Washington — Apropos the January 6, 2021, insurrection, the following is a look-back at the insurrection of 1861. It is from the Civil War diary of our cousin, David Hunter Strother (also known as Porte Crayon), now several generations removed. But we are of like mind in our common observations of insurrectionists, then and now (emphasis added).
January-February, 1861
January-February, 1861
Martinsburg, Virginia — … South Carolina has actually seceded! and what of that? South Carolina is a great way off, and has been threatening Secession for thirty years or more. The Toryism of 1776 has never died out in South Carolina, nor have her gentry ever fully acquiesced in our republican form of government. It is high time the questions between her and the country were settled. I wish she had made up her mind to try conclusions with Andrew Jackson when she had her hand raised to pluck the forbidden fruit. Does she think it more nearly ripe now? or that the present “Old Man” won’t throw stones? I’ll vouch for it, that if he does not, somebody will.
…I am rather glad South Carolina has taken this decisive step. Her arrogance and rashness have arrayed even her Southern neighbors against her. She will not be supported by a single State. I have not heard a voice raised in her behalf. Even those who have heretofore been most vociferous about Southern rights unite in condemning her premature presumption. A ship of war in the harbor of Charleston, and a battalion of nation troops thrown into the forts, will quench South Carolina as briefly as one may snuff out a tallow dip with his thumb and finger.
…”Sedition is like fire, easily extinguished at the commencement, but the longer it burns the more fiercely it blazes.”
… South Carolina is not quenched, and there seems to be no disposition on the part of those in power to out the extinguisher on her.
…I am rather glad South Carolina has taken this decisive step. Her arrogance and rashness have arrayed even her Southern neighbors against her. She will not be supported by a single State. I have not heard a voice raised in her behalf. Even those who have heretofore been most vociferous about Southern rights unite in condemning her premature presumption. A ship of war in the harbor of Charleston, and a battalion of nation troops thrown into the forts, will quench South Carolina as briefly as one may snuff out a tallow dip with his thumb and finger.
…”Sedition is like fire, easily extinguished at the commencement, but the longer it burns the more fiercely it blazes.”
… South Carolina is not quenched, and there seems to be no disposition on the part of those in power to out the extinguisher on her.
… As she pursues her course of presumptuous madness with impunity other States are following her example.
… Each day brings tidings of fresh outrages and humiliations heaped upon the Government, seizures of arsenals, arms, forts, dockyards, and vessels – of traitorous officers surrendering their charges without defense – of faithful officers arrested and thrown into prison, besieged in forts where they are cut off from supplies and assistance – our national flag hauled down and trampled in the dust, with all its glorious historic memories, to be replaced by some tawdry rag flaunting an obscure device known only to local office-holders and militiamen.
The effect of this state of things is distinctlible in the time of opinion around us. State Sovereignty dogmatism is becoming daily more open and arrogant. County court metaphysicians are modifying their Unionism with “ifs” and “ands” and “peradventures” – small anglers in the mud-puddle of village tavern opinion are drawing in their lines and changing their bait – petty politicians are craftily trimming their sails that their cock-boats may run with the rising wind. But while the weak-kneed are thus tottering, and trimmers fluttering in the breeze, the storm serves to fan to fiercer flame the indignation of all true men. All eyes and hearts are now turned toward Washington, expectant, eager, hopeful. There centres the power which in its infancy has met and twice foiled the giant of Great Britain, which in the very wontonness of its lusty youth made a holiday frolic of throttling poor Mexico. What will the Government do in this crisis?
…Is it secret sympathy with treason or mere driveling that tells the American people “the Government has no right to coerce a State?” – a nation that for more than eighty years has maintained fleets and armies, has waged wars and made peace, has collected customs and coined money; whose commerce covers the globe, whose flag is known and honored wherever the sun shines; whose power and civilization are acknowledged by the proudest and most enlightened peoples; whose future promises to surpass in grandeur all that history has yet recorded. Such a nation has not the right to suppress domestic insurrection! So vast an aggregation of power, prosperity, and hope must submit quietly and unresistingly to perish at the bidding of a local faction, a confederacy of visionary schemers, conceited dogmatists, self-deluding and self-stultifying economists – base huxters, who unblushingly pretend to barter the national honor and safety for the advantage of cheap negroes and a good cotton market; unprincipled politicians, whose vulpine instincts have warned them that the power and places which they had so long abused and so deeply corrupted are about to be withdrawn from their keeping!
Is nothing lawful or constitutional but the outrages of revolutionary mobs, the violation of solemn oaths, the plundering of national property, and the babbling of seditious orators?
Is the Government we have loved and trusted indeed so pitiable and impotent a sham? Have the founders, whom we have been accustomed to regard as wise and good men, really put such a scurvy trick upon us? Have we built houses, laid up wealth, begot children, acquired honors, and recreated in boasting and self-glorification under the delusion of a Political Idea that would disgrace a council of Pottawatomies?
Such are the questions that loyal Virginians in the bitterness of their humiliation now all each other, as the daily mails bring in the accumulating details of rebel outrage, arrogance, and menace, responded to only by governmental acquiescence, deprecatory remonstrance, and despicable compromise.
The effect of this state of things is distinctlible in the time of opinion around us. State Sovereignty dogmatism is becoming daily more open and arrogant. County court metaphysicians are modifying their Unionism with “ifs” and “ands” and “peradventures” – small anglers in the mud-puddle of village tavern opinion are drawing in their lines and changing their bait – petty politicians are craftily trimming their sails that their cock-boats may run with the rising wind. But while the weak-kneed are thus tottering, and trimmers fluttering in the breeze, the storm serves to fan to fiercer flame the indignation of all true men. All eyes and hearts are now turned toward Washington, expectant, eager, hopeful. There centres the power which in its infancy has met and twice foiled the giant of Great Britain, which in the very wontonness of its lusty youth made a holiday frolic of throttling poor Mexico. What will the Government do in this crisis?
…Is it secret sympathy with treason or mere driveling that tells the American people “the Government has no right to coerce a State?” – a nation that for more than eighty years has maintained fleets and armies, has waged wars and made peace, has collected customs and coined money; whose commerce covers the globe, whose flag is known and honored wherever the sun shines; whose power and civilization are acknowledged by the proudest and most enlightened peoples; whose future promises to surpass in grandeur all that history has yet recorded. Such a nation has not the right to suppress domestic insurrection! So vast an aggregation of power, prosperity, and hope must submit quietly and unresistingly to perish at the bidding of a local faction, a confederacy of visionary schemers, conceited dogmatists, self-deluding and self-stultifying economists – base huxters, who unblushingly pretend to barter the national honor and safety for the advantage of cheap negroes and a good cotton market; unprincipled politicians, whose vulpine instincts have warned them that the power and places which they had so long abused and so deeply corrupted are about to be withdrawn from their keeping!
Is nothing lawful or constitutional but the outrages of revolutionary mobs, the violation of solemn oaths, the plundering of national property, and the babbling of seditious orators?
Is the Government we have loved and trusted indeed so pitiable and impotent a sham? Have the founders, whom we have been accustomed to regard as wise and good men, really put such a scurvy trick upon us? Have we built houses, laid up wealth, begot children, acquired honors, and recreated in boasting and self-glorification under the delusion of a Political Idea that would disgrace a council of Pottawatomies?
Such are the questions that loyal Virginians in the bitterness of their humiliation now all each other, as the daily mails bring in the accumulating details of rebel outrage, arrogance, and menace, responded to only by governmental acquiescence, deprecatory remonstrance, and despicable compromise.
— David Hunter Strother, "Porte Crayon"
