NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
September/October 1860
From The Missouri Democrat, Friday, October 19, 1860.
No Other Paper has the News—Preparations for Secession Completed.
We find in an Oregon (Mo.) paper, the following startling intelligence. It is singular that no other paper has the news, but perhaps the editor has been to see Yancey, Keitt and Pryor, and let the cat out of the bag too soon. In the meantime, we hope our Oregon disunionist will settle up his affairs as soon as possible, for in the event of Lincoln’s election, this State may be too hot to hold him. The allusion to the certainty of a Southern confederacy being formed as soon as Lincoln is elected, suggests the idea that the telegraph up that way must be rather slow, if it is expected to communicate news of the two events at the same time. The news is certainly important, and we won’t detain our readers any longer with a preface:
An Awful Alternative—Dangers of a Black Republican Triumph.
From present appearance we are forced to the opinion that Lincoln’s election is certain, and an inevitable result, the secession of the cotton growing States. As deplorable as would be such an event, it is yet certain, and all the powers of the government will be inadequate to its prevention. Every arrangement has been consummated for the undertaking in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina, and without a doubt the flash of lightning that communicates the election of Lincoln, will also bring to our ears the astounding news that a Southern confederacy has been formed, and that this government, which has so gallantly stood the blasts of the fierce storms raging around for eighty-four years, will succumb to the fierce surging of internal commotion, and be wrecked upon the breakers which we have so long sought to ward against.
