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CARRT ER • S AI)1)R ES S
TO THE PATRONS OF THE
SOUTHERN TRIBUNE.
■) A N U A R Y 1 , 18 51.
Another Twelvemonth now is past and gone !
The Eastern hills have fledged the maiden dawn
Os stranger hours, whose courses will be run
Within the realm of Eighteen Fifty-One.
A few short moments o'er the punctual bell
Proclaimed our loved protector's dying knell,
And threw the shroud of devious afterthought
On all the good or evil that we wrought
Whilst yet his kindly admonitions rung
Upon our ears, or stirred our hearts among.
Os all the pleasures past we are bereft,
Their glad remembrances alone are left
To stamp their image on the fertile brain—
Who wills, may plant the fruitful seed again,
And bear the bud and flower to cheer the sight
With unseen incense to afford delight.
Yes ! there are memories in which the mind
Drinks deep the evidence of joy refined,
When looking back on the receding main
Os days escaping to return again
Only by fancy's bright reviving art
Or retrospection’s half-unerring chart.
Just here and there a short memento brings
Dreams that were coined in the Elvsian springs
Os youthful beauty, whose experienced powers
Were nursed to being in this world of flowers !
A word, a look unfurls a kindred sphere
For loving hearts to dwell in rapture there.
The hours of social converse, too, have marked
The signal when the freighted ship embarked
With fond affections for its destined port,
At the command of that imperial Court
Which, though to seeming consequences blind
Still links the fate of man and woman kind.
Put ah ! the melancholy thought will come
For those who fill their sad and dismal home,
Whose blooming vigor presaged many years
Crown'd with the fruit deserving manhood bears,
When last the song of merriment was heard
Where scores amid the youthful concourse stirr’d;
And jest and playful prank, and laughter free
Adorned the welcomed New Year’s Jubilee—
The quiet cemetery's verdant sod
Contains their clay— their souls have fled to God!
The hoary-headed relics of the age
Have stooped and tottered, then forsook the stage
Os care-worn life, and calmly laid them down,
With heirs and subjects to the kingly crown—
With coward frames beside the warriors brave—
With noblemen and the notorious knave, —
With curtained splendor as in regal gloom
And flowers that deck the peasant's humble tomb.
South Carolina weeps, and well she may’,
Relentless Death has cast a withering ray
Os grief across her intellectual sky,
And plucked the zenith from his dwelling high
Above the rest of men— Calhoun, of yore
Her sovereign master-spirit, lives no more !
That form—in Senatorial chambers true
To Southern Rights and Southern Honor too, —
Not even the dark and wildly rolling deep—
Whose inmost cells each ’vat’rv trophy keen, —
Ilis marbled likeness would presume to claim,
And thus forbid the stone to speak his name
To the admiring millions yet to trace
The truly chiseled featuresof his face :
But yielded to his fellow men the prize
To cheer their hearts, and feast their gazing eyes.
He does not breathe among us the pure air
Os vital being—yet his past career
Has stamped its nature on the minds of men,
And in the forum, and the silent pen
The echoes of his honored counsels sound
With galh'ring strength at each successive bound.
A dark appalling cloud has covered o'er
The glorious Union of the days of yore,
And pendant thunderbolts of horror hang—
Concocted by a rude, and lawless gang,
But held by powerful enemies abroad,
To scatter death and ruin in the road
Os Southern honor and of Southern fate—
To burst an avalanche of active hate
On our defenceless heads, if, calmly tame
To the abuses heaped upon our name,
We give up all we know to be our own,
And woo aggression by our sullen tone
Til all our strength is lost, and the sad hour
Which marks the demise of resisting power.
Shall note our hist'ry with the clanking chain
Os servile bondage to a demon's reign
More terrible than Pandemonium’s walls,
Or deep Tartarus, 'midst its echoing halls,
E'er crowned a missionary to this earth
Os mingled multitudes, of motley birth.
Alas! Land of the South ! my mother-land !
I dread to sec you shrink beneath the hand
Os Legislative tyranny —a Time
Was once recorded in this sunny clime.
When half the wrongs that you have suffer'd now
Would bring the blood to every Southron’s brow
In stern defiance of the reckless will
Which feeds upon us, yet degrades us still—
There was a Time no coward spirit dare
Whisper a word, or utter forth a care
In common with the base invader's crew—
When all were pure,and every patriot true.
Alas ! my native Georgia ! shall I paint
A shadowy picture of your sad restraint
H hen clasp and in bondmen arms your former pride
Must sink in deep oblivion's murky tide ?
Fair daughters of this heaven-favored land !
Must I behold you tortured by the hand
Os menial spirits ; sunk in deep disgrace
By those the most inferior of your race ?
Shall I behold your pitying cries for aid
When on the threshhold of your dungeons laid?
And hear your plaintive shrieks of suffering wo
\ ct feel I can no help nor aid bestow ?
Great God ! avert this horror-striking doom,
Or point us to the sweetly resting tomb !
Exert thine own omnipotence to draw
These poisonous fangs from scurners of the law—
Stay the swift tide of innovation strong,
And place its lenders where their crimes belong ;
Force these invaders from the tented field
Who wear Religion as a cloak to shield
Some base design against our sovereign State,
That they may leave us to our wretched fate.
The humble efforts of the Tribune's pen
Have been to hold the rights of Southern men
From the aggressor and the traitor free
That we might taste the boon of Liberty.
True, we have stemmed the overwhelming tide
With banner'd fortress and our breastworks wide;
Have boldly warned the oft-insulting foe,
That farther, injury should never go,
Unless it met resistance Srmlv placed
Upon the guaranties they have erased
From the time-honored instrument we signed
When first the 13 Sovereign Stales combined
To form a Union,—arid our ardent soul
Has wept to see the dread-inspirin': coal
Preparing by the coalescing strength
Os ignorance, and the Satanic length
Os the nrisnomered throngs, who daiiy form
United legions for the coming storm.
Yet ’tis Our Country that we dared sustain,
Which has received and will receive again
Whate'er of virtue or of real good
May spring to being from our Southern blood.
Kind Patrons, herc acccpt my honest hope
That each with every enemy may cope, —
And that success may crown your constant aim,
Be that for riches or for honored fame,
For ease and quiet, or commercial strife,
May rosy health prolong your valued life,
And peaceful smiles, and hearty welcomes greet,
Your generous forms, from ev'ry lip you meet —
'Til friends and fortune banish carking care
Throughout the moments of this Haity Year !
