Chicago Daily Tribune, January 19, 1861

We owe it to the people of the North, as public journalists, to warn them that they are about to be betrayed and sold out. The course pursued by the South is slowly but surely doing its intended work. The enactment of secession ordinances by two or three more States; the seizure of a few more forts, arsenals and munitions of war; the confiscation of additional cargoes of powder and provisions belonging to private citizens; the maltreating and murdering of yet other men of Northern origin; of some more who voted for Lincoln, or who, not doing so, believe his election is not sufficient cause for secession; the firing a few times more upon our national flag, and the utterance of a few more treasonable speeches in the Senate of the United States—and the flunkies and the doughfaces and the cowards of the North will be upon their knees, begging for terms. It is impossible to be mistaken in this matter. On all sides the indications thicken of an ignominious surrender. The Northern Democracy are everywhere caving in. In their County and State Conventions they express a willingness to give up every one of their heretofore cherished principles, to submit to every possible outrage that traitors may choose to inflict; and they more than intimate, unless the whole North surrenders, they will turn their guns upon those who object. In these positions they are joined by the timid, conservative men of all parties—by men of capital and by men intent upon the profits of trade—by men who own ships and manufactories and merchandise—by men who put a market price upon principles, and who count ease and personal safety of more value than honor and patriotism. While the former are holding their conventions for the undisguised purpose of giving aid and comfort to men who are in arms against their own country, the latter are equally active in getting up and circulating petitions to their representatives in Congress, imploring them to dishonor their country, their section, their principles, and their manhood, by voting for some ignomin[i]ous compromise. There was a time when both classes had only brave and defiant words for traitors and rebels. When Douglas, in his Norfolk speech, declared that treason must be put down and the laws of the country enforced by the whole power of the Nation, if necessary, the Democracy of the North with one voice echoed and applauded his words. But that was before the traitors had shown their teeth—before they had fired upon the national flag, seized the national property within their respective States, and defied the Federal Government. It would seem that the threats were intended only for small traitors or traitors in posse—not to treason on a large scale, or to traitors in esse. For the former an avenging arm and a terrible retribution—for the latter, words of kindness and conciliation and measures of concession only.

Has all manhood clean gone out of the North? Are all the steadfastness of purpose and all the courage of the country in the possession of those who are in arms against the government? Have we sunk so low that we hasten to swallow every brave word we may have uttered, the moment danger appears in view? If so, then it matters not what may come, we cannot be dishonored.

And now, if there is not enough of manliness and of principle left at the North to meet this crisis, let the consequences be what they may, without surrender, then let us beg of the South not to be modest in their terms. If whenever a demand is made in behalf of Slavery, Freedom is to [be] betrayed by its professed adherents, in God's name let every remaining vestige of liberty be given up at once. Why stop with recognizing property in man—with incorporating a Slave code into the Federal Constitution—with paying the South in money for all its fugacious chattels? Such an adjustment would give but brief satisfaction to a section that never fails to get what it demands; and in a few years the country would be called upon to pass through another crisis, to be settled by the humiliation of the North and the triumph of traitors. No: Let the South demand now all it may want for the next century, or, at least, until a better breed of men shall inhabit the North. Let us sound the lowest possible depths of depredation at once. A speedy descent to the lowest possible point may perchance be followed by an upward movement, but we should never recover from a degradation that is the work of generations, and so becomes ingrained in our very souls. In pity then, let the South complete the work now. Let her add to the other demands the re-opening of the African slave trade—that our outward bound ships shall go freighted with cotton, and no vessel shall enter our ports that does not bring a full cargo of slaves—that capital, everywhere, shall own its labor, that no distinction shall hereafter be made, in law, between the laborers of the South and the labor[er]s of the North—that the distinction of free and slave States shall be forever abolished, and that slavery shall be alike lawful in every State, and the slaveholder's rights of property be protected in every land and on every sea. Let the South increase her demands to this extent while she is about it—and our word for it, the same men at the North who are in favor of conceding to her present demands, will be equally clamorous for the balance.

There is yet a single hope for freedom in this crisis, but that hope does not rest on the North. If the South Carolinians would only make a determined assault upon Fort Sumpter, level its walls to the sea, and slaughter its gallant commander and all his men—then perhaps the North would arise in vindication of the Constitution and laws, and teach the South that this country and government were not made wholly for slaveholders. That is now almost our only hope.