NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
January/February 1861
From The Missouri Democrat, Monday, January 28, 1861.
Does not Victoria own South Carolina.
The Toronto Daily Globe raises a new issue in the discussion of the locus standi of the seceding State of South Carolina:
Suppose that this (a dissolution of the Union) is consummated, some curious question will arise with regard to the national standing of the seceding States. Great Britain has recognized the national independence of the United States. But does that necessarily involve the recognition of the nationality of South Carolina, for example, when she ceased to form a part of the Union? Her colonial relations to Great Britain only ceased by virtue of her being merged in the United States, whose independent nationality was recognized by the mother country. When she ceased, then, to form part of that nationality, does she not, by the law of nations, revert to her former position of colonial dependence on Great Britain?
In the year 1729 the British government, for the sum of £17,500, purchased the Carolinas from a company of merchants. When no longer under the ægis of the American flag, will they not again in the nature of things become the property of Great Britain? England may find it worth her while to produce her old title-deeds to the cotton producing territories in the South. Her manufactures form so important an element to the well being of her people, that it is not convenient for her to be dependent on foreigners for her cotton supplies. Moreover, in the interests of humanity, it would be well that the Southern as well as the Northern portion of this continent should be British. Slavery would not long exist under British rule, and with a free republic in the center of the continent, bounded north and south by free British colonies, the future of North America might be looked to by the friends of human progress with the most cheering anticipations.
