The Great Fact
South Carolina now has several States to share her fortunes and her peril. The movement for secession, at first like a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, has spread with a rapidity unparalleled in political agitation, and now involves the greater part of the entire South. Florida has formally terminated connection with the Union. So has Mississippi. Alabama has assumed ground which renders any other course than secession impossible. Georgia has pledged herself to the assertion of State sovereignty. Louisiana has defeated the co-operationists in their very stronghold, and may be pronounced a seceding State. From Texas come tidings of a degree of unanimity which leaves no room to doubt the future of the Lone Star State. There is no presumption, then, in setting down the seceding States as already numbering seven. For all the purposes of the argument, seven stars are even now blotted from the federal flag.
…And though the signs of quickened action in Maryland and North Carolina, and Tennessee and Kentucky, are less distinctly marked than those which are apparent throughout Virginia, there is not wanting evidence that in all of these States the secession element gains ground daily. But one thing is needed to rally them, with Arkansas and Missouri, around the standard of the Southern Confederacy; and that is an attempt on the part of the North, or of federal officers doing the bidding of the North, to enforce attachment to the Union by belching blood from the cannon’s mouth.
The great fact, then, admits not of misapprehension. Seven States virtually out of the Union. Other States treading the same track at a pace which adverse coercive effort will but hasten. And yet there are political moles and bats to whom this fact is not visible, and by whom this movement is altogether ignored!
But partisan blindness and fanatical hate afford no excuse for congressional indifference. The fact is before the country. The crisis approaches its height. The danger is at our doors. And nothing whatever has been done to meet circumstances which, though constitutional in form, are revolutionary in essence, and the consequences of which are almost altogether dependent upon the wisdom or the madness that shall prevail in high places. Congress may pass force resolutions if it pleases. It may threaten to its heart content.  But the movement will go on, augmenting in volume and velocity. Dame Partington, driving back the Atlantic with a mop, was as sagacious as the man or the party who would stay secession, and maintain the Union intact, by brandishing the sword of a lieutenant-general before the faces of the Southern people. With justice they had been satisfied. Denied justice, no power on earth can hold them in subjection.
What should be done? Plainly, one thing, and one only.
Recognize secession, as you would any other incontrovertible fact. Acknowledge that the Union is broken. And then seek to mitigate the misfortune which you have no longer power to avert.
Since secession is inevitable let care be taken to render it peaceful. One calamity is enough. Add not to the pains of disruption the horrors of civil war. Multiply not griefs by arraying in hostile attitudes sections of a people once united under a common government, and now severed only because the Union had become an instrument of sectional domination rather than a guarantee of State equality and freedom.
The allegation that Congress is impotent in the premises is not true. To the extent of preserving the Union as it was, Congress is indeed powerless. By no practicable compromise can it stay secession. But it may still do much, nevertheless.
What? Remove all likelihood of civil war by removing the causes of difference between the General Government and the seceding sovereign States. Abandon the idea of collecting revenue in communities which no longer owe to you allegiance. Withdraw your troops, which, whilst insufficient for the perpetuation of federal power, constitute a menace to which no spirited people will patiently submit. Surrender your forts in States that have cast off your authority, and that are entitled to all federal property within their borders, as in part a settlement of their claims upon the federal estate. And thus, not only put an end to prevailing apprehensions of desolation and bloodshed, but create guarantees of future friendly intercourse between neighboring confederacies.