New York Enquirer Quotes
The returns before us indicate the election of ABRAHAM LINCOLN President of the United States. The result anticipated has become a gratifying reality.... It is enough that the great fact stands out clearly ... that LINCOLN is elected president, and that the principle of intimidation, so persistently and wickedly brought to bear on this election by Southern extremists and their allies the Northern Democratic panic makers, has signally failed.... All honor to freemen of this Republic; congratulations warm and hearty be theirs, for the great principle of the defense of freedom within the free territories of the United States, to establish which the Republican Party entered upon this canvass, has its complete vindication in signal victory.... Stretching out our hands to the South over this victory, we have no word of taunt to utter for the threats of disunion which were raised for our defeat. Let those threats be buried in oblivion; for through the long vista of this success we see a reign of peace from Slavery agitation, established simply by that circumscribing of Slavery within its local bounds, and that firm defense of the integrity of National Freedom, which this triumph of the Republican party on the 6th of November, 1860, seals now and henceforth.
The logic of Southern secession made so little sense to most Northerners, that they assumed that after the election, the Southern threats of treason and rebellion would stop. Most Northerners did not appreciate that Southerners had little economic vision absent slavery and could not imagine how they could survive. For the Northerners, they had seen great economic growth with free labor and no slavery. But most Southerners were ignorant of the possibilities except for the few very wealthy Southern families who had seen the North and England. They realized that the South could make it economically, but they whose total fortunes came from the ownership value of slaves, might not be in their exalted positions without slavery. At the time, the value of the Southern slaves was greater than the value of all the land, factories, mines, and farms of the South.
New York Enquirer, November. 7, 1860
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This newspaper editorial has historical importance for two reasons. First, it is yet another proof that the sole reason for southern secession was slavery. Second, note the implication that Lincoln had Negro ancestry. As that could be the only reason that he would hold his views on slavery. This disreputable tactic of slandering opponents who hold different views have extended to German ancestry in WWI, Catholic religion, communist affiliation, and in one of the more recent examples, the accusation—believed by a number of Americans, that President Obama was a secret Muslim.
This quotation is a classic example of the extreme view of slavery that was held by many Southerners. Note the phrase: “as the great God-given guaranty of the freedom of the white man through the thralldom of the black”. The Southern view was that the only way the white can be free is to have the Black as a slave…and this order of things is what God had ordained.
The last lines of the editorial were tragically accurate in predicting the Civil War. The more the slavery question was debated in the nation, the more polarized the country became. If the South would persist in trying to curtail men’s freedom and maintain slavery, the slaves had the same right of revolution and insurrection as was established in the American Revolution. That was the view of most abolitionists. Southern slave holders, feared an armed slave rebellion more than anything else, and observed that debating the issue of slavery was just riling up Blacks and whites and would instigate such armed revolutions. The Southern solution was to cease debating the slavery question. The Northern solution was to end slavery. Neither side would accept the solution of the other and the Civil War ensued.
When the first Southern States seceded, each appointed a whose job it was to persuade the other Southern States to also secede. In this case Hale was marketing secession to Kentucky which with Maryland were the only two Southern States to reject what they regarded as treason and rebellion. The importance of the quotation however is in his argument which was all based on enmity to racial equality and abolition. Later Southern apologists would argue that the Civil War was fought, not about slavery and racism butt about different philosophies of government. See {623715} .
The reason for secession was the threat to slavery, which was a great threat to the slave-owners of the South. However, the non slave-owners had a very strong vested interest in maintaining slavery in that most Southerners had been brought up with such a negative view of Blacks that they were paranoid of Black equality or even worse some Blacks in positions of authority over whites. At the time, it was the Republican Party that was the advocate for minority equality and the Democratic Party embraced the racists. The parties would flip flop after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending legal segregation was passed by a Democratic President and a Democratic Majority Congress.
While Douglas and Lincoln were political opponents with little love lost between them, both were patriots. And Douglas was committed to seeing that Lincoln was inaugurated and the Union preserved, if Lincoln won the election. When Lincoln did so, Douglas traveled throughout the South trying to persuade Southerners to stay in the Union. See {584870}.
The amendments failed as did the compromise.
The Mystery was for many years the only Black Newspaper in America.
Northern laborers, especially the new Irish immigrants, were fearful of the prospect of competing for jobs with freed Negroes who they perceived would flock to the North. That is what happened but a century later. The blanket assumption that the South was pro slavery was also not accurate. Different sociologies and economics produced different attitudes in communities throughout the South and some were inclined to abolition as Rankin’s history demonstrates.
The “enemy of the human race” is the Devil, Note that the Pope labels as “allies” of the Devil those who advocate and participate in slavery. Slavery was not only immoral, but the Devil was behind it all. The fact that slavery persisted on a massive scale by Catholic countries illustrates that while the Pope was a powerful leaders and figure, even he could not influence all the “sinners.”
In June of 1850, a bipartisan group of Southern politicians met in Nashville, TN for the purpose of organizing strategy and tactics to ward off and defeat the growing aggressiveness of Northern politicians and other leaders in trying to abolish slavery. They issued an address to the people. This is one of the clearest statements of the position of most of the Southern Politicians on the increased efforts to abolish or curtail slavery. They felt that a deal had been made by the founding fathers and the first Congress not to deal with the slavery issue, and that deal must be honored in perpetuity. Most Northerners agreed that a deal had been made, but it was not binding forever—that a Congress could not limit the scope of a future Congress except via a Constitutional Amendment. The deal on Slavery was a deal not to address it for a while. It was not a deal to accept the Southern point of view. And none of it was written into the Constitution because opinion was even then split and a majority could not be mustered for a compromise that would write legal slavery into the Constitution. But many Southerners believed that its absence implied that it could not be addressed by the government. They demanded the right of their states to choose slavery if they so wished. Time was not on the side of the South and the Southerners who insisted on State’s Rights regarding slavery opposed States Rights for Northern States who wished to disallow fugitive slaves to be returned to owners. The more fugitive slaves there were, the more hypocritical the Southern position became as they needed Federal preemption on the issue of Fugitive Slaves, else slavery would end by escape and non-return of slaves.
The New York Enquirer has been the name of two unrelated newspapers published in New York City.
