D’A. For the liberty and honor of the south.
Brightly. Liberty and honor? The world very properly forgot both when the crusade ended. A country hampered with slavery and the arrogance of wealth, prating of liberty and honor!
D’A. Well, you have graduated at a school that can say even more.
Brightly. Honor is a bag of gas for the mouth. A presumptuous idea manufactured for the occasion.
D’A. Well?
Brightly. While driving a sharp bargain for a soul and body in a black hide, or speculating on deceptive conclusions, did you ever feel it?
D’A. I have done neither.
Brightly. I spoke of the custom of the country you defend.
D’A. Well?
Brightly. What is liberty? An unwanted, useless thing, stamped upon in every prosperous part of the country. Even the old cradle of our fabled liberty rocks for the benefit of the capitalist, who starves his brainless neighbor for the benefit of his vanity. I do not disagree with him. From the beginning, custom, law and tradition have said, it is to him that can. In nature, the large fish eat the smaller. The same of the birds and beasts. The world is a slave pen. Statutes never made a man free. Take in the boasted freedom and civilization of New England, are her working people more free than ours? Does the working man dare assert the rights of a freeman there? The hypocrisy of this presumption is manifest everywhere. The rich demand the servile submission of the poor, and they give it or starve! Be frank. Say that you fight to control for your pocket and stomach. Unite with the slaveholders of the north and shed no more aristocratic blood. Say he that works for another is a slave, and I am with you.