Secession Era Editorials Project

Southern Sentiments and the Nebraska Humbug.

New Orleans, Louisiana, Bee [Whig]

(24 May 1854)

We verily believe that if the struggle on the Nebraska bill could be continued two or three months longer, the real sentiment of the Southern people would become so unmistakably known that most of their representatives would drop the demagoguical abortion as a thing not fit to be touched. We find, by looking over our Southern exchanges, that the opposition to this scheme of Senator Douglas, to enable him to reach the Presidency, small ans comparatively unimportant at the commencement, is spreading and becoming more powerful day by day. Our people are beginning to appreciate the utter practical worthlessness of the project. They are beginning to see that the mere re-affirmation of an existing fact, was not called for by the exigencies of the times, or for the protection of any constitutional right they now enjoy. And they are also becoming acquainted with that other truth that the whole measure was originated by unscrupulous and designing politicians to promote their own advancement, careless of the effects it might produce upon the country. They care nothing about the convulsions which may follow if their own selfish, personal ends, are subserved.

Even in South Carolina the bill is regarded with disfavor. That ultra Southern Rights journal, the Charleston Evening News, in its issue of the 18th inst. says:

The Scenes in the House.-- We witness in the House of Representatives at Washington a disgraceful struggle, and that over a measure containing no constitutional principles, however it may ignore some, and involving directly no great interest. It claims to be neither anti slavery nor pro-slavery; yet it is as desperately fought over as if it were a vital issue between abolition and slavery. It is confessedly a measure of no positive or practical value to the South, and it is taken by it only for certain supposed negative advantages; yet our Representatives are exhibiting a heroism -- a heroism 'chivalrous and classic,' in its defence and support, surpassing even the effort of 1850, when our constitutional safeguards, and our rights as States and a section were broadly, ruthlessly and vitally destroyed.

What is the secret of this struggle? It is very simple, and is two-fold. The essential value of the Nebraska bill to politicians is, that it is a skillful specimen of that species of political non-committalism which has of late become so valuable in party contests and Presidential elections, yet subserves design in perpetrating substantial and systematic departures from the first principles of our republican organization. The next solution is, this plain truth, that the North, in the insolence of its anti-slavery supremacy, is not satisfied with the covert advantages it gains by the bill, but demands to have them more direct and unequivocal. It would have the pleasure of kicking and humiliating the South openly while the latter is imploring to be kicked only sub rosa. This may be classic, but we doubt as to the chivalrous.

We have all along wished that the Southern press would speak out more fully on this subject. With the exception of the a very few leading organs that invariably echo any key-note that may be rounded at Washington, there has been no general discussion. Neither the people nor the press appeared to care anything about it. This universal indifference accounts for the ignoring of discussion.-- Should the bill be defeated, there will be no regrets expressed by the the Southern people, and should it be carried, a similar state of feeling will exist. None but the trading politicians are interested; and, thus far, their appeals have produced no agitation among the masses.

When such able and patriot statesmen such as Bell, Hunt, Cullom, Harris,Houston, and others, oppose a measure of this kind, the inference is fairly legitimate that it contemplates no practical good, immediate or contingent, remote or otherwise, to the South. In fact it can do none, no matter in what light it may be viewed.

All the effect it has had, or is likely to have, is to furnish the enemies of the South and the Union -- the Abolitionists of the North -- with fresh weapons wherewith to continue a remorseless war upon both! Even now they are boasting that if the bill becomes a law they will elect William H.. Seward President of the United States in 1856. We have no idea this can be done; but there is no doubt the agitation thus far has immensely strengthened him in the North. This mere fact should not be without influence upon the action of Southerners.