SECESSION AND SLAVERY.
NOTE: This poem contains offensive racist terms.
Secede, ye Southern States, secede,
No better plan could be,
If you of niggers would be freed,
To set your niggers free.
Runaway slaves by federal law
At present you reclaim;
So from the Union straight withdraw,
And pray the free-soil game.
What, when you’ve once the knot untied,
Will bind the Northern men?
And who’ll resign to your cowhide
The fugitives again?
Absquotilate, then, slick as grease,
And break up Unity,
Or take your President in peace,
And eat your humble pie.
But if your stomachs proud disdain,
That salutary meal,
And you, in passion worse than vain,
Must rend the Commonweal,
Then all mankind will jest and scoff
At people in the case,
Of him that hastily cut off
His nose to spite his face.
Title:Secession and Slavery
Author:unknown
Publication:Bury Guardian
Published in:Bury
Date:12/1/61
Keywords:america, slavery, war
Commentary
This Punch poem with offensive racist terms which may or may not be an attempt to mock Southern attitudes to slavery is anti-secession. At this point, before the Civil War began, Confederate states were already withholding cotton exports in an attempt to force Britain to recognise the South’s right to self-determination. – SR