William H. Holcombe

“ The Constitution, either openly violated or emasculated of its true meaning and spirit by the subtleties of New England logic, is powerless for protection. We are no longer partners to a federal compact, but the victims of a consolidated despotism. Opposition to slavery, to its existence, its extension and its perpetuation, is the sole cohesive element of the triumphant faction. It did not receive the countenance of a single vote in any one of the ten great cotton States of the South! ”

“ We anticipate no terminus to the institution of slavery. It is the means whereby the white man is to subdue the tropics all around the globe to order and beauty, and to the wants and interests of an ever-expanding civilization. What may happen afar off in the periods of a millenial Christianity we cannot foresee. No doubt the Almighty in his wisdom and mercy has blessings in store for the poor negro, so that he will no longer envy the earlier and more imposing development and fortunes of his brethren. Some shining Utopia will beckon him also with beautiful illusion into the shadowy future. ”

“ We are to be coaxed, cheated, legislated out of our rights and liberties. What cannot be achieved by trickery, will at length be attempted by force. The most hateful feature in the despotism which threaten us is its religious element. If we are outraged because the Constitution is violated and broken, what shall we say of those hypocrites or madmen who have perverted the Word of God to the most detestable purposes of man! ”

“ The grass would grow in the streets of our cities, our ships would rot in their harbors, our plantations would become a wilderness of cane-brakes. The re-subjugation of the negro, or the extermination of one race or the other would be inevitable, and in any event our children would be beggared with an inheritance of woe. Let us swear upon the altar of God, that as Christians and citizens we will resist to the death the first step which might lead us towards this awful abyss! ”

“ But if it be possible, in the mysterious providence of God, that we should fail and perish in our sublime attempt, let it come! Our souls may rebel against the inscrutable decree of such a destiny, but we will not swerve a line from the luminous path of duty. With our hands upon our hearts we will unitedly exclaim, let it come! The sons and daughters of the South are ready for the sacrifice. We endorse the noble sentiment of Robert Hall, that he has already lived too long who has survived the liberties of his country! ”

“ If the Republican party is permitted to get into power, the Africanization of the South may be gradual, but it will be sure. Their leaders already boast to applauding multitudes that the heel of the North is at last on our necks. When the power, the patronage, the prestige of the federal government are wielded against slavery; when Southern men take office under it, and first apologize and then approve; when a free-soil sentiment gradually percolates through the South itself ”

“ There is no man in the South so stupid, so cowardly, so base as to be willing to live in the Union as it is. There is no difference between us as to the fanaticism and tyranny of the North, no difference as to the wrongs and injuries of the South. ”

“ The Northern mind has become thoroughly anti-slavery in sentiment. Even those who contend for our constitutional rights share in the universal opinion that slavery is a great moral and social evil. Those who have adopted the pro-slavery view are exceedingly few in numbers, and are regarded by the mass of Northern people as more fanatical than the most extreme Abolitionist. The press, the pulpit, the rostrum of the North are clamorous with declamation against us and our institutions. Slavery is considered not only immoral but debasing to both owner and owned. ”

“ In this great crisis which involves the welfare of the present and the future, let us be united as one man. Let us survey the whole question in all its bearings, immediate and prospective. Let us act calmly, wisely, bravely. Let us take counsel of our duty and our honor, and not of our danger and our fears. Let us invoke the guardian spirit of ancestral virtue, and the blessing of Almighty God. ”

“ The Constitution must be construed in the spirit of its founders, as an instrument to protect the minority from the domination of an insolent majority. The slavery question must be eliminated forever from the political issues of the day. No party which contemplates the restriction of our system and its ultimate extinction can be tolerated for a moment. ”

“ It is almost impossible at present to disabuse the public mind of Europe and of the North of this shallow prejudice. In the meantime, whilst carrying out the designs of Providence in relation to the negro race, we must rest for a while under a cloud of obloquy and abuse. Let us be faithful to our sublime trust, and future ages will appreciate the grandeur and glory of our mission.
The pro-slavery sentiment is of recent development. It is more recent than any of the great inventions which have created the distinctive forms of our modern civilization. ”

“ It is only thus that an inferior race can exist in contact with a superior one. In the Sandwich Islands, in Australia, in New Zealand, the aborigines are passing away before the encroachments of English power and at the mere presence of English civilization. The free negroes of the North are dying out beneath the cold climate and the colder charities of that region. Freedom and competition with the white man would ultimately annihilate the negro race in the South. The only hope of the African is in his just subordination to the superior type. ”

“ The Southern view of the matter, destined to revolutionize opinion throughout the civilized world, is briefly this: African slavery is no retrograde movement, no discord in the harmony of nature, no violation of elemental justice, no infraction of immutable laws, human or divine—but an integral link in the grand progressive evolution of human society as an indissoluble whole. ”

“ From present appearances, the North will before very long be unanimous in opinion, and if it has the power or can invent the means, it will be ready to reduce the South to the condition of Hayti and Jamaica, and expect the approval of God upon the atrocity.
It is unquestionably true, although it be upon false issues, that the sympathies of the civilized world are united against us. The name of slavery is hateful to the ears of freemen and of those who desire to be free. ”

“ The doctrine that there exists an “irrepressible conflict” between free labor and slave labor is as false as it is mischievous. Their true relation is one of beautiful interchange and eternal harmony. ”

