"Let Us Fight Like Men for Our Firesides"

From: bernhard1848@gmail.com

By refusing to compromise or discuss alternatives to secession with Southern legislators, and as President-elect endorse the cooling-off period Southern Unionists in North Carolina and the rest of the South desired, Lincoln drove a reluctant North Carolina and Virginia into the Southern Confederacy to protect their liberties in a more perfect union.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"


"Let Us Fight Like Men for Our Firesides"

"In [North Carolina] wrote [Jonathan] Worth, the Union sentiment was largely in the ascendant and gaining strength until Lincoln prostrated us. Congress having refused to pass the force bill [against South Carolina], we felt that the President could abandon Sumter and Pickens without any sacrifice of his principles, but in conformity with the Legislative will.  He induced the whole South so to believe.

The assurance of [Secretary of State William] Seward to Judge [and Supreme Court Justice John A.] Campbell seems to have been made with deliberate duplicity . . . He [Lincoln] did more than all the secessionists to break up the Union, but whether he did this, not being statesman enough to comprehend the effect of his measures; or whether his purpose was to drive all the slave States into rebellion, thinking he could bring against us men enough, with the aid of servile insurrection, to overthrow us and abolish Slavery, we are in doubt . . . I infer . . . that Lincoln's measures have united the North.  The[y] have certainly united North Carolina [for secession]."

"[Worth added a short time later that the] voice of reason is silenced.  Furious passion and thirst for blood consume the air . . . the very women and children are for war. I think the annals of the world furnish no instance of so groundless a war – but . . . let us fight like men for our own firesides."

(The Civil War and Reconstruction, J. G. Randall, D.C. Heath and Company, 1937, pp. 256-257)