Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/South and North
Boston: Saturday Evening, June 7, 1856.
South and North.
As the Frenchman said when informed, in a corner where he was waiting, that his wife made him the happy present of three children at a birth, we must put a stop to this business. The bellicose tone of the newspapers, North and South, is frightful. Spiteful words are hurled about, regardless of the damage they may do, as the leaden bullets were fired at Bunker Hill, and it would seem at this precise moment that the evil genius of our country were standing, axe in hand, ready to cut the line that holds the two sections together, and let the whole fabric fall into eternal smash. In this case we say, stand back, or, let both parties hit the evil genius that would work the ruin right between the eyes, and not like two lubberly school boys stand glowering at each other, with malice and hatred flashing from their eyes, and fists doubled up, ready to pitch into each other. Because a cowardly bully knocks down a Northern man, and the whole press of the South commend him for it, it may not be from a real sentiment that he has done right, but from a bravado that, springing out of antagonism with the North, leads to an expression of approval that, if coolness were the order of the day, might be condemnatory.
There is no reason why we should quarrel with the South about their institutions any more than that the South should quarrel with us about ours. And we are really not disposed to. The muss is with the South itself, which, fancying every Northern man an abolitionist in disguise, with a Guy Faux keg of Union-destroying gunpowder under his arm, distrusts everything north of that line of Messrs. Mason and Dixon that divides Maryland from Pennsylvania.
Our friends, the Northern politicians, of the Southern sympathising stamp, have done much to encourage this idea, by favoring the impression, through ignorance or wilfulness, that thonest repugnance to slavery and regret at its existence, with the wish that it should be confined to constitutional bounds, is the same as the fanatical opposition that proclaims, as they say, the Constitution to be a compact with what’s-his-name, and considerable more, which is untrue entirely. Having done their best in fanning up so interesting a feeling as is now evidently existing, they wring their hands at any honest outburst of feeling that threatens to retaliate for wrongs resulting from their insidious working—far more effective than what the warmest of the abolitionists do themselves—and frantically cry treason, and ask people if they know they are endangering the Union by the course they are pursuing! But the North cannot do without the South nor the South without the North. The Union is made, and what God has joined together let not man put asunder. The free love temporizing with the bond will not go down with the people, and fanatics, North and South, cannot dissever it. The Kansas trouble will be adjusted, as soon as “border ruffianism” can be made amenable to law and Kansas emigrants come under the same rule, for we believe that even in Kansas there are two sides of the story, and that perfection does not belong even to the emigrants—though that gross wrong has been done them there is no doubt. Affairs in Kansas should not endanger the Union, for Kansas itself will yet be a part of that Union.
If the politicians can be killed off, the trouble will be all over, and we recommend as an offering to our institutions that a holocaust be made of such on the altar of the Union.
