inaugural address is a declaration of war.
The Athens (AL) Herald:
Mr. Lincoln’s inaugural, analyzed, fully means nothing but force, war, and bloodshed.
The Atlanta Confederacy:
It is a medley of ignorance, sanctimonious cant and tender-footed bullyism.
Seriously, the future is ominous. We are dealing first with men who hate us bitterly …
The Augusta (GA) Dispatch:
… he talks about collecting the revenues of a country as essentially foreign to his authority as Great Britain, and yet affects to see no cause for war in such usurpations. Let him experiment with this delusive theory …
The Bolivar (TN) Southerner:
… he must either back down from his present position, or else invade the South with his abolitionist cohorts.
The Charleston (SC) News:
It breathes both peace and war. … smooth and oily words … destitute of all statesmanlike views, and deeply impregnated with the intolerance of a partisan.
The Florence (AL) Gazette:
This, of course, will be open war.
Fredericksburg (VA) News:
Lincoln may be assured that all Virginia will sternly and effectually resent and resist coercion in any shape.
The Lynchburg Virginian (Bell paper):
… ill judged and unfortunate, and calculated to lead to hostile results …
The Holly Springs (MS) Independent South:
Is Abraham Lincoln so completely besotted with stupidity as to think that an attempt to collect the revenue in the seceded States, by means of a blockade of our ports, is not making war on us?
… any attempt by the ex-barkeeper, who is now installed in the White House, as President of abolitiondom, to carry out the programme announced, will be a declaration of war …
The McMinnville (TN) New Era:
This may be viewed as a direct declaration of war on the part of the Federal Government.
The Memphis Daily Appeal:
Apart from the unimportant complications of mere side issues, there was, properly speaking, but one question for Mr. Lincoln to decide, and that was the question of peace or war. He has chosen(?) the bitter alternative …
The Mobile (AL) Register:
… his language leaves it doubtful whether he will even attempt to execute the laws “so far as practicable.” … There is the same impenetrable fog about what he says concerning the holding of public property and collection of duties.
The Mobile (AL) Tribune:
… equivalent to a declaration of war.
The Nashville Patriot (Union):
We read it with great interest, and were rather favorably than otherwise with the frankness and candor with which it treated the issues of the day. … he has evidently much to learn, and it may be that only experience can teach him.
The Nashville Republican Banner (black):
The address is ably written and it sentiments generally, will be approved by all Union-loving men every where.
The New Orleans Bee:
And how is he to collect the revenue in the port of New Orleans, unless by blockading the mouth of the Mississippi, and compelling vessels from foreign ports to pay tribute to the United States ere they are allowed to enter the river? Would not these be acts of war?
The New Orleans Delta:
If he is at all a man of his word, war is already virtually declared.
The New Orleans Picayune:
These passages in the inaugural are susceptible of a construction just the opposite of peace. … he would be compelled to send upon us obnoxious strangers enough to make mince pies of the southern people and cook them over their blazing dwellings.
The Norfolk (VA) Herald:
Let no Black Republican imagine that Virginia will fail to be united in resisting the invasion of any portion of the South, which have resumed the powers formerly delegated by them to the Federal Government.
The Oxford (MS) Mercury:
… bloody and brutal manifesto …
It amounts to a plain, open and unqualified declaration of war against the Confederate States and the South !
The Panola (MS) Star:
This amounts to war, with us. If Mr. Lincoln enforces or attempts to enforce one half of what he says in his message, it will bring a bloody war with the seceding States.
The Petersburg (VA) Express (Union):
… it will add immensely to public dissatisfaction North and South.
The Richmond (VA) Dispatch:
Every border State ought to go out of the Union in twenty-four hours.
The Richmond (VA) Enquirer (secessionist):
No action of our convention can now maintain peace. Virginia must fight.
The Richmond (VA) Whig (conservative):
The policy indicated toward the seceding States will meet the stern and unyielding resistance of the united South.
Northern and Border state newspapers:
The Albany (NY) Statesman (Radical Republican):
Mr. Lincoln affirms his devotion to all the tenants of that platform of principles, upon which he secured the votes of the people. In so doing, he solemnly declares the honesty and the patriotism of his party …
The Baltimore Sun:
The inaugural as a whole, breathes the spirit of mischief. … The fact is as boldly stated as such a man as Lincoln dared to do it, that if the North will sustain him he will coerce and subjugate the South.
The Chicago Times (Democrat):
The whole seems to be a loose, disjointed, rambling affair. … Lincoln has resolved to force his doctrines upon the point of the bayonet. … It must be civil war within thirty days ...
The Kennebec (ME) Weekly Journal:
He has met the emergency with firmness and courage nobly blended with the spirit of conciliation and patriotism. He discusses the pending issues with a fairness, calmness and brevity which cannot fail to receive the approval of all friends of National perpetuity.
The New York Day Book:
… his inaugural address is a concentration of deceit, arrogance, ignorance and audacity in about equal proportions.
It is skillfully devised, well calculated to deceive the unthinking, and in its false and deceitful talk about the Union, appeals to the strongest and most patriotic sentiment in the American heart.
The New York Express (Whig):
His way of keeping the Union together seems to be in cannonading and bombarding the discontented part of it …
… the 4th of March is the inauguration of civil war and the dissolution of the Union of the States.
The New York Journal of Commerce:
… nothing less than a proclamation of war.
The best that he offers us – and in this he is treading in the path indicated by Mr. Seward and other party leaders in the Senate – is a national convention, one, two, or three years hence, to revise the Constitution. … the inference is left to be drawn from the language of the message, that there are no wrongs to be righted – no just complaints to be listened to.
The New York News:
The inaugural is not satisfactory; it is ambiguous, and we fear the Republicans, even while professing the most peaceful intentions. Coercion could not have been put in a more agreeable form; it reads like a challenge under the code, in which an invitation to the field is veiled in the most satisfactory syllables.
