Confederates speaking on Confederate Motives

Statements from the Confederate Constitution:

Article I Section 9(4)
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

Article IV Section 2(1)
The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

Article IV Section 3(3)
The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several states; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form states to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states.

Statements from Confederate States' "Declaration of Causes" for secession.

Alabama:

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republi­can party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new princi­ples, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.

Be it resolved, That the State of Alabama, fully concuring with the State of South Carolina, in affirming the right of any State to secede from the confederacy, whenever in her own judgment such a step is demanded by the honor, interests and safety of her people, is not unmindful of the fact that the assaults upon the institution of slavery, and upon the rights and equality of the Southern States, unceasingly continued with increasing violence and in new, and more alarming forms, may constrain her to a reluctant but early exercise of that invaluable right.

Georgia:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. 

An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity. 

Mississippi:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."

It [hostility to slavery] has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

South Carolina:

But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

Texas:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

Jefferson Davis, President, CSA:

"If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree." 

"African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing."

"You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us."

"It [slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts...Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible...I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation...Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized, sanctioned everywhere."

John C Pelot, Chair, Opening Speech, Florida Secession Convention:

The People of a portion of the States who were parties to the Government were early opposed to the institution. The feeling of opposition to it has been cherished, and fostered, and inflamed until it has taken possession of the public mind of the North to such an extent that it overwhelms every other influence. It has seized the political power and now threatens annihilation to slavery thoughout the Union. 

 At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. 

 This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of the Government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige or right growing out of property in slaves. 

George Williamson, Commissioner of Louisiana, to the secession convention of Texas:

Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, be­queathed to their posterity. 

Louisiana supplies to Texas a market for her surplus wheat, grain and stock; both States have large areas of fer­tile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity.

The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery, if Texas either did not secede or having seceded should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy. If she remains in the union the abolitionists would continue their work of incendiarism and murder. 

The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and deter­mination to preserve African slavery. The isolation of any one of them from the others would make her the theatre for abolition emisa­ries from the North and from Europe. Her existence would be one of constant peril to herself and of imminent danger to other neighboring slave-holding communities. 

That constitution the Southern States have never violated, and taking it as the basis of our new government we hope to form a slave-holding confederacy that will secure to us and our remotest posterity the great blessings its authors designed in the Federal Union. With the social balance wheel of slavery to regulate its machinery, we may fondly indulge the hope that our Southern government will be perpetual.

Alexander Stephens, Vice President, CSA:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.


Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone 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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.


One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.


Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.



Jospeh E. Brown, Governor of Confederate Georgia:

Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense of the term his equal. He feels and knows this. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men. He black no masters boots, and bows the knee to no one save God alone. He receives higher wages for his labor than does the laborer of any other portion of the world, and he raises up his children with the knowledge, that they belong to no inferior cast, but that the highest members of the society in which he lives, will, if their conduct is good, respect and treat them as equals.

Discover even more on Confederate motives at this link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/



Christmas Hope

“Dis crazy, Miss Harriet,” the young girl gasped as they sprinted down the dimly lit lane. The older lady showed no sign of hearing the complaint. Instead, her attention was on the straggling runners who were falling ever further behind. “We's runnin' right for 'em,” the girl pleaded.

Harriet turned her attention momentarily to the girl. “Hush, Liza, we're doubling back on them. Just keep running -straight for the back of that Church building yonder.” Harriet fell back and urged on the slower runners, hoping that they would make it in time. She hadn't meant to cut it quite this close. The child was right, those dogs were dangerously near. As they neared the Church building, the sounds of singing and praise could be heard from within.

Harriet quickly led her group to the back of the building, where they pulled loose a few boards and crawled underneath. From the inside, Harriet wedged the boards back into place. Obviously she had used this hiding place before. On their bellies, they crawled under the building to a place near the center where a depression was carved out. It was large enough for their group to huddle in without being seen from the outside.

“They gone find us fo' sho' now,” grumbled Liza. “Them nigger dogs knows they work.”

“That's slave talk,” Harriet chided. “The man that owned you may have called you that, but you're a free negro now. If you don't start acting like one you'll be back in chains before we make it North.”

