Staunton Vindicator

Lincoln's War Policy

The Washington correspondent of the Richmond Examiner says:

In Southern circles here little doubt is entertained as to the policy and purpose of the Inaugural address. It is believed Mr. Lincoln will proceed, without delay, to adopt hostile measures against the South. A collision in less than a week is quite possible. This may grow out of an attempt to collect revenue at the South, to reinforce Forts Sumter [sic] and Pickens, or to retake other places. The words, "hold, occupy and possess," in reference to the forts and other coast points in the South, coupled with the special reservations made as to interior places where residents cannot be induced to hold offices, are full of meaning. They teach us to be prepared for war at a moment's notice, and those recreant Virginians whose base hearts throb with sympathy for the North may at once prepare their cartridges for a fight with their own neighbors.

In army circles the reinforcement of Fort Sumter is proposed to be effected in a stealthy mode at first, by sending down a ship provided with good seat boats, who are to go in by night from the sea, take advantage of bad weather, fogs and an imperfect vigilance of the South Carolina steamers posted on the look out, and thus get men enough in Fort Sumpter to resist an assault. After this is done, four or five war vessels will then essay to force their way in, and Major Anderson will open fire to sustain them.

It is not unlikely this plan may be hit upon, but I am included to think a prior step will be the repudiation by the Government of agreement made at Pensacola by the late Administration. Orders will be sent to Lieut. Slemmer, commanding Fort Pickens, to take men from the slip to reinforce the garrison, to bring in the war vessels, and to demand a surrender of the Navy Yard by the officers of the Provisional Government.

Such are some of the steps likely to be taken by the Government to bring on the war they covet. They rely upon their ability to whip the South, and count extensively on help from Andrew Johnson and the men like him in your Convention. Lincoln does not know these men. Their treason lies in hatching plots, and will shrink from the open field where they will have to confront the brave and true men of the South.

Southern Confederacy.

The Southern Confederacy is gradually progressing in a career of eminent success. With the flower of the American Army in command of 50,000 well drilled troops; the most gifted and experienced statesmen of the age in charge of its civil departments; a treasury well supplied with funds; and sustained by the hearts and hands of a united people, the new Confederacy bids fair to become one of the most successful and prosperous governments on the globe. Its foundation are being carefully and firmly laid; its columns erected to meet all the shocks and throes incident to new enterprises, and its arches formed to bear the weight of an empire baptised in blood, if needs be. The idea of this government ever again uniting with a people whose entire education is enmity and whose highest ambition is oppression, aggression and outrage, is simply preposterous. Such a thing is not dreamed of by the statesmen who are directing the affairs of the Confederate States. Every act is looking directly to the establishment of a firm, united and powerful government, sufficient for all the exigencies of peace or war.

Virginia--the Battle Ground

We have good reason to believe that our State has been selected as the grand arena for the display of Black Republican prowess--that our people have been marked as the victims for Black Republican vengeance. The concentration of forces about Washington city--a point convenient to Fortress Monroe and the Virginia line--the unusual precaution exercised in reference to points over which federal authority extends in Virginia--the increase of federal soldiery in our midst--are all prominent facts of evidence driving us to the conclusion that the State which gave the soldier who won our liberties, and the statesman who fortified them with constitutional barriers, is to be the first to meet the shock of Black Republican invasion. The people's representatives in Richmond perceive this--some acknowledge this--and yet there has been no act passed, nor movement effected, calculated to detach Virginia from the anaconda folds of this hideous centralism, and place her where she can resist the machinations and devices of her enemies.

Lincoln threatens coercion, yet our Convention hesitates to secede; the Peace Conference patch-work is repudiated by Congress, yet the Convention hesitates to secede; the starved forces of the Government are whistled from Fort Sumpter, and thrown into Fortress Monroe or Washington city, yet the Convention hesitates to secede; the brand of infamy and inequality is ready to be impressed, hissing hot, into our flesh, yet the Convention hesitates to secede; the Southern Confederation opens wide its gates and beseeches Virginia to take her stand under the folds of that banner which bears upon it the blessed motto of Constitutional freedom and State equality, yet the Convention hesitates to secede. Are the Freemen of Virginia ready to acknowledge the inequality and inferiority of their State? Have they prepared their minds to witness the most revolting spectacle ever yet presented to the gaze of civilization--the voluntary abandonment, by representatives of a free people, of all that ennobles humanity and elevates social existence? Honor, freedom, justice, good faith, all are to be crushed under the Juggernaut of abolition villainy. We put it to the farmer, the mechanic, the professional man, to men of every grade of wealth and every occupation, if this deed shall be perpetrated by the Convention with impunity? We can answer for the people of the country that they are not now, and never will be, willing to pass from a state of freedom to a condition of vassalage--to bend their necks to the yoke of abolition servitude. The Convention cannot consign us to Northern despotism. The programme may be made out--the gyves all finished and furnished to conventional order by abolition hands. Yet ultimately Virginia is as certain to disconnect herself from the North, and unite with her natural allies of the South, as that infamy attaches to the one, and honor is the controlling principle of the other. The Convention may delay--the Convention may jeopardize our safety--the Convention may put to useless sacrifice many valuable lives, but the people of Virginia, in the strength of that integrity and power and patriotism, high above all Conventions, will force their representatives to strike the blow in behalf of that civil, religious and political liberty which constitutes the chief glory and pride of our beloved Commonwealth.