The New York Times (Republican):
The intellectual and moral vigor which pervades it will infuse new hope and loyalty into the American heart. …
In our judgment, the inaugural cannot fail to exert a very happy influence on public sentiment throughout the country.
The New York Tribune:
… those, if there be any such, who shall resist this assertion of the laws and rights of the Government, the odium of the consequences may follow resistance.
The Philadelphia Public Ledger and Daily Transcript:
His language is mild and peaceful. …
… How these things are to be done without a collision, we are unable to understand …
The St. Louis Democrat (Republican):
… it meets the highest expectations of the country … its effect on the public mind cannot be other than salutary in the highest degree.
"Southern newspapers called the inaugural speech a declaration of war against the South"
Sounds like a description of what will happen if Kerry is elected.
Ping
Bump.
Consider yourself flagged.
I can't believe none of them used the word "Quagmire".
The Rochester (NY) Democrat (Republican):
Even the most ultra Democrats seemed to rejoice that the Ship of State was no longer under the guidance of an imbecile and dotard, if not an actual traitor.
Among the members of the assembly now here, the Republicans are loud in their praise of the Inaugural, and the general opinion among them is that it indicates a conservative policy in the Cabinet, and avoidal of any chance of collisions.
The Democratic members indorse almost without exception the position of the [Albany, NY] Atlas and Argus, and believe the attempt to enforce the Revenue Laws, must lead to collision and war.
The Albany (NY) Atlas and Argus:
… weak, rambling, loose, disjointed, and initiating civil war.
… in denying the decisions of the Supreme Court upon Congress and the Executive, President Lincoln is guilty of usurpation, and places himself upon the platform of the Higher law, instead of the Constitution.
The Detroit Advertiser (Republican):
Mr. Lincoln's position is such as will meet a cordial response in every patriotic heart in the land, and claims that while he is temperate and concilliatory towards the South he proposes no concession.
Detroit Free Press (Democrat):
... fears from the temper of the inaugural and the construction of the Cabinet, we shall have the secession of the Border States and war, while the seceded States will receive it as a declaration of war, and prepare for war.
The New York News and the Chicago Times had about the most perspicuous views on the First Inaugural, IMHO.
The New Orleans Picayune had the bravest reaction -- they saw the outcome clearly, but didn't sound a cowardly note. Those guys were men.
Interesting that everyone else saw the potential for conflict, but the New York State Republicans professed not to ......spin, spin, spin from the partisan spin zone, even in 1861.
The point they obviously wanted to make was that Lincoln's policies were mild and "conservative", so that if there were to be a conflagration, of course it couldn't be the Republicans' fault. Damn good demonstration of mens rea if you ask me!
free dixie,sw
as i've said numerous times, "lincoln the first, the damnyankees clayfooted saint, wasn't smart enough to accept secession, make peace with the new nation & TRADE with her. the CSA would have needed MANY THINGS from her northern neighbor for DECADES, if not forever."
free dixie,sw
In the historical context, six states in the deep south and Texas had purported to secede by the time of Lincoln's inauguration. The provisional government of the CSA had been in place for about one month.
IIRC the St. Louis Democrat was a notorious propaganda paper controlled by the Wide Awakes - a paramilitary group that drew from the most extreme radical fringes of the Republican Party at the time. That helps explain why they praised it so openly for a border state paper.
I have hundreds of xeroxed pages from the old newspaper microfilms now, many of them four compressed newspaper columns wide and many inches long. This way I get as much text as I can on each page.
Some pages are quite legible; others are dark or overprinted with backward text from the back side of the page. The latter and the smallness of the type on my copies may eventually make me go blind.
However, I keep finding interesting stuff on these pages that I didn't notice in the library and didn't realize was there. The little blurb about the burning of General Cadwalader's mansion by the Baltimore rioters was one such serendipitous find. Similarly, I discovered some editorial opinions about Lincoln's inaugural on a page I had copied for some Texas news. I then made another trip to the library to search out more inaugural opinions.
"The [St. Louis] Republican (Douglas Democrat) says we fail to see in it any disposition to sweep party platforms and party politics aside, but its words and studied sentences seem to have been prompted by some idea of meeting the expectations of the Republicans who elected him. We hoped for more a conservative and more conciliatory expression of sentiments; much will depend upon the putting into practice of the ideas advanced that will test the question, be it one of expediency or right -- whether the forts can be held or retaken and the revenues collected without bloodshed."
A hand-held magnifying glass might save your eyesight! That, and a bright light.
btw, check out the Baltimore Civil War Museum!!!
it is the most unique museum that i've ever visited--it ONLY covers the Baltimore Riots & the "blood that flecked the streets of Baltimore".
and after a long visit, i found out that the Baltimore Riots were MUCH MORE complicated than i'd thought before going there. MUCH more complicated!
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
It is reported that Gen. Cadwalader's mansion, nineteen miles from Baltimore, has been destroyed.
Also from another page from that issue:
Mayor Alberger, of Buffalo, a resident of Baltimore for several months, reports the condition of Baltimore as fearful. Streets barricaded, the shutters of houses loopholed for musketry and Union men fleeing for their lives.
when i visited the B'more CW museum, who i "felt sorry for" were the "poor boys from PA", who came to "charm city" expecting to have a "GREAT & GRAND" PARADE, complete with a BRASS BAND, fireworks,etc!
boy, did they get a SURPRISE on the 2d day of the Baltimore Riots!! (the MA "volunteers" had "worn out the welcome" for ANY yankees the day before by promiscuously shooting into an UNarmed crowd of onlookers, killing 4-5 unarmed civilians & seriously wounding about ten others.)
free dixie,sw
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