By Larry Felton Johnson

While browsing 19th-century issues of Cobb County newspapers on the Georgia Historic Newspapers site, I ran across these two articles in the secessionist Marietta Advocate. Both articles were from the February 5, 1861 issue.

The first is an account of a speech from a secessionist Virginia senator, Robert Hunter (pictured above):

Power of the South

The following extract is from the speech of Senator Hunter, of Virginia:

“The eight seceding States alone possess a territory more than three times as great as France; more than six times as large as Prussia, and nearly six times as large as England, Scotland, and Ireland put together. The alliance of the other Southern and border States would increase the territorial extent of the Southern Confederacy by more than one third.

Can a country like this, occupied by a people who, from their childhood, have been accustomed to the most manly exercise and the free use of firearms—bold, hardy, restive under unlawful control—and numbering within its borders 1,800,000 men capable of bearing arms, who, with a few weeks’ warning, could be marshaled at every assailable point in bands of 50,000 and 100,000—can, I say, such a country, and so peopled, be overcome by any foreign foe? The idea is simply absurd.”

Spoiler alert: The war lasted a bit less than five years, and the seceding states lost the war decisively.

The second article, in the same issue of the Marietta Advocate, was a bit of wishful thinking involving England’s stance on the war. It was a reprint from the New York Express:

England and the Southern Confederacy

The news from Toronto today, that the British Government intends to acknowledge the independence of the Southern Confederacy as soon as it is regularly organized and makes application in due diplomatic form, creates a profound sensation in the city.

The journal which makes this announcement—The Toronto Leader—is a highly official authority, and regarding its correctness in this case, the most intelligent of our people here do not appear to have any doubt.

The General Convention of the cotton States, it will be remembered, assembles at Montgomery, Alabama, on the 4th of February, a month in advance of Lincoln’s inauguration. The plan is to organize a provisional government at once, with a President and Vice-President, etc., and then dispatch ambassadors to England and France for recognition as an independent power, so as to be prepared for whatever consequences may arise under the Republican regime by March 4th.

The cautious and very diplomatic speech of the British Premier at the Southampton dinner on the 9th, strongly opposing “coercion,” now unquestionably carries significant weight in this context—and the meaning may be intervention, in case we start cutting one another’s throats and blowing one another’s brains out.

The Washington correspondent of the Richmond Examiner, a very reliable source, says: “I hear from a trustworthy authority that the Powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia will promptly recognize the independence of the new Southern Confederacy. Assurances of this have been given in a way that leaves no doubt as to the outcome. It may be confidently expected that any attempt to block Southern trade will be countered by England and France. They must have the cotton.”

Another spoiler alert: Great Britain never recognized the Confederacy, and no foreign power ever recognized it.

About Georgia Historic Newspapers

Georgia Historic Newspapers is a part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia. It’s an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in the history of Georgia and its regions.

According to the “About” page on its website:

The Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. Since 2007, the DLG has partnered with universities, archives, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions to digitize historical newspapers from around the state. The archive is free and open for public use and includes over two million Georgia newspaper pages between 1763 and 2021.

Newspaper titles are regularly digitized and added to the archive. If you are interested in including a particular title, you can visit our participation page. A majority of the newspapers on this site were digitized from the microfilm produced by the Georgia Newspaper Project (GNP). For more information about the microfilm available through the GNP, please visit their website.

“If you think I look terrible now, you should see me before I’ve had my coffee”

Larry Felton Johnson is the editor and publisher of the Cobb County Courier. He has the distinction of chipping away at a degree from Georgia State University for 49 years (1969-2018). He would have held off to make it an even 50, but the university was getting impatient with him. He began practicing journalism long before he received his degree in that subject, and lives in Mableton with his wife and cat.