Baltimore Conference.

This body has new under consideration the propriety of an immediate withdrawal from the General Conference, in consequence of the "New Chapter" of the Buffalo Conference in 1860, antagonistic to, and denunciatory of slavery. The Rev. Mr. Griffith, a man grown gray in the cause of Methodism, characterized the Chapter as immoral, false and heretical; whilst Rev. Norval Wilson, in a speech of signal ability, replete with the most cogent argument, advocated an immediate separation from the Methodists north of Mason and Dixon's line. We write this at the conclusion of Rev. Mr. Phelp's advocacy of a continued union with the General Conference. The effort of this gentleman was as ineffective and impotent, as the course which he advised is impolitic and suicidal. An analysis of his speech would present excitability, fustian sophistry and error. We do not propose to assert that the gentleman embraces wrong intelligently--we have no means of understanding if this is the case; but assuming the most charitable view in reference to his position, we must express our sentiments of regret that the Church and its prospects are to be afflicted, perhaps blighted, by ignorance so obtuse. Mr. Phelps, at the same time that he resists the plan of separation, attacks it from the masked battery of Southern devotion. Pretending to esteem the continuance of slavery as essentially right and proper, he still prefers to remain in connection with a Church which denounces it as infamous. Assuming to shelter and protect his erring brethren of the North under the wing of an enlarged virtue, he would also embrace the institution of negro slavery as eminently wise and proper. The strong point of his argument, if any point could be found weaker than another, was, that the Baltimore Conference should rather seek to throttle vice than evade it--that the errors of the Northern mind should be dissipated by the light of Southern reason, and not be deprived of that light forever. We acknowledge that virtue should seek vice for the purpose of correcting it; but when vice, as in the present case, establishes its most infamous propositions as important principles of a Church creed, and requires virtue to endorse and propagate them, then the good and true and just men, whether in the pulpit or in the congregation, must refuse an alliance so revolting to human nature--so subversive of the teachings of an enlightened morality and Biblical precept.

The Spectator and Coercion.

Mr. Editor: Your neighbor of the Spectator, in his zeal to bind us to Black Republican misrule, has been laboring to show that the "chief object" had in view in the formation of the present Constitution of the United States was to "preserve the Union," and that the "great defect" of the old Confederation consisted in its "inability to preserve it"-- the Union.

This, in a certain sense, is true--but not as the editor seems to understand it.

The old articles of Confederation proved wholly inadequate to secure an efficient government for the special purposes designed by the States. Hence it was falling rapidly into popular disfavor, and in danger of dissolution.

[Illegible], and in this sense alone, the present Constitution became necessary for the preservation of the Union.

The idea of the Spectator, however, appears to be that the object was simply to clothe the Federal Government with power to coerce the States to its authority. This, he argues, indeed, was the "chief object"! The "common defense" and "general welfare" of the States, were of course secondary and subordinate! The absurdity of such a proposition (to say nothing of its monstrosity,) is too palpable for serious refutation.

The editor reads history to little purpose, if he can see, in the extracts which he makes, any support for the Black Republican doctrine of Coercion. Ours is emphatically a Government of Opinion, not of Force; and the only ligaments of Union between the States are interest and affection.

The Federal Government is a mere emanation from the Sovereignties of the States, and the present Constitution was designed simply to create a more efficient Agent for management of their general interests; one which would work unobstructedly in its distinctly prescribed sphere, free from the delays and cumbrous clogs of separate State cooperation. So jealous, indeed, were the framers of the Constitution in guarding against the idea of Consolidation, that the word "National" was stricken out of the Constitution as originally drafted, without a dissenting voice.

STATE RIGHTS.

Who's Afraid?

The advocates of "Reference" previous to the election of delegates to the Convention, delighted to dwell on the Sovereignty of the people and their right to determine by their votes the future destiny of Virginia. The proposition has been made in the shape of a resolution that the people shall have the opportunity of determining whether Virginia will continue to hang on to the abolition States of the North, or will unite her fate with her sister States of the Southern Confederation. This brings the question immediately before the people. We ask that they may act for themselves on this important question. They are honest and capable and patriotic, their interests are immediately concerned. Which member or members of the Convention will vote against this resolution, and record himself as fearing to trust the people in the management of their own business?

Put this question, gentlemen of the Convention, to the people who made you members of that body and our word for it that Virginia will no longer be the hanger-on of Black Republican States, but will soon become a member of the Southern Confederation, that the star of our destiny will no longer be dimmed by the sombre clouds of fanaticism, but will shed its genial rays over every point of our social surface,

"Not as in Northern climes obscurely bright,

But one unclouded blaze of [illegible] light."

Protracted Meeting and Baptism.

During the past two weeks religious services have been held twice every day in the Baptist Church in this place, in which the Pastor has been assisted by Rev. T.W. Greer, of Charlotte. Twenty-three persons have been baptized, and several others are awaiting the ordinance.