Raleigh (NC) Democratic Press, "The South and Southern Safety - A New Presidential Programme," December 10, 1859

The South and Southern Safety––A New Presidential Programme.

   We are informed from Washington that the failure of the South to secure a law at this session of Congress for the better protection and security of Southern institutions and Southern society will not be considered as the direct signal for disunion, but that still another effort will be made to secure the South, within the Union, against the abolition incendiaries and movements of the North. This effort, it is predicted, will be something in the shape of a Presidential ticket or platform, or both, from a caucus or convention of Southern members of Congress, the authorized and legally constituted representatives of the Southern people.

   In other words, this programme contemplates the nomination of a Presidential ticket, on the part of the South, without regard to the Charleston Convention, or for the purpose of superseding that gathering of irresponsible political gamblers. Upon this point, the opinions of Mr. Calhoun against these national party conventions, when the democratic was a national party, are very much to the purpose. We gave his views, therefore, as elaborated by the Charleston Mercury, in its article, which we transfer to these columns. Thus it will be seen how easy a matter it will be for the responsible representatives of the South in Congress to supersede the Charleston Convention, and to bring the North, upon a new Presidential test, to the nice alternative of Southern safety within the Union, or the separation of the South from the Union. 

   The present grievances of the South, inflicted upon them by the North, are too serious to admit of any further trifling. By twos and threes, and tens and twenties, the slaves of the border slave States are spirited away on the "underground railroad," of which there are several organized lines from Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, to the Canadian frontiers. Of itself this system of kidnapping is an intolerable nuisance, and a source of constant losses, alarms and dangers to the border slave States. Secondly, abolition incendiaries, in various disguises, are in various ways, in the North and in the South, are more active than ever heretofore in sowing the seeds of servile stampedes and in insurrectionary conspiracies. The Harper's Ferry raid is suggestive of another or a dozen other abolition outbreaks of the same kind, all along the Northern line of slave States, at any moment, and without a moment's warning. And if Northern philanthropists and Puritanical preachers of the Gospel are found, with the orators and organs of the republican party, glorifying Old Brown as a saint and martyr, is not the danger very much increased of a repetition, from time to time, of these bloody Harper's Ferry forays?

   Above all, with such interpreters of Mr. Seward's "irrepressible conflict" as Old Brown, and Hinton Rowan Helper, who seeks to instigate the Southern slave States to a servile revolt, and the laboring white class of the South to an agrarian rebellion, is it not abundantly manifest that this terrible abolition crusade against the institutions and society of the South has been pushed to the last extremity of forbearance? If there existed a political party in the North to which Southern men could look with the smallest confidence, the case would be different.  But not such party exists. The all powerful North, from Maine to Minnesota, stands in hostile array against slavery and the "slave oligarchy." Possibly there may be a way whereby the conservative people of the central States may be brought to the rescue of the Union. 

   At all events, let this Southern Congressional Presidential movement be tried upon the touchstone of the Union, and we shall not despair of reclaiming such States as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois. We say nothing for the present of New York, because the Albany Regency and Tammany Hall have so debauched and divided the democratic party with the abolition crochets of the Buffalo platform, that even the hitherto impregnable national city of New York may go by the board. It is only now through the bold and decisive action of the Southern members of Congress, acting for the South, that the North can be brought to realize the perils and the value of the Union. --N.Y. Herald.