Fayetteville (NC) Observer, "Suspicious Characters," December 29, 1859

SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS. – We copy a sensible and timely article from the N. Y. Journal of Commerce on the treatment of suspicious characters at the South. We are grieved to learn from it, that in some places the prejudice against Northern men has been carried to an extent at once injurious to the interests and disgraceful to the character of the South. The statements of the Savannah Republican astonish us. We fear too that such conduct has found imitators in other parts of the South; for we are surprised to hear by persons just from Alabama, that the cars in that State and Georgia were crowded with an usual number of passengers, among whom were families returning to the North in a very unamiable mood, as may be imagined, at the indignities offered them.

Do Southern people mean to drive off the many excellent citizens of Northern birth who have become indentified with the South by feeling and interest, who hold property at the South, and perchance have married and had children born at the South? Much better would it be to cherish such a population, and to increase it if possible. It is the itinerant peddlers, show men, and such like persons, that we ought to get rid of, and of them only be legal means. Let us discountenance every thing like Lynch law, tarring and feathering, &c. The LAW is ample to punish incendiaries. Let the Law do it.