Virginia Statesman

The Crisis. No one of our readers, who places any value upon the political institutions under which we live, has forgotten the Address of Mr. Senator Rowan, which we copied from a late Kentucky paper—the contemporaneous movements of the malcontents in South Carolina. In the subjoined article from the Richmond Whig, we find a singular confirmation of the suggestions contained in the Letter to Mr. Rowan. It is not only a singular, but an awful coincidence of language from different points. We should like to hear what opinions other eminent men, admitted behind the curtain during the last Session of Congress, have disclosed to their friends on their return home. When we speak of eminent men, we do not speak of able and prominent men merely. We do not, for instance, speak of Mr. Van Buren in this case: he had too much to lose by any attempt at revolution to be trusted with such a secret as this, if such a project was for a moment entertained, as a disturbance of the Union. To be suspected of being connected with such a scheme would extinguish him forever, as surely as Aaron Burr was extinguished by the development of his scheme. But we should like to know what has been said by others, whom we will not designate by name, but by any others. It becomes highly important that this matter should be sifted to the bottom, and that every one who has any information on the subject should contribute his mite. It is important to know how the Union is to be dissolved. Is it by rallying troops around some military leader, and marching over the land, putting down the government and laws, as Caesar did in the Republic of old, at the point of the bayonet? If so, where is the Caesar? Is it by refusing to pay duties, and resisting the decrees of the Judges and the process of the Marshals of the United States—declaring the ports of the resisting States free, and proclaiming their independence of the Union! This latter course is actually proposed at a Public Meeting in South Carolina, and broadly (and we will say boldly) advocated by leading writers in the paper which is the organ of the Opposition in Charleston: and we are not allowed to doubt what the object of these persons is. That all the Jackson party are engaged in this lamentable more than alarming project we do not pretend to suggest, or even to insinuate. But there are many who are—active, daring, and aspiring spirits, tired of the dull pursuits of civil life; and panting for a field in which to display their powers of action. Though not dangerous from their power, they are so in their purpose. Be it wanton or wilful: and it becomes a solemn duty to hold up to public odium their machinations against the Government by which they have been so long petted as well as protected.

Van. Int.

The Union.—The Hon. Andrew Stevenson, some two or three weeks ago, publicly expressed an opinion that the Union would be dissolved. In Kentucky, Mr. Senator Rowan has expressed the same opinion. Why this opinion entertained? From what circumstance, or number of circumstances, is it derived? Why is the defeat of General Jackson to dissolve the Union, when that effect was not produced by the defeat of other Presidential candidates at former elections! We do not answer for Mr. Rowan, but we are sure Mr. Stevenson meant no harm than to express an opinion, and an opinion which we trust and believe he felt grieved to entertain. We are satisfied that he intended to convey no such impression. But how comes it that he should hold an opinion so inconsistent with the historic experience of the country? How comes it that he and Mr. Rowan, Jackson men, and we believe inmates of the same house during the late session of Congress, should, at distant geographical points, avow the same extraordinary opinion? We can give the answer. The subject of disunion was familiarly canvassed by the Jackson leaders at Washington. Many of them declared themselves, as a Judge of the General Court of Virginia did at Norfolk, that if Mr. Adams was not put out by the voice of the People they would be willing to put him out by force. Put these circumstances and the movements in South Carolina together—and the serious and observing reader will see too much reason to think with us—that the Union of these States hangs by a single hair. Were we not solemnly persuaded of this truth, we are the last who would so much as mention disunion. We know the disastrous effect of discussing such a topic—that it has a tendency to hasten the deprecated mischief. But when we see such proceedings as those in South Carolina—when we hear of high functionaries in the very Capital of Virginia, recommending disunion—when we know there is a purpose to attempt it, unless a particular man is elected to the Presidency, we should be traitors to our patriotism, traitors to the duty of our station, and to our country, if we did not sound the alarm. As sure as the Sun is in the Heavens, there is an organized design to dismember this Union—a design connected with the Presidential election, to which the Tariff is the stalking horse—a design embraced by men of high station and trust. We are no alarmists. We have individually nothing to lose, and every chance of gaining by such an event. If we were capable of placing our safety before our country, we would say, let it come. Satisfied of the truth of what we affirm in our minds, our purpose is to warn the country and the storm, when distant mutterings are already heard. Richmond Whig

From the Norfolk Herald

Yankees! Look to your hides, no well as your ears, in Igno county, Va., in celebration of American Independence, the following significant toast was given by Mr. D. J. Claiborne:

Old Hickory—excellent bark to tan Yankee hides! Verbum sat sapienti.

