Charleston (SC) Mercury, "The Rejection of Kansas," April 26, 1858

The news from Washington City, says the Spirit of the South, leaves little hope of the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton Constitution at the present session of Congress. The House adheres to its amendment. The Senate has asked for a Committee of Conference, and one has accordingly been appointed, but the chances of agreement have been nearly exhausted. Notwithstanding the calm that seems to pervade the Southern mind, we have great hopes that the coming storm will not find us unprepared. There is among the masses of the people a strong and growing conviction, that the issue which is fanaticism is precipitating upon us, must soon be firmly met and finally decided. The bold declarations of Seward, the startling defection of Douglas, the long attempted and finally successful removing of Loring, have not been without effect. Prudent, hopeful men, who dreamed that the Union might be perpetual, begin to see plainly the alternative. Abolition with all its horrors on the one hand, or a Southern Confederacy with its untried but certain glories on the other. Wise men who have long felt that the question was one of time only, and who knowing that governments are made and unmade in a day, have never depaired, begin to feel that the hour of deliverance is at hand. Every where, there is extreme disgust with a protracted contest, in which we are perpetually cheated and plundered; a longing for something better, a determination to conquer an honorable peace instead of purchasing temporary relief by unmanly concessions. When Kansas is refused admission into the Union because our peculiar institution is recognized in her organic law, as will certainly be the case when the Lecompton Constitution is rejected, the politicians may stare at each other in stupid amazement, but the Southern people who mean to tolerate no ignominious backing down from the Georgia platform will take the matter into their own hands and “set their house in order not to die but to live.” Then shall be laid broad and deep the foundation stones of a new government; then shall spring into vigorous existence, a nation rich in the great staples of Southern agriculture and strong in the elements of manhood, which shall raise its proud head among the powers of the earth, whose harmony there will be none to disturb and whose destiny there will be none to frustrate. – Montgomery Advertiser.