“ In opposition to the prevailing sentiment of the North, we believe that men are created neither free nor equal. They are born unequal in physical and mental endowments, and no possible circumstances or culture could ever raise the negro race to any genuine [Pg 5] equality with the white. Man is born dependant, and the very first step in civilization was for one man to enslave another. A state of slavery has been a disciplinary ordeal to every people who have ever developed beyond the savage condition. ”

“ Others would give the North a last chance to abandon her false position, to make apologies and amend, and to secure us in the strongest bonds imaginable, against not only the encroachments but the existence of the Republican party. The difference is rather nominal than real, for all the conservatives doubt and many despair of proper concessions from the North. With those concessions, disunion is probable, without them it is inevitable.
It is the business of the Cotton States to move first in this important matter. They alone are the great conservators of the institution of slavery. ”

“ Certain physical and spiritual peculiarities of the negro necessitate his subjection to the white man. It is for his own good that he is subjected. As long as this was doubtful or not clearly seen, the South itself was opposed to slavery. It remonstrated with England for imposing the institution upon it, and with Massachusetts for insisting upon a continuance of the slave-trade for twenty years after the adoption of the federal compact. The South is now fully convinced of the benefits and blessings it is conferring upon the negro race. ”

“ That government is the best, and its people the happiest, not in which all are free and equal, but in which equal races are free, and the inferior race is wisely and humanely subordinated to the superior, whilst both are controlled by the sacred bonds of reciprocal duty. ”

“ The wise and just subordination of an inferior to a superior race, is rashly confounded with the old systems of oppression and tyranny, which stain the pages of history and have excited the righteous indignation of the world. ”

“ The meagre slave population of the last century has increased to four millions. Cotton and sugar have risen to an unparalleled political and industrial importance, so that the whole civilized world is deeply interested in its maintenance of African slavery. And lastly, though not leastly, the free negro settlements in the North and in Canada are social experiments for our analysis and instruction.
This pro-slavery party includes, with insignificant exceptions, nine millions of people of Anglo-Saxon blood. It is diffused over territory sufficient for a mighty empire. ”

“ The people of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri are unquestionably with us in spirit and principle, but we cannot disguise the fact, that the tenure of our social system in those States is feeble and failing. Those great communities must do as in their wisdom they see best, but we cannot wait [Pg 13] for their decision nor promise to abide by it. Whether they go with the North or declare for a separate sovereignty, the mission of the Cotton States must be equally accomplished. ”

“ The negro is a permanent variety of the human race, inferior to almost all others in intellect, but possessing an emotional nature capable of the most beautiful cultivation. The greater part of this race in its native Africa is sunk in the deepest barbarism. What little civilization a few tribes may have, has been imposed upon them by Arabic and Moorish conquerors. Left to themselves, these poor people would no doubt remain barbarous forever ”

“ Not only the physical science of man but the philosophy of history itself has been almost created since the days of the revolution. The question of slavery has been thoroughly sifted. The metaphysical and theological as well as the political bearings of the subject have been closely scrutinized. Liberia is before us with its feeble and precarious existence, with its little torch of civilization nearly extinguished by the foul atmosphere of surrounding heathenism. ”

“ Man has no “inalienable rights”—not even those of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If the life he leads, the liberty he enjoys, and the happiness he pursues, are not consistent with the order and well-being of society, he may righteously be deprived of them all. ”

“ The Republican party itself, the best and the worst of it, we charge with having outraged our feelings, violated our rights, and initiated a policy which, if carried out, will be destructive of our liberties. It is not an election but a usurpation, and if we acquiesce, we are not citizens but subjects. ”

“ When each is restricted to the sphere for which God and nature designed it, they both contribute their full quotas to the physical happiness, material interests, and social and spiritual progress of the race. They will prove to be not antagonistic but complementary to each other in the great work of human civilization. ”

“ The evolution of history, according to the laws of Providence, which supervise even the falling of a sparrow, necessitates it and demands it. The diversity of character, opinion, interest, climate and institutions in the two sections is beyond remedy. Each has a separate mission to fill and a glorious destiny to accomplish. ”

“ To understand rationally the events which are transpiring, and to forsee their inevitable issue, it is necessary to examine this element of discord between the Northern and Southern people, to investigate its true nature and extent, and weigh carefully the prospect of its cure. ”

“ The government of the South is to protect it; the Church of the South is to christianize it; the people of the South are to love it, and improve it and perfect it. God has lightened our [Pg 7] task and secured its execution by making our interests happily coincide with our duty. ”

“ Let us remember that, although precipitancy [Pg 15] is a fault, it is better, in a question so vital as personal and national independence, to be an age too soon than a moment too late. If we succeed in establishing, as we shall, a vast, opulent, happy and glorious slave-holding Republic, throughout tropical America—future generations will arise and call us blessed! ”

“ It is, they say, a relic of barbarism and a disgrace to an enlightened people. We are not regarded as equals but are merely tolerated, as persons whom they in their wisdom may possibly reform and improve. ”

“ It is more recent than many of the great innovations of thought which now agitate mankind. The great and good fathers of our Republic unquestionably entertained anti-slavery sentiments or predilections, and the flippant Abolitionist thinks he has silenced us forever by quoting the opinions of Washington and Jefferson and Madison on this subject. ”

“ To the professed Abolitionists, that motley crew of men who should be women and of women who should be men; who see in Fred Douglass a hero and in John Brown a martyr, whose venom is proportioned to their ignorance, as some animals are said to be fiercest in the dark ”