New Orleans Daily Crescent

November 18, 1860

(Taken from Kenneth Stampp, Causes of the Civil War, pages 46-47.)


The history of the Abolition or Black Republican party of the North is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over the slaveholding States. And all without the smallest warrant, excuse or justification. We have appealed to their generosity, justice and patriotism, but all without avail. From the beginning, we have only asked to be let alone in the enjoyment of our plain, inalienable rights, as explicitly guaranteed in our common organic law. We have never aggressed upon the North, nor sought to aggress upon then North. Yet every appeal and expostulation has only brought upon us renewed insults and augmented injuries. They have robbed us of our property, they have murdered our citizens while endeavoring to reclaim that property by lawful means, they have set at naught the decrees of the Supreme Court, they have invaded our States and killed our citizens, they have declared the unalterable determination to exclude us altogether from the Territories, they have nullified the laws of Congress, and finally they have capped the mighty pyramid of unfraternal enormities by electing Abraham Lincoln to the Chief Magistracy, on a platform and by a system which indicates nothing but the subjugation of the South and the complete ruin of her social, political and industrial institutions.

All these statements are not only true, but absolutely indisputable. The facts are well known and patent. Under these circumstances, in view of the dark record of the past, the threatening aspect of the present, and the very serious contingencies which the future holds forth, we submit and appeal to a candid and honorable world, whether the Southern people have not been astonishingly patient under gross provocation -- whether they have not exhibited remarkable forbearance -- whether they have not been long suffering, slow to anger and magnanimous, on numerous occasions where indignation was natural, and severe measures of retaliation justifiable? There can be no doubt on this point. For the sake of peace, for the sake of harmony, the South has compromised until she can compromise no farther, without she is willing to compromise away character, political equality, social and individual interest, and every right and franchise which freemen hold dear.



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Source:  Kenneth Stampp, Causes of the Civil War, pp. 46-47.

Date added to website: May 26, 2000