Editorials: When to Secede, Mr. Brady and the Republicans, At Attempt to Make Mischief (9/28/1860)

The Southern Disunionists are exercising a good deal of prudence in their plans and projects for carrying their schemes into execution. They evince very little of that headlong zeal which has sometimes characterized them. They are not disposed to rush to arms instantly and wage a war of extermination upon the North as they have at times threatened to do hitherto -- but are suggesting various modes of accomplishing their object, with a view of selecting the one which shall involve least risk. Part are opposed to any one State seceding alone. Some want one State to take the lead, and some another. One man thinks it madness to move until Virginia and the other border States are disposed to join in the movement, and others think it much greater madness to dream that they will ever do so. And there is a still greater diversity of opinion as to the time of secession, -- whether they should secede at once, or wait for some "overt act." In this diversity of sentiment the Charleston Mercury makes one suggestion which will probably meet universal concurrence. That sagacious journal is of the opinion that if they are to secede at all, they had better do it while Mr. BUCHANAN is in office, rather than after LINCOLN comes in. It bases its opinion upon an article in the Constitution, contending that in the pending sectional controversy the North is the aggressor. The Mercury jumps at the hint. If that is the President's opinion, then he must concede the right of the South to repel aggression. Then he won't send the Army and Navy to put down the South, if they make the attempt. But LINCOLN will. Therefore, it would be wisest to make the movement now.

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

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Link to previous New York Times thread

"Editorial: Mr. Brady and the Republicans – 2"

I highly recommend this is an extraordinary 1861 editorial wherein we find arguments sometimes posted on these threads:

A Southern Democrat, Mr. Brady argues: "the Republicans gravely argue that a man ought to be made President of the United States because he once split rails."
It seems Democrats then were no more serious than they are today.

But Brady does make serious arguments:

"Now, I would ask Mr. Lincoln what he proposes to do for the benefit of that race?
I would ask the Republican orators, and the Republican leaders, who are so loud on this subject, what they propose to do for the benefit of this race, in case the Republican Party gets into power?
If they say, as they must, "Nothing..." to what mere mockery are all their professions of philanthropy reduced? [Applause.]
Their sympathy for the African race is a humbug, like their other electioneering humbugs, like their coon skin and hard cider songs and speeches in the 1840, like their bombast about the Rocky Mountain Explorer in 1856."

Today we hear that same argument from our own Lost Causers: "Northerners hate blacks more than Southerners ever did," they claim.
But first, let us not forget that the people who made that claim were Democrats and they referred not to "northerners" generally, but specifically to Republicans -- "Black Republicans" they called us.

The editorial goes on to remark:

"The current charge in the lower strata of politics against Republicans is that they are "negro worshippers," -- Mr. Brady's objection to them seems to be that they are negro haters -- that they do not intend to do anything for the elevation of that race.
Does he, or do his political friends, propose to do more?
Are his superior sympathies for the negro to be turned into any useful channel, and made available?
Does he propose to elevate the race politically, socially, or in any other way?
He will make no such pretense.
On the contrary, he deems them fit only to be slaves -- utterly unable to cope with whites in any department of activity, and created solely to be their abject and hopeless dependents."

Wow! I'd say those words apply pretty well to Democrats today.

"Mr. Brady's objection is to the alleged profession by the Republicans of special regard and esteem for the negro race.
He assumes apparently that the welfare of the negroes is the professed object sought by the Republican Party.
We think he knows better.
There may be men ignorant enough to believe -- as there are many reckless enough to assert -- this; but Mr. Brady is not of the first and ought not to enlist in the second, class.
He must be very well aware that the sentiment which pervades the great mass of the people of the Northern and Western States, and which has organized the Republican Party, rests on a more substantial basis than that of mere philanthropy, and aims at broader results than relieving the condition of any class.
The evils which have called it into existence do not affect the blacks alone.
They fall still heavier weight upon the whites in the slaveholding States -- and affect the civil policy and Government of the whole country..."

The gist is: Republicans were motivated not just by philanthropy towards slaves, but even more by animosity against slaveholders and the political interests of slavery.

"This evil they intend to remedy, and we venture the prediction that the four years of Mr. Lincoln's administration will witness far less agitation of the subject of Slavery, than has marked the term of any President since the annexation of Texas."

Now curiously enough, it is our own Lost Causers who claim that last prediction was totally true!
They tell us the Civil War was not about slavery, but something else -- tariffs... fishing smacks... mean-spirited Northerners... something, anything else, just not slavery.

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