Richmond Semi-weekly Examiner, November 9, 1860

It would seem that the sectional game has been fairly played out in the North. New York has gone for LINCOLN by a majority larger than she cast for FREMONT in 1856. Of the free States we see no reason to hope that the Black Republicans have lost more than two, and they amongst the smallest and weakest in political power—those on the Pacific. The solid, compact mass of free States has solemnly given its sanction and its political power to the anti-slavery policy of the Black Republicans.—The idle canvass prattle about Northern conservatism may now be dismissed. A party founded on the single sentiment, the exclusive feeling of hatred to African slavery, is now the controlling power in this Confederacy. Constitutional limitations on its powers are only such, in its creed, as its agents or itself shall recognize. It claims power for the Government which it will control, to construe the measure of its own authority, and to use the entire governmental power of this Confederacy to enforce its construction upon the people and States of this Union. No man can fail to see and know this who reads and understands what he reads. The fact is a great and a perilous truth. No clap trap about the Union, no details of private conversations of Northern men can alter it or weaken its force. It is here a present, living, mischievous fact. The Government of the Union is in the hands of the avowed enemies of one entire section. It is to be directed in hostility to the property of that section.

What is to be done, is the question that presses on every man, strive to put it out of view as he may. Every citizen will have to look the difficulty calmly in the face, seek to avoid it as he will. Every State will have to consider and act on it, or it will have to make a more painful and difficult decision, whether it will or no. The distinct and unavoidable issue will be made up for those who seek to shrink from it by those who are anxious to have the disposal of the whole matter. Any Southern State can now easily take such action as will force every State to decide whether she will see a Federal force subjugating a sovereign people, or look on at the sad spectacle of a dismembered Union or an impotent and maimed Government. Nor can any State complain that these difficult questions have been prematurely forced upon its people without full notice.

No man need now annoy people with idle speculations as to how this matter might have been avoided, or whether the position of certain States was unwisely taken or no. The real, perplexing, perilous matter is here. How is it to be disposed of? Are one, or two, or three States to settle this grave matter on which the peace and union of all is dependent? They have the unquestioned power and right to do it. They have sought counsel and conference. Their request for a free and full conference was answered by a declaration from Virginia, and other States, that there was just then no need of consultation. No such answer can be given now to the anxious people North and South. The Gulf States are not asking counsel. They have striven, under the Constitution, to avert an evil which they proclaimed in advance would drive them to seek, through powers of their own, held of their own right, and through no consent of others, a remedy against the dangers which they apprehend from the domination of the Black Republican party. They announced that they should consider the election of a Black Republican President, by a purely sectional vote, indisputable evidence to them that their rights and honor and interests would not be protected, but would be endangered and sacrificed by submission to the rule of such government.

Their decision was not kept back, to be sprung upon their sister States suddenly and without notice. All men in every quarter knew their position. It has been freely canvassed and unceremoniously handled on every hustings and in every paper in this land. What will the other slaveholding States do now? Will they stand idly by to suffer this momentous issue to be disposed of by others, and then come dragged into a melee forced on them by others? We warn the people that the right and power of a State to bring this issue on the country is no subject for speculation now. Men may call it rebellion, treason, or whatever opprobrious name their own folly and bad taste may dispose them to use. The fact remains that a sovereign community has the right and power to make its own decision as to whether it will or will not remain under a particular form of government. Other governments may have the power to fight this community about it, but it will be a power, not a right—a fight, and not a pacific settlement of the difficulty. Whichever party is successful, the Union is broken, the relations of the contending communities are changed. Civil disturbance must come from such a collision.

We ask the people of Virginia calmly to reflect on the condition of affairs. They cannot dispose of the difficulty by saying that they will not make the election of Lincoln a cause of dissolution: that they will wait for an overt act of oppression. That would do if they were the only parties to the controversy. But there are other parties who have an equal right to decide these questions for themselves that Virginia has for herself. And they will decide it; and in their decision Virginia has a deep interest. Let the collision come when it will, Virginia will be a party to it. All the powers on earth cannot prevent it. Neither the Federal nor the State Government can prevent the people of Virginia taking part in the contest. How will she act?

We call the attention of the people to it. And we ask them to consider the question deliberately and at once. Consideration and action by them this present exigency demands and will have. Will they seek consultation and a union with the Southern slaveholding States? Or do they intend to stand aloof until a decision shall be forced upon them by a contest which they sought neither to avert nor direct? Will they again refuse to take counsel with their sister States of the South, and suffer a great convulsion to come upon them when they shall be found listless and unprepared? There is no time for delay. Let them take counsel with themselves at least.