Hosea5.html

Robert Hosea to Abraham Lincoln, February 7, 1861

Page 5

They know that calmness and deliberation will not

answer their purpose, and have sought by precipitate

disunion and collision with the government to unite

the South against, what they term "Coercion," but

which law abiding men have generally understood

and I hope will so continue to think, as "enforcement

of the laws and abiding by the constitution."

The conspirators know full as well as you

and I that Republicans differ vastly from

the Abolitionists, but to acknowledge this would be

to ruin their cause in the eyes of their own followers.

Every planter knows he could not emigrate to any territory,

we now possess with his slaves with profit to himself,

they know that in the Union they have the best

guaranty for their slave property, they know that

disunion will bring them to all the horrors of a

St Domingo insurrection; their fears are aroused and

at the volcano beneath their feet, and the passions

of the mob are excited by the constant theme and

picture of northern aggression against slavery

held up before them. Thus in spite of intelligence of

many in the south, and who should know better, the conspir-

ators have seized the opportunity to "fire the southern heart"

as they express it, for such is the peculiar nature

inflammatory nature of the "peculiar institution," that

the slightest allusion to the danger losing their slaves

throws the mob into paroxysms of rage and fear.

Their hate has been artfully directed against the pop-

ulation of the north who are now classed as abolitionists.

7223