Hillsborough (NC) Recorder

June 12, 1861

Page 2

Faithlessness of the Lincoln Administration

We call attention to the remarkable revelations of the Hon. John A. Campbell, late Judge of the United States, exposing the duplicity of the Administration of Lincoln in regard to Fort Sumter. It will be seen that whilst all assurances of determination to evacuate Sumter were made, the Administration was secretly taking steps to provision and hold it, and that Judge Campbell made so strong a case of want of honor and good faith that Seward never even attempted to explain away or contradict it.

It seems to us that this disclosure must have a material effect upon the public mind, in Europe, if not this country.

It has for some time past been within our knowledge, that similar assurances of evacuating both Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens were given by members of the Cabinet to a number of prominent men (then Union men but now heartily in favor of dissolution) in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. This deliberate fraud was practiced upon men who favored Peace and Union; and no excuse for it has ever been vouchsafed to them or to the public. The circumstances leave no doubt now, that the bad men who rule the country meant war from the first, in spite of all Seward’s and Lincoln’s assurances to the contrary; and that the vessels were sent to Charleston, not to provision Sumter or to help it defend itself—they did neither the one nor the other—but to provoke the attack which the bad faith of the Administration made almost certain. The development of these facts puts a different face on the attack upon Sumter, which at the time, with the imperfect information then at hand, we condemned and deplored, as did all others then hopeful of preserving the Union.

There is nothing left but to fight such faithless creatures—to resist them to the death.

--Fayetteville Observer--