January 7, 1861. |
 |
| Edwin D. Morgan. |
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of their politicians that secession would be peaceful, and that there would be no war.1
At that time a notorious character named Fernando Wood was Mayor of the City of New York.
He was a special favorite of the worst elements of society in that cosmopolitan city, and sympathized with the conspirators against the Republic, during the civil war that ensued.
Four days before
the Legislature of the State passed its patriotic resolutions, this disloyal man sent a message to the Common Council of the city, in which he mentioned the advantages which the people might secure by following the example of those of South Carolina in revolutionary measures.
“Why should not New York City,” he said, “instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two-thirds the expenses of the United States, become also equally independent?
As a free city, with but a nominal duty on imports, her local government could be supported without taxation upon her people.
Thus we could live free from taxes, and have cheap goods, nearly duty free.
In this she would have the whole and united support of the Southern States, as well as of all other States, to whose interests and rights, under the Constitution,
she has always been true.
If the Confederacy is broken up,” he continued, “the Government is dissolved; and it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.
When disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master — to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce, taken away the power of self-government, and destroyed the confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City?
Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York, as a free city, may shed the only light and hope for a future reconstruction of our blessed confederacy.”
2 His own treasonable words seemed to have startled him,
1 See Toombs's counter-resolution in the Georgia Convention. The Legislature of Virginia, on the 17th of January, ordered the resolutions to be returned to Governor Morgan.
2 One of the favorite writers for De, Boo's Review (already mentioned as the most stately and pretentious of the periodical publications in the Slave-labor States), and who was a leader of the peculiar “Virginia aristocracy” based on the ownership of slaves, pronounced this proposition, “the most brilliant that these eventful times have given birth to,” and then proceeded in the following style, characteristic of the writers and speakers of his class at that time, to give his views on the subject:--
“Should New York fail to erect herself into a free port and separate republic; should she remain under the dominion of the corrupt, venal wire-workers of Albany, and of the immoral, infidel, agrarian, free-love Democracy of western New York; should she put herself under the rule of Puritans, the vilest, most selfish, and unprincipled of the human race; should she join a northern confederacy; should she make New England, western New York, northern Ohio, northern Indiana, or northern Illinois her masters; should she make enemies of her Southern friends, and deliver herself up to the tender mercies of her Northern enemies, she will sink to rise no more. Better, a thousand times better, to come under the dominion of free negroes, of gipsies, than of Yankees, or low Germans, or Canadians. Gipsies and free negroes have many amiable, noble, and generous traits; Yankees, sour-krout Germans, and Canadians none. Senator Wade says, and Seward too, that the North will absorb Canada. They are half true; the vile, sensual, animal, brutal, infidel, superstitious democracy of Canada and the Yankee States will coalesce; and Senator Johnson of Tennessee will join them. But when Canada, and western New York, and New England, and the whole beastly, puritanic, ‘sour-krout,’ free negro, infidel, superstitious, licentious, democratic population of the North become the masters of New York — what then? Outside of the city, the State of New York is Yankee and puritanical; composed of as base, unprincipled, superstitious, licentious, and agrarian and anarchical population as any on earth. Nay, we do not hesitate to say, it is the vilest population on earth. If the city does not secede, and erect a separate republic, this population, aided by the ignorant, base, brutal, sensual German infidels of the northwest, the stupid democracy of Canada (for Canada will, in some way, coalesce with the North), and the arrogant and tyrannical people of New England will become masters of the destinies of New York. They hate her for her sympathies with the South, and will so legislate as to divert all her western trade to outlets through Chicago, the St. Lawrence, Portland, and Boston. She will then be cut off from her trade North and South. In fine, she must set up for herself or be ruined.” --George Fitzhugh in De Bow's Review for February, 1861.
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