]
Other distinguished speakers expressed themselves in similar
terms--varying somewhat in their estimate of the propriety of the
secession of the Southern States, but all agreeing in emphatic and
unqualified reprobation of the idea of coercion. A series of
conciliatory resolutions was adopted, one of which declares that "civil
war will not restore the Union, but will defeat for ever its
reconstruction."
At a still later period--some time in the month of February--the "Free
Press," a leading paper in Detroit, had the following:
"If there shall not be a change in the present seeming purpose
to yield to no accommodation of the national difficulties, and
if troops shall be raised in the North to march against the
people of the South, _a fire in the rear will be opened upon
such troops_, which will either stop their march altogether or
wonderfully accelerate it."
The "Union," of Bangor, Maine, spoke no less decidedly to the same
effect:
"The difficulties between the North and the South must be
compromised, or the separation of the States _shall be
peaceable_. If the Republican party refuse to go the full length
of the Crittenden amendment--_which is the very least the South
can or ought to take_--then, here in Maine, not a Democrat will
be found who will raise his arm against his brethren of the
South. From one end of the State to the other let the cry of the
Democracy be, Compromise or Peaceable Separation!"
That these were not expressions of isolated or exceptional sentiment is
evident from the fact that they were copied with approval by other
Northern journals.
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