New York (NY) Commercial Advertiser, "A Sensible Southern Man," November 10, 1860

A Sensible Southern Man.

The Louisville (Ky.,) Journal contains a letter from J.R. Buchannan, to the governor of Kentucky, from which we make brief extracts:

To resist the abolition agitation by disunion is as sensible as the course of the lunatic who, when a few drops of water had dropped through his roof ran out indignantly from his house into the pelting storm.

Finally, to look at the last paltry pretext for disunion, the escape of fugitive slaves–ought not disunion agitators to blush when they allude to this?  They know that the occasional escape of slaves (sometimes talented, sometimes vicious and daring, but always the dissatisfied and dangerous elements of population) is a necessary unavoidable event, and that the only safeguard we have against a general stampede of all slaves, who can be persuaded off by their comrades, is the Union and the right of pursuit and recapture which it gives us. They know that just so soon as they dissolve the Union and bring the Canada line down to our borders, they strike the heaviest stunning blow at slavery which can be given, before which it will reel and recoil for hundreds of miles. They know that such a measure would render probable the extinction of slavery in all the border states and yet forsooth they claim to be exclusive champions of slave holder’s rights and interests.

Is this folly, fraud, or madness? Can the South be so deluded by passion as to follow this insane counsel, and thus play into the hands of its enemies?

There is but one cool, sensible, long-headed disunion party in the country. It is the party of radical abolitionists led by Garrison and Phillips. They have been struggling for upwards of twenty years with desperate perseverance against that Union and Constitution, which they pronounce a covenant with death and hell. They know that their schemes are hopeless while the Constitution and the Union are maintained; but as soon as the Union is destroyed they can carry on the war against slavery with tenfold effect, making their underground rail road a public institution backed by an army and operating by ten thousand invisible hands in the South.

In their untiring war against slavery, where have they found the most efficient allies? Not at the North; the disunion faction there is scarcely large enough to fill a single hall. It is at the South among the politicians who look to the high office of a Southern confederacy as their reward for the ruin of their country.

I doubt not there may be patriotic men among the disunionists, but certainly they are blinded by passion. They are blind to the fact that disunion will aggravate tenfold every grievance of which they have ever complained against the North. They are blind to the great fact that disunion is not the policy of slave holders, but the shrewd policy of abolitionists who understand well what they are about.

The honest Disunionists of the South seem to be unsuspicious of the fact that they are becoming more tools and catspaws of the abolitionists– and that the abolition faction at the North and all who sympathise with them are rejoicing just in proportion as they hate the South in the prospect of a dissolution of the Union.

If these hopes should be disappointed, and if the Union party should not be able to control the madness of this political excitement–what have we to expect if Kentucky is dragged into this revolutionary rebellion and violation of all her pledges to the general government.

What but a desolated frontier, her cities burnt and pillaged–her slaves escaped–her farmhouses red with the blood of assassination or smoking in ruins from the black incendiary–her soil wet with the blood of her best citizens­ her fertile lands ravaged–her families flying in destitution and suffering to the mountains, and her whole territory the marching and battle ground of armies fighting with a fierceness unknown to ordinary war, while regiments of negroes would introduce horrors beyond those of savage tribes; and in the midst of all this ruin and carnage, the gentlemen of cotton bales and rice swamps busy in watching their own slaves could smile to recollect the credulous facility with which Kentucky poured out her life blood not for any wrongs or injuries, but simply from a mistaken spirit of chivalry–to accomplish no other purpose but to render a few politicians conspicuous as leaders in the Southern Confederacy–to saddle herself with oppressive taxes and a standing army–to maintain a military cordon all along the river border (to retain her slaves)-to loose free commerce with the North–to sink her citizens from their present rank as representatives of the great American Republic into members of a slave trading Southern confederacy, without a fleet and without standing abroad–to live on the frontier of an aggressive confederacy and sustain the shock of war with a foe vastly surpassing herself in numbers. Crippled, impoverished, ruined, demoralized, the Kentucky of the next ten years, if the policy of the Disunionists prevails, will be but the skeleton of her former self. Poverty desolation and mourning will fill her limits, and her present proud and prosperous position may never be regained.

Let us ­turn from this horrid vision–we cannot believe until we see it that Kentucky will be untrue to her character–that without one solitary motive or one object to be gained–she will be false to all her pledges to the Union by which she is in honor bound. No, we trust that old Kentucky will yet rebuke this incipient treason and stand up as the banner state–the defender of the constitution and the Union, and we call upon you, we, the many thousands who have confided in your patriotism and ability, call upon you now to uphold the honor of Kentucky and represent fairly and nobly before the world her firmness and fidelity to principle in the hour of trial.