Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/44

CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY. New York Tribune, November 16, 1860. — Still we say, in all earnestness and good faith, whenever a whole section of this republic, whether a half, a third, or only a fourth, shall truly desire and demand a separation from the residue, we shall earnestly favor such separation. If the fifteen slave States, or even the eight cotton States alone, shall quietly, decisively, say to the rest, "We prefer to be henceforth separated from you," we shall insist they be permitted to go in peace. War is a hideous necessity at best, and a civil conflict, a war of estranged and embittered fellow countrymen, is the most hideous of all wars. Whenever the people of the cotton States shall have definitely and decisively made up their minds to separate from the rest of us, we shall urge that the proper steps be taken to give full effect to their decision.

New York Tribune, November 19, 1860. — Now we believe and maintain that the Union is to be preserved only so long as it is beneficial and satisfactory to all parties concerned. We do not believe that any man, any neighborhood, town, county or even State may break up the Union in any transient gust of passion ; we fully comprehend that secession is an extreme, an ultimate resort — not a constitutional but a revolutionary remedy. But we insist that this Union shall not be held together by force whenever it shall have ceased to cohere by the mutual attraction of its parts; and whenever the slave States or the cotton States only shall unitedly and coolly say to the rest, "We want to get out of the Union," we shall urge that their request be acceded to." New York Tribune, November 24, 1860. — Some of the Washington correspondents telegraph that Mr. Buchanan is attempting to map out a middle course in which to steer his bark during the tempest which now howls about him. He is to condemn the asserted right of secession but to assert in the same breath that he is opposed to keeping a State in the Union by what he calls Federal coercion. Now we have no desire to prevent secession by coercion, but we hold this position to be utterly unsupported by law or reason.

New York Tribune, November 30,1860. — Are We Going to Fight?—But if the cotton States generally unite with her in seceding, we insist that they cannot be prevented, and that the attempt must not be made. Five millions of people, more than half of them of the dominant