New Albany Daily Ledger, November 21, 1860

Everybody nowadays is talking about Disunion, Secession, a Southern Confederacy, a Northern Confederacy, and similar subjects, and we do not know why we should form an exception. It is true it is a disagreeable subject for newspaper discussion, and one on which the patriot can only speak with regret. But the question is upon us; it will not down at our bidding, and we ought to look it square in the face. Indeed, the people of the North ought to have done that before they elected Lincoln. But they did not; they shirked it; they avoided it; and when it was presented to them, they turned their ears and their eyes away. This will answer the purpose no longer, however. Turn their eyes and ears whichever way they may the Disunion monster is ever present.

Men talk of a Northern and a Southern Confederacy—the one embracing all the "free" and the other all the "slave" States. There may be Disunion, but if that unhappy day should ever come, it would not see the country divided into two but a half dozen Confederacies. We do not believe all the slave States would agree upon terms of union satisfactory to all: most certainly all the free States would not join in a common Confederacy. In the event of a breaking up of the Union, it is not at all probable that the Pacific States would link their destinies to either of the fragments. Beyond all question the States of California and Oregon, with the Territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Washington, with the Arizona region, would soon set up for themselves, believing that they possessed within themselves all the elements of national greatness, with room for expansion both to the North and the South.

Coming to our own section of the country, what would be our destiny? If, through the madness of fanaticism, the present Union, which has brought to us and to all so many blessings, is dismembered, is it probable that we of Indiana would unite with those who have brought about the great disaster? We certainly could not unite with South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama; neither could we unite with the fanatical, abolitionized, canting, hypocritical New England States, the authors of nearly all the evils which have befallen the country since the year 1837, when her people began to pour their abolition petitions in upon Congress, in order that they might be read, printed, referred, reported upon, discussed, and the subject thus be kept constantly before the countryfanning the flames of fanaticism in one section and producing uneasiness and irritation in the other. We do not believe the people of the West would consent for a moment to be tied on to New England, to be taxed to death with protective tariffs for the benefit of Eastern manufacturers, who would thus hope to find here that market for their goods which they had lost in the South. We think we may safely say that if, through the madness of the abolition fanatics of New England, the present Union is broken up, the people of the Southern half of Indiana (and we hope the Northern half also) would protest most vigorously and most earnestly before they would consent to the aggrandizement of the authors of our ills, by entering into a union with, and being compelled to pay tribute to, them.

There is a great and fertile and prosperous region of country, embracing Kentucky, Missouri, and a large portion of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, whose people are not to any considerable extent affected by the ultraism of either of the extremes, who would, in the event of the convulsion of the Republic, be drawn together by the ties of commerce, neighborhood, and general coincidence of views and interests. Whose friendship is worth most to the people of Southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—that of our neighbors, between whom and us there is a community of interest and of feeling, or that of far-off, puritanical New England, whose citizens regard the West and the South as a fair field for the exercise of their Yankee trickery and cunning?

This is, a painful and a most disagreeable subject, and one from which we would gladly turn. But we cannot. It is forced upon us, and it is time that we should look around and ascertain where we stand or where we are to fall. If the Union remains as it is—and heaven grant that it may!—it will only be, we are convinced, after some definite understanding is arrived at as to the relative rights and duties of the two sections. If only calm and considerate and conservative men were to be consulted on either side, we think there would be little difficulty in arranging the preliminaries of such an understanding. But if the matter is given over to the keeping of such men as Seward and Hale and Giddings and Julian on the one side, and Yancey and Rhett and Davis and Toombs on the other, for what can we hope? Is there any reasonable ground for hope? Alas! we fear not.