This apple did not fall too far from the tree: Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr., Mercury editor (Library of Congress LC-USZ62-4890)
From The New-York Times April 1, 1861 (The New York Times Archive):
NEGRO REGIMENTS TO BE RAISED.
The latest sensation in the Cotton States has been caused by an announcement in the New-York correspondence of the Charleston Mercury that the loan of eight million dollars for which Secretary CHASE has issued proposals, is to be used for the purpose of “arming the free blacks of the North to aid insurgent negroes in the South,” — the Mercury gravely reminding us that Lord CHATHAM rebuked the Government of GEORGE III., “because it employed the scalping-knife and the tomahawk of the savage against the white men of its own race.” What is to be done with a journalism that circulates, and a people who believe such monstrous inventions as this? All Northern papers contradicting these fictions are rigidly excluded from general circulation in the Confederacy; and thus the public mind of the extreme South is poisoned systematically, while rigid care is taken that no antidote of truth shall be administered.
Salmon P. Chase raises $8 million for black army to free southern slaves (Mercury says)
How long the secession leaders hope to be able to maintain this supremacy of misrepresentation, it is, of course, impossible to say. But that a lull must eventually come to the excitement — a cooling off to the present red-hot fury, is as inevitable as the decree of death. When this reaction has once fairly set in — and there are indications that it is widely beginning to operate — how will the desperate and reckless men who have raised the storm by falsifying Northern opinion and manufacturing a sectional hostility that has no existence outside of their own selfish and ambitious breasts, face the currents of popular indignation that will then be directed against them? The fire-eating leaders need no punishment at the hands of the Government whose laws they have violated and set at defiance. Sooner or later the truth must become known to the people of the Cotton States, and on their own plantations will then arise the Nemesis that is to exact full retribution.
Robert B. Rhett, Jr was the editor of the Charleston Mercury. His father, Robert Rhett was the famous fire-eater who used the Mercury to broadcast his views. Previously I gave the Rhetts credit for being forthright in their opinions. Lying about facts to manipulate public opinion sure isn’t my idea of forthright.
Salmon P. Chase practiced law in Cincinnati beginning in 1830:
For his defense of escaped slaves seized in Ohio under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, Chase was dubbed the ‘Attorney General for Fugitive Slaves’.
In some weird way it’s kind of fitting this editorial was published on April 1st, even though there’s nothing prankish or lighthearted about it. The Mercury told a whopper, but its never going to say, “April Fools’!”. The Times says that a lull in the excitement of secession is starting to set in (as it also tries to mold public opinion). That might have been true on April 1st, but in a couple weeks Charleston events would blow the lull to pieces. Eventually the Mercury’s story would have some truth in it – in a couple years there would be black troops from the North fighting in Charleston harbor.
