CHARLESTON MERCURY


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Charleston Mercury

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a recent case, has, by a decision of seven to two of the Judges, established as law what our Southern statesmen have been repeating daily for many years on the floors of Congress, that the whole action of this Government on the subject of slavery, for more than a quarter of a century, from the initiation of the Missouri Restriction in 1822, to the California Compromise in 1850, has been all beyond the limits of the Constitution; was without justifiable authority; and that the whole mass should be now proclaimed null and void, and that slavery is guaranteed by the constitutional compact.
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Charleston Mercury

The tea has been thrown overboard. The revolution of 1860 has been initiated.
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Many Southern Rebels saw themselves as patriots and secession as akin to the Boston Tea Party—the start of a revolution.

Charleston Mercury

The Union can be saved by an amendment to the Constitution, which will secure the rights of the South. The Union can be saved by giving the South an equal share of the common domain, and by restoring fugitive slaves to their owners. The South has no compromises to offer.
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This editorial reflected majority Southern political positions of the time. There was never going to be any compromise by ending or curtailing slavery in any way. Amongst the abolitionists, there was an equally rigid view towards compromise. Many Northerners felt that the anti-slavery Americans had been compromising for half a century and slavery was a larger institution that it ever was. They wanted no further compromise. The South had never budged from its original position at the founding of the nation. Historically, it was just a matter of time before there would be a showdown politically and probably militarily. The explosion took 10 more years.

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Charleston Mercury
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Biography

The Charleston Mercury was a secessionist newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, founded by Henry L. Pinckney in 1819. He was its sole editor for fifteen years. It ceased publication with the Union Army occupation of Charleston. After the American Civil War, publication resumed in November 1866 before the paper closed permanently two years later in 1868.