Defenses of Slavery
(a) “The
Negro is not equal to the White Man”, Alexander H. Stephens Speech at
Savannah, March 21 1861
Liberty and slavery – civilization and
barbarism are absolute angtagonisms. One or the other
must parish in this Continent.
Our new government is founded on exactly the
opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great
truth that the negro is not equal to the white man;
that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral
condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world,
based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth …
(b) “The
labor of slaves was and is indispensable”, Jefferson Davis – message to
Confederate Congress, April 28 1861
As soon … as the Northern States that
prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient
to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent
and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of
slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A
continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of
rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves … Senators and
Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief
title to this distinction consisted in th display of
the spirit of ultra-fanaticism, and whose business was … to awaken the
bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States, by violent denunciation
of this institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated
efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of
impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which
held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized
for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the
avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States
from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the
States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirelyby States in which slavery should be prohibited; of
thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure asto
be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth
thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the
month of November last in the election for the Presidency of the United Sates.
With the interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the
Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adaptation of
some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.