Long accustomed to incendiary resolutions of
Pro-Slavery political platforms, as embodying the creed of Southern men;
committed by those declarations to the most extreme action when, in
their judgment, the necessity should arise; and worked up during the
Presidential campaign by swarming Federal officials inspired by the
fanatical Secession leaders; the entire South only needed the spark from
the treasonable torch of South Carolina, to find itself ablaze, almost
from one end to the other, with the flames of revolt.
Governor after Governor, in State after State, issued proclamation after
proclamation, calling together their respective Legislatures, to
consider the situation and whether their respective States should join
South Carolina in seceding from the Union. Kentucky alone, of them all,
seemed for a time to keep cool, and look calmly and reasonably through
the Southern ferment to the horrors beyond. In an address issued by
Governor Magoffin of that State, to the people, he said:
"To South Carolina and such other States as may wish to secede from the
Union, I would say: The geography of this Country will not admit of a
division; the mouth and sources of the Mississippi River cannot be
separated without the horrors of Civil War. We cannot sustain you in
this movement merely on account of the election of Mr. Lincoln. Do not
precipitate by premature action into a revolution or Civil War, the
consequences of which will be most frightful to all of us.
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