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A OAMPAIGK TRACT FOR 1864. 
 
 Extract from a Speech hy Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of 
 the Confederate States, delivered in the Secessio7i Convention of Georgia, 
 January, 1861. 
 
 This step, [the secession of Georgia,] once taken, can never be re- 
 called ; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must 
 follow, (as you will see,) will rest on the Convention for all comintr 
 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 harvests shall be trodden 
 down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweepino- over 
 our land ; our temples of justice laid in ashes ; all the horrors an'd des- 
 olations of war upon us — who but this Convention will be held re- 
 sponsible for it ? and who but him who shall have given his vote for 
 this unwise and ill-timed measure (as I honestly think and believe) 
 shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present gener- 
 ation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all comin<» 
 time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this 
 act you now propose to perpetrate ? 
 
 Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you 
 can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments — what 
 reasons you can give to your fellow- sufi"erers in the calamity that it will 
 bring upon us ? What reason can you give to the nations of the earth 
 to justify It ? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case ; and 
 to what cause, or one overt act, can you name or point, on which to 
 rest the plea of justification ? What right has the North assailed » 
 What interest of the South has been invaded ? What justice has been 
 djuied, and what claim, founded in justice and right, has been withheld ? 
 Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliber- 
 ately and purposely done by the government of Washington, of which 
 the South has a right to complain ? I challenge the answer ! While, 
 on the other hand, let me show the facts, (and believe me, gentlemen, f 
 am not here the advocate of the North ; but I am here the friend, the 
 firm friend and ioyer of the South and her institutions, and for this 
 reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every 
 other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness,) of which! wish 
 you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeni- 
 able, and Avhich now stand as records authentic in the history of our 
 country. 
 
 When we of the South demanded the slave trade, or the importation 
 of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they not yield the ri^ht 
 for twenty years ? When we asked a three-fifths representation in Con- 
 gress for our slaves, was it not granted ? When we asked and de- 
 manded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those 
 persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Con- 
 stitution, and again ratified and strengthened in the Fugitive Slave 
 Law of 1850 ? 
 
 But do you repljr, that in many instances they have violated this com- 
 pact, and have not been faithful to their engagements ! As individuals 
 and local communities they may have done so, but not by the sanction 
 
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 of government ; for that has always been true to Southern interests. 
 Again, gentlemen, look at another fact : When we have asked that more 
 territory should be added, that we might spread the institution of Sla- 
 very, have they not yielded to our demands in giving us Louisiana, 
 Florida, and Texas, out of Avhich four States have been carved, and 
 ample territory for four more to be added in due time, if you, by this 
 unwise and impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and, perhaps, by it 
 lose all, and have your last slave wrenched from you by stern military 
 rule, as South America and Mexico were ; or, by the vindictive decree 
 of a universal emancipation, which may reasonably be expected to 
 follow ! 
 
 But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change 
 of our relation to the general government ! We have always had the 
 control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we 
 have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the 
 South, as well as the control and management of most of those chosen 
 from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to 
 their twenty-four, thus controlling the Executive department. So of the 
 judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the Sovith, 
 and but eleven from the North ; although nearly four-fifths of the judi- 
 cial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a majority of the Court 
 has always been from the South. This we have required, so as to guard 
 against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In 
 like manner we have been equally w^atchful to guard our interests in 
 the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding 
 Presidents Q^ro tern.) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their 
 eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they 
 twelve. While the majority of the Representatives, from their greater 
 population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally 
 secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls 
 the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every 
 other department of the general government. Attorney-generals we 
 have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign minis- 
 ters, we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. AVhile three 
 fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is 
 clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet 
 we have had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world markets 
 for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar, on the best possible terms. We have 
 had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a 
 larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North 
 Equally so of clerks, auditors, and comptrollers filling the Executive 
 department ; the records show for the last fifty years, that of thi 
 three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two thirds ol 
 the same, while we have but one third of the white population of th 
 Republic. 
 
 Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a 
 great and vital interest ; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting 
 government. From official documents, we learn that a fraction over 
 three fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government 
 has uniformly been raised from the North. 
 
 Pause, now, while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and 
 candidly these important items. Look at another necessary branch of 
 government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in 
 that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we 
 
3 
 
 now enjoy under the general government, as it has been for years past. 
 The expense for the transportation of the mail in the Free States was, by 
 the report of the Postmaster General for the year 1860, a little over 
 $13,000,000, while the income Avas $19,000,000. But in the Slave 
 States, the transportation of the mail was $1-1,716,000, while the reve- 
 nue from the same was $8,001,026, leaving a deficit of $0,115,735 to 
 be supplied by the North for our accommodation, and without it we 
 must have been entirely cut off from this most essential branch of gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars 
 you must expend in a war with the North, with tens of thousands of 
 your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon 
 the altar of your ambition , — and for what, we ask again ? Is it for 
 the overthrow of the American government, established by our com- 
 mon ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and 
 founded on the broad principles of Right, Justice, and Humanity f And, 
 as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which 
 has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen 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 mos^ lenient in its 
 measures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men , 
 that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. 
 
 Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, 
 under Avhich we have lived for -more than three quarters of a century — 
 in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our do- 
 mestic safety while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and 
 tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unas- 
 sailed — is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can. 
 neither lend my sanction nor my vote. 
 
 Barnwell Rhett, in the Secession Convention of South Carolina, 
 said : " The secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day. It 
 is not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, nor by the non-execution of 
 the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head 
 
 for THIRTY YEARS." 
 
 Mr, Keitt, in the same Convention, said : <*I have been engaged in 
 this great secession movement ever since I entered political life." 
 
 Mr. Inglis, another member of the Convention, said : "Most of us 
 have had this matter of secession under consideration for at least 
 twenty years." 
 
 Mr. Parker, also in the same Convention, said: ''This secession 
 movement is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us, but 
 it has been gathering head for a long series of years." 
 
 Kev. Mr. Prentiss, in a sermon preached at St. Peter's Church, 
 Charleston, S. C, Dec, 1860, said: "The United States government is 
 about to be destroyed, and another is to be built upon its ruins. That 
 Slavery is a Christian institution, and the slave trade a Christian duty, is 
 the one idea that underlies our secession and revolutionary movement, 
 and the sooner the whole people. North and South, understand this 
 fact, the better for us all. No compromise, no adjustment will satisfy 
 the South which does not secure absolute protection and permanence to 
 Slavery and the slave trade,, and permit its unlimited expansion." 
 
Preston Brooks, before his constituents, in justification of his attempt 
 to assassinate Charles Sumner, said : " The issue is upon us, How can 
 we sustain, perpetuate, and extend sLavery ? The only way to meet this 
 issue is, just to tear the Constitution to shreds, trample it under our 
 feet, and form a Southern Confederacy, every State of which shall be a 
 Slave-holding State. Our only hope in the support of Slavery is in the 
 destruction of the Federal Government. I would not have an officer in 
 our new Confederacy who would not swear that slavery is right. Let 
 the slaveholders of the South rise above the constitution and laws, take 
 the power into their own hands, and lay their strong arm upon the treas- 
 ury and archives of the Federal Government." 
 
 Alexander II. Stephens, in March, 1854, said of the North in the 
 House of Representatives, in a debate in regard to Kansas: "Well, 
 gentlemen, you make a good deal of clamor over this Kansas affair, but 
 it don't alarm us. You have often threatened but you have never ;jer- 
 formed. You always caved in, and you M'ill do so again. We have got 
 you in ottr jJOiver . You must submit to the yoke. Don't be so imjmtient as 
 to comjjiain : you tcill only be sla2iped in the face. Don't resist : you tvill 
 only be lashed into obedience." 
 
 Hon. L. W. Spratt, speaking of the American Republic and the 
 Southern Confederacy, in the Charleston Mercury, and showing the 
 difference between them, says: "The one embodies in its political 
 structure the principle that equality is the right of man, the other that 
 It is the right of equals only. The one embodying the principle that 
 equality is the right of man, expands on the horizontal plane of pure 
 democracy; the other, embodying the principle that it is not the right 
 of man but of equals only, has taken to itself the rounded form of a 
 social aristocracy. In the one there is hired labor, in the other slave labor; 
 in the one labor is voluntary, in the other labor is itivohmtary. In the 
 labor of the one there is the elective franchise, in the other there is not. 
 In the one, the power of government is with the loicer (laboring) class ; 
 in the other, with the upper (non-laboring) class. In the one the reins 
 of government come from the heels, in the other, from the head of society. 
 In the one, the laborer has the power to rise and to dispose of the fruits of 
 his labor, and thus the ship of state is turned bottom upwards. In the 
 other, the laborer has no power of rising, and the ship of state is bal- 
 anced by a disfranchised class. The contest between these two states is 
 inevitable. The principle that " all men are equal" (in natural rights) 
 is destructive of Slavery at the South." 
 
 A Democratic paper, in South Carolina, in 1856, said: "The 
 theory of free government is a delusion. Slavery is the 7iatural and 
 normal condition of the laboring man — white or black.." 
 
 The Richmond Enquirer, (the organ of Jeff. Davis & Co.,) says: 
 <'The laws of all the Southern States justify the holding of white men 
 in Slavery. The principle of Slavery is right in itself, and does not 
 depend on difference of complexion." 
 
 Who, then, is responsible for this War ? AVhere is the hope of peace 
 except in crushing Slavery and the Rebellion ? The simple issue is, — 
 Shall the North be subjugated to Slavery and Slave Labor, or 
 the South to Freedom and Free Labor? 
 

 
 
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