Article Title

A Caution.

Authors

Newspaper Title

Times-Picayune

Publication Date

10-9-1859

Publication Place

New Orleans, Louisiana

Event Topic

John Brown

Political Party

Democratic

Region

slave state

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Quote

These journals thus make themselves the agents, which abolitionism desires, for sending its tracts into the midst of the South, and, under professions of friendship, do the work of our deadliest foes.

Document Type

Article (Journal or Newsletter)

Full Text Transcription

The New York Herald some time sincepublished, as "A Key to the Harper's ferryOutbreak" -- a plan for the abolition ofslavery, which has been in circulation at theNorth. It is an incendiary paper of the mostinflammatory kind, proposing a league orassociation to be formed throughout thecountry, for the raising of means and levying oftroops to make private war on slavery withinthe States. The plan is minutely full, withall the details by which the slave populationis to be visited be emissaries, prepared forsedition and aided to revolt. It is accompaniedby an address to the non-slaveholdersof the South, calculating upon coöperationfrom them, and setting forth the various waysby which the slaves could be reached, themasters harassed and threatened, and thesecurity of slave property disturbed. It isan atrocious paper, such as would come underthe legal description of seditious and incendiary publications in any Southern State.The frantic folly of its anticipations, its utterignorance of the state of opinion and the conditionand disposition of the slaves, are noextenuation for the horrible wickedness ofthe temper in which it is conceived, or themalignant uses to which it might beput. Still, in all its details, its diabolicalplans, and the wild rhetoric with which itrecommends them, it is spread out in thecolumns of newspapers which profess to bezealous defenders of the South, and is madeto circulate wherever they go among theSouthern population.

These journals thus make themselves theagents, which abolitionism desires, for sendingits tracts into the midst of the South, and,under professions of friendship, do the workof our deadliest foes. It is not a littleremarkable, too, that some Southern papers, in theirhot haste to expose the enormity to whichNorthern fanaticism in willing to push itshatred to the South, fall into the sameerror of conduct, and actually help thecirculation throughout the South of the worstpublications of the worst abolitionism. Infact, since the outbreak at Harper's Ferry,there has been a flood of those documentspublished in the most headless manner, andcirculated with a strange want of reflectionupon their character. Abolitionism hassucceeded in these few weeks in penetrating intoall parts of the South, with papers that neverreached us before, and in quantities unheardof, until they were dispensed under suchpatronage.

We have endeavored to keep clear of asmuch of this irruption of seditious matter aswas consistent with a fair history of currentevents, which the Southern people ought tobe acquainted with. We have as muchconfidence as anybody in the contented temper ofour slave population, and the hopelessness ofany attempt to excite them into disorder,but we cannot agree that it is prudent to putthem thus, within such easy reach of thetempter, or to invite Abolitionism to try itsdiabolical inventions directly upon them.

This "plan," which is now spread out,in this open manner, to the gaze to theSouth, is no new thing to us. It wassent to this office anonymously, in the form of a circular, some time last summer.We read it with the conviction that it wasthe production of some dreamy enthusiast,who had become heated by fanatical teachingsinto a frenzy of hatred against the South,and believed himself called, by a divineinspiration, to administer on earth a higher lawthan that of the constitution and the Bible:"to steal," to "bear false witness against hisneighbor," and to do murder, and call it duty.We had no disposition to assist in giving currency to ideas so frantic, so sectional, sodiabolical, uttered in language disgustinglybrutal. We put it into the waste basket,never expecting to hear of it again, andnothing has surprised us more than to find it,floating around in the South, spread out infull, for the edification of every one that canread and find listeners.

Edited/Proofed by

Entered by James Cash. Proofed by Lloyd Benson

Identifier

latpjb591109a

Rights

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A Caution.

These journals thus make themselves the agents, which abolitionism desires, for sending its tracts into the midst of the South, and, under professions of friendship, do the work of our deadliest foes.