The Southern Press

The absence of the senior editor of this paper, and the sickness of his colleague, for two months, must be the apology to our readers and correspondents, for any neglect or inadvertence they have experienced in reference to their letters or the selections. The latter have been confided to the clerk, who is not versed in Southern politics.

We publish to-day the letter of the Hon. James K. Paulding to the Southern Rights Association of South Carolina. It ought to have appeared several days ago, and would have appeared but for the circumstances above referred to. We endorse emphatically every word of this letter, and of the commentary by the Charleston Mercury. The South has acted in such a faltering and fratricidal manner as to sacrifice and prostrate almost every real friend she had in the North. Mr. Paulding stands almost solitary and alone in the constancy, ability, and courage with which he has supported the Constitution and the rights of the South—'faithful among the faithless.' His letter speaks for itself. It is one of the most able, cogent, lucid, elegant, and patriotic of all the productions to which the pending controversy has given birth. And we envy not the head or heart of the Southern submissionist, who can read it without a pang of remorse, or a blush of shame.