Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/32

 20 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Mr. Gardener, in a sermon preached in Boston, July 23, 1812, says: " The Union has long since been dissolved; it is full time that this part of the United States should take care of itself."

This is only a specimen of many exhortations to secession.

The press teemed with similar sentiments: " My plan is to with- hold our money and make a separate peace with England." From the Boston Advertiser.

" That there will be a revolution if the war continues, no one can doubt, who is acquainted with human nature and is accustomed to study cause and effect. The Eastern States are marching steadily and straightforward up to the object." Federal Republican.

These are only specimens from the leading newspapers.

The citizens of Newberryport, Mass., memorialized their Legis- lature as follows:

"We call upon our State Legislature to protect us in the enjoy- ment of those privileges, to assert which our fathers died, to defend which we profess ourselves ready to resist unto blood."

No more violent sentiments can be expressed by the most hot- headed secession convention.

" We will not pay our continental taxes, or aid, inform or assist any officer in their collection."

This resolution, passed by a mass meeting at Reading, Mass., is less violent than the resolutions immediately above, but it shows a more determined, though less noisy, spirit.

Said Cyrus King, of Massachusetts, in a speech in Congress:

"Yes, sir; I consider this administration as alien to us, so much so that New England would be justified in declaring them, like all foreign nations, enemies in war, in peace, friends."

The Federal Republican has it: "On or before July 4 next, if James Madison is not out of office, a new form of government will be in operation in the eastern section of the Union."

These are completely parallel, in most respects identical, with the utterances of the most extreme secession politicians and newspa- pers of 1860, except in the very important respect that even the most violent southern secessionists deplored the necessity which forced them to their course, and rested the grounds of their action on principle and right, whereas the northern secessionists of 1814 never alluded to principle, but merely writhed and roared when the "pocket nerve" was touched.

Grave and di-stinguished Southerners actually shed tears at the