“We ain't makin' it nowhere when them dogs git up under here,” complained one of the older men. “They gone turn 'em loose on us and what don't get chewed off gone get whipped off later. There ain't no foolin them noses, they gone catch us.”

“There's no fooling those dogs, they're too good,” Harriet agreed. “But I ain't fooling the dogs. I'm fooling the hunters.” The sounds of singing and shouting suddenly died down, and the sounds of the dogs could be heard a short distance away. They were closing in on the Church quickly, the shouts of their handlers could already be heard in the distance. The sudden shuffling and stomping of feet on the floor above their heads suddenly drowned out the frightening sound of the slave hunters. The congregation was leaving the building, and the sounds of their laughter and shouting soon surrounded the building.

From the Church steps a gunshot rang out. “Nobody leaves!” a loud voice shouted. “We tracked some escaped slaves here and nobody leaves 'fore we find them.”

A calm voice replied “Those are mighty fine dogs, Sir. They led you right to the biggest gathering of slaves in the county. You may may have noticed that everyone here is a negro except you and me.”

“The preacher's right, Billy,” chimed in a low, deep drawl. “Them slaves give us the slip back up the road and them dogs just kept tracking nigger scent. Lord knows there's enough of it here, but none of these are the ones we're looking for.”

Another voice chimed in “It's Christmas eve, Billy. Let's git on back home, we already got a long ride ahead of us. There ain't no escaped slaves here. I can tell 'em by the look in their eye. They either look scared or proud, and none of these niggers has the look. I got my kids expecting me home tomorrow, escaped slaves or no escaped slaves.”

After a little more bickering, the gang loaded up their dogs on a wagon and headed back south on the road. The Pastor waited for them to get out of sight before calling the congregants back to the steps. “Brothers and Sisters,” he intoned solemnly, “somewhere out there in the cold, dark night there's people in need. They need our prayers tonight. We'll all go home to our family, maybe a fire and some food. They won't have anything but cold, fear, and hunger. Join me now as we pray for them.”

Liza listened quietly as the group prayed for them, seemingly unaware that they were in earshot. The voices seemed solemn -there were men and women, some even sounded like children. Liza wondered if the children were with their families. “I miss my Momma,” she whispered, not even realizing that she had spoken it.

“She'd be proud to know you are free,” whispered Harriet. “I know it must have hurt her to see you sold off South, being as young as you were.”

Liza's head drooped. “I remember that day like it was yesterday. They ripped me outta her arms and throwed me in the wagon. She was cryin' and I was a' bawlin' like a baby. I guess I was a baby. Ever since I felt like I ain't got nuthin in the world. I sho' do wish I could spend a Christmas with her, even if we didn't have nothin' to eat special.”

“I know it hurts, child, but all of it led to something good, you're free.”

Liza chuckled. “Free? I hope dis ain't what free is all about. We is hidin' here under a floor runnin' from dogs. We's cold and hungry. I don't feel free. I can't walk around like the ole' Massuh can. He's free to do what he want.”

Harriet shook her head. “Child, do you think that man is free? He beat you in a inch of your life for readin' the Bible. You know what else he done to you, and you so young. Don't you reckon he's got a price to pay for that? The lawd Jesus say that it would be better for him to have a rock tied round his neck and be throwed in the creek than to hurt you. That man won't never be free. The devil owns his soul and he don't even know it.”

Aware that the others were now listening, Harriet paused to let her point sink home. “Remember, baby child, tomorrow is Christmas. The lawd came down from heaven above to make us free. You think about that little baby layin' in an old barn full of animals. He was just like we is tonight -no home, his momma and daddy even had to run from ole King Herod.” From the darkness, Harriet could hear a few whisper “Amen.” As the prayers continued outside on the Church steps, Harriet took Liza by the hand. “Bein' free, child, is about what is in your heart. Jesus came and died to set you free. If you ain't free inside, you won't never be free outside.”

From the steps nearby, they heard the minister close the prayer. Through the silent, still night his final words rang out.

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”