"If gentlemen do not see or feel the evil of slavery whilst the Federal Union lasts, they will see and feel it when it is gone; they will see and suffer it then in a magnitude of desolating power to which 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness' would be a blessing."
Referring to the protection afforded slavery by the Federal Constitution, he said:
"Withdraw but the protecting energies of that instrument and be the associations into which we shall be thrown what they may—whether directed by judgment or caprice—our distinct character as a slaveholding people will still be left—we shall still hold a separate and adversary interest but hold it under circumstances of aggravated evil, as the existence of it will disqualify us for defense in the very degree in which it will expose us to foreign hostility and wrong."[[333]]
Robert E. Lee, referring to the same subject, wrote,
"The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the North, as you say. I feel the aggression and am willing to take every proper step for redress.... But I can anticipate no greater calamity than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything, but honor, for its preservation."[[334]]
George W. Summers, speaking in the Virginia Convention of 1861, said:
"What has Virginia to gain by secession and separate action? Nothing on the territorial question but lose everything. On the fugitive slave question, she could make no treaties with the North or with England. In relation to the institution of slavery, which I consider morally, socially and politically right, she will lose the present protection and be exposed to border incursions from a foreign government."[[335]]
John S. Carlile, speaking in the same convention, said:
"I have been a slaveholder from the time I've been able to buy a slave. I have been a slaveholder not by inheritance but by purchase; and I believe that slavery is a social, political and religious blessing.... How long, if you were to dissolve this Union—if you were to separate the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding states, would African slavery have a foothold in this portion of the land? I venture the assertion that it would not exist in Virginia five years after the separation; and nowhere in the Southern States twenty years after. How could it maintain itself, with the whole civilized world, backed by what they call their international law, arrayed for its ultimate extinction with this North, which is now bound to stand by us and to protect slavery, opposed to us?... And now, Mr. President! in the name of our illustrious dead, in the name of all the living, in the name of millions yet unborn, I protest against this wicked effort to destroy the fairest and freest government on the earth."[[336]]
CIVIL WAR WOULD AID EMANCIPATION