Albany Atlas and Argus, November 22, 1860

A portion of the Abolition press, recognising the seriousness, if not the gravity of the Southern movement for secession, proposes that the discontented States shall go in peace, and speculates upon the comparative resources of a Northern and [a] Southern Confederacy. They draw the assumed line of division to suit their fancies, and assume that the future of the North is to be the combination of that unrivalled prosperity, which, for a century, has blessed it with wealth and advancement beyond all other portions of the world. They forget first, how much the prosperity of the North has been gathered in Southern markets, and how necessary to it has been the unrestrained freedom of trade between the States of the Confederacy.

But they are blind to the fact that the secession of any considerable number of Southern States, is not merely a Division, but the Dissolution of the Confederacy. A single geographical line will not be run East and West, so as to form those two Confederacies of mutual hate, which philanthropists dream of as the successors of our present system. So sure as a Confederacy of the Cotton States is formed and maintained, the border States of the South will be drawn into it. The Pacific States will secede. California, Washington and Oregon will have every motive of interest to establish free trade with the world, and will feel no obligation of loyalty to a broken and dishonored Confederacy sufficient to make them tributaries to those Northern Atlantic States, which, under our present system, enjoy the monopoly of their markets. The gold of California will open all the ports of the world and is even a greater Potentate than Cotton, which is proclaimed King. Geographical position, independence of resources, character of population, interest and feeling will all combine to withdraw the Pacific States from an alliance with either a Northern or a Southern Confederacy. They will set up for themselves—throw open their markets to a competition that will virtually exclude our commerce and manufactures, and commence a career which will draw to them the emigration and capital that now enrich us.

The Northern Confederacy will then embrace only the States on this side of the great Plains; but its form and policy will have to undergo essential modifications, before it can even commence its new career. New York and the producing States of the West will not consent to live under a tariff devised for the benefit of New England and Pennsylvania. Such a tariff, spread over a wide Confederacy, and embracing millions of consumers, may be little felt in the midst of prosperity such as ours, and it is, besides, compensated by other advantages; but with the South and the West, not only cut off, but erected into rival sovereignties under the banner of free trade, it would be fatally oppressive. You might as well place the Neversink Highland across its harbor, as permit the barrier of a tariff like the present, under such circumstances, to block up the port of New York. That restrictive system, under which commerce would be paralysed, would not last a year, and no Northern Confederacy, though it were unanimous, could enforce it against the people of New York city, even if they stood alone. But they would not stand alone. The Western States would unite in demanding freedom of trade; and the day this voice prevailed would be that of the bankruptcy and industrial desolation of New England and Pennsylvania.

The iron and the coal of the latter State would find no market; the mills and manufactories of New England would stop, and the cold and hardened egotism of her people would have to find support from the granite and ice which alone are her natural exports.

We invite no such results. We have labored to avert them. But if the catastrophe of a Separation of the Union is to take place, the Dissolution that will follow will be a matter of self-preservation for our own State. We owe no allegiance to a Northern Confederacy—can take no pride in one, have no interest in one. We cannot hang crucified between New England and Pennsylvania. Our future will be apart from them, in rivalry to them. Our alliances will be with the producing States of the West. If we can force a system of free trade between the seperated Confederacies and States, as well as with Europe, we will maintain, in part at least, the supremacy of New York. So far as we fail in this, will we recede in position and prospects.

Those who are calculating the value of a Northern Confederacy, must take these considerations and consequences into the calculation. They must consider also whether New York will consent to an equality of representation in the Senate (if there is to be a Senate,) with the petty New England States. Will these States which talk so much about freedom and equality, ask for such a disproportionate representation? If they do, we shall tell them that the motive for once granting it, when it was necessary to secure the blessings of Union, has ceased, now that their egotism and intolerance have brought about the curse of disunion.

In bringing about this competition of rival Confederacies, each finding its final interest and necessity in breaking the chains of Commercial restriction, the party of Freedom will unconsciously have achieved something for Freedom. They will have struck off the chains from trade, and united us in a brotherhood of mutual dependency with each other and with the world. They will not have extinguished Southern Slavery in the blood of insurrection; but they will have emancipated Northern labor and business in the ruin and destruction of Northern capital and manufactures. True, the destruction of all political interest, the repudiation of state debts, the depreciation of paper currency, the extinction of capital will mark the change and constitute the penalty of our folly and the price of such liberty as we may rescue out of our ruin. But others have paid the same penalty before us, and we have shut our eyes blindly to the instruction which they have left in history. We must open them to the experiences of stern reality.

The picture is a gloomy one; but we give it in these colors, that the wicked and besotted speculators, who propose to build a Northern Confederacy upon the ruins of our present government, may realize its true character. There can be no such thing as a Northern and a Southern Confederacy. The moment the Union is broken, Allegiance ceases to be a duty; patriotism centres in the obligation of the community to the State in which it lives. The Constitution which was framed for the Carolinas and Virginia as well as New York and Massachusetts, and adjusted to their conflicting interests, becomes so much waste paper. Not one of the fragments of the Confederation would adopt a system of Union, which in the midst of peace, prosperity and civilization was turned into an instrument of disunion.

We hope we may be spared the calamities which will follow this final catastrophe, by the postponement of the day of evil, or by escape through some avenue which is not yet revealed to us. We pray for such an escape, not because merely of the material evils that would befal our people, but on account of the shame and humiliation that would rest upon our name; on account of the disillusion of patriotism, the despair of the expectant people of other lands, the triumph o£ the enemies of liberty and the Apostle of Absolutism, pointing to our failure and fall.

We repeat, in answer to those whose delusive speculations about a Northern Confederacy have forced us to confront them with these painful truths, that the separation of the States is the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the obliteration of the Constitution. It is the end of this government; and the beginning of an Era, the character of which no human eye can discern, but of which, we know with certainty, that a long period of Chaos must precede the Construction of Order.