Alexander Stephens

“ This step (of secession) once taken, can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow, will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth: when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land; our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolations of war upon us; who but this convention will be held responsible for it? ”

“ Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as this, under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century - in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquility accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed - is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote. ”

“ And, as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statemen and patriots in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest Government - the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most aspiring it its principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. ”