South Carolina. The most studied efforts are making to depreciate the importance of the revolutionary movements in South Carolina, and conceal them from the people of Virginia. That paper, which when the Hartford Convention threatened the existence of the Union in the North, thundered forth its deep and incessant execrations, now when a danger far more immediate and menacing, has displayed itself in the South, affects to consider it the result of 'hasty excitement,' and the ebullition of momentary passion: Others again call these movements the proceedings of boys. Is McDuffie a boy? Are the people of Colleton—nay the people of S. Carolina, justly described when they are called boys? Actuated by the alarm of injury to the cause of the hero by the proceedings of these, his chosen friends and supporters, these hypocrites cry out peace—peace! when there is no peace. Those extraordinary movements, which had they occurred at any other time, or in any other of the States than one devoted to Jackson, would have drawn down upon their actors, the full vengeance of the Enquirer, are for the contrary of these reasons, studiously blinked, affectedly underrated, and tenderly extenuated. Had Massachusetts declared she would openly resist a law of the United States—that unless at her demand, this law was repealed she would no longer adhere to the Union—had her people petitioned a call of the Legislature to organize resistance to the laws of the land, and professed their determination to prohibit the ingress into her limits of the products of the South—had her members of Congress, Orators, and public and private citizens, showered upon the people of the South, insults, execrations and menaces—what then had the most disinterested Enquirer said? Had Mr. Webster at Boston, like Mr. McDuffie at Columbia, openly threatened resistance to the Union and counselled the people not to submit to its laws—what language of denunciation in that case, had we heard from that hypocritical print? But mutatis mutandis McDuffie is for Jackson and so is South Carolina. This is the elevated and patriotic consideration, which excites his audacious and seditious speech from the columns of the Enquirer—this is the holy feeling that excuses South Carolina from the chastisement of the Enquirer. If the treasonable language and seditious conduct of the people of that State were exposed and reprobated as they deserved, it might have a tendency to alarm the people as to the affections of the Jackson leaders towards the Union. Silence therefore, and extenuation are the better policy. We have said above, that the danger to the Union from S. Carolina, is more immediate and more menacing than that from the Hartford Convention. The Convention nor its constituents never did avow a purpose of dissolving the Union. They never did say, to the Congress of the U. States, as S. Carolina has said and is now saying, repeal a law you have solemnly enacted, or we will dissolve the Union. We are no apologists for the Hartford convention—that body of men stink now, ever have stunk, and ever will stink in our nostrils. But we will never consent to make fish of one and fowl of another. We never consent to call that 'misguided patriotism' and 'hasty resentment,' and other emollient names, happening on this side Mason and Dixon's line, which happening north of the Hudson, has been called flat treason. Treason it is, morally and essentially. Treason it is in every thing but the overt act, which they profess their determination speedily to commit. When a state or the people of a state, say that they will not obey the laws of the land but will openly resist them, the treason is in their hearts, and equally to be detested, though not punished, as if the parricidal hand had already been lifted. But a city on a hill is not to be hidden. The Enquirer may stifle, apologize, extenuate—but the people of Virginia will know, and know how to appreciate, both the movements in S. Carolina, and its own Jesuitical course in relation to them. Already are they sensible of their menacing character, and the celebration of the late Anniversary, give them the opportunity of denouncing them from one end of the State to the other—an opportunity which they did not neglect.

The Charleston Courier, of the 7th inst. brought us the following additional proceedings of the people of Colleton District. We invite particular attention to them.

Meeting in St. John's, Colleton Parish.

An unusually large and respectable number of the inhabitants of St. John's, Colleton Parish, convened, on the 1st inst., at the Parish house, Rockville, for the purpose of taking into consideration what measures may be adopted by this State, to prevent the ruinous tendency of the existing tariffs to its interests. Captain Benjamin Bailey being called to the Chair, and Joseph E. Jenkins appointed Secretary: the Meeting was addressed in an eloquent and impressive manner, by the Hon. W. B. Seabrook, who thereafter submitted the following resolutions, which were seconded by William Seabrook, sen. Esq. and adopted by the assembly unanimously, not a dissenting voice being heard.

Resolved, That in the opinion of this Meeting the several Acts of the Congress of the United States for the encouragement of domestic manufactures, are destructive to the labor and capital of the Southern States, and ought not to be submitted to.

Resolved, That the allegiance of S. Carolina to the Union, should depend upon the unconditional repeal, by the present or next Congress, of the Tariff Laws of 1816, '18, '24, and '28, so far as they conflict with the constitutional rights of our citizens.

Resolved, That until the repeal of those laws shall take place, S. Carolina is bound by the immutable principles of self preservation, to impose a municipal Tax, amounting to prohibition, on such Northern manufactured goods as the Legislature may deem incompatible with the interest of the people to consume.

Resolved, That the Governor be requested to convene the Legislature immediately, to adopt such measures as the exigency of the crisis demands.

The following persons were appointed by the chair a Committee to communicate with his Excellency—to wit: Hon. W. B. Seabrook, Capt. Wm. Seabrook, Capt. Joseph Seabrook, Capt. Jos. D. Jenkins, W. Sams, Esq. J. C. Mathews, Esq. and Capt. J. R. Townsend.

We ask all readers who remember that period in our history, to compare the language and resolutions of these proceedings with those of the Hartford Convention. We ask every honest man to say, if this language had been held in New England, what would the Enquirer have said to it? We ask of Americans if degrees of latitude are to change the character of offences, and of that resistance of the laws of the Union, is to be excused on this side the Potomac, which would have been angrily rebuked and readily punished had it happened on the other.

Will any man after reading these new proceedings in Colleton palliate, and affect to consider them as mere trifles?—Does not every one see that these people are resolved to dismember the Union by demanding impossible conditions?