Said Mr. Parker:—
"It is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us; it has been gradually culminating for a long period of thirty years. At last it has come to that point where one may say the matter is entirely right."
"I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life," said Lawrence M. Keitt.
"It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It has been a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years," said R. Barnwell Rhett.
It was the fire of 1832 flaming anew. No rights had been invaded. That Secession was inaugurated without cause must ever be the verdict of history. And history will forever hold John C. Calhoun, R. Barnwell Rhett, Right Rev. Bishop Elliott, Rev. Dr. Thornwell, and other statesmen, editors, ministers,—members of the slaveholding forum, bar, and pulpit,—responsible for all the suffering, bloodshed, and desolation which have come to the country.
Proud in spirit was South Carolina just then. The cotton crop was luxuriant. Planters were plethoric with money. The internal slave-trade established its marts of human flesh all through the South. Virginia became slave-breeding, and South Carolina slave-consuming. In former years slavery was deemed an evil, a curse; but the call for cotton, its rise in market value, with increased profit of culture and a consequent demand for labor, transformed it into a blessing, to be perpetuated for the best good of the human race.
It was found to be in perfect accordance with the teachings of the Bible. The system itself was right; the abuse of the good was only evil. Rev. Dr. Thornwell, Professor of Theology in the Presbyterian Seminary at Columbia, came boldly forward to advocate slavery as a Divine institution, ordained of God for the welfare of the human race. He preached thus:—
"Our slaves are our solemn trust, and while we have a right to use and direct their labors, we are bound to feed, clothe, and protect them, to give them the comforts of this life, and to introduce them to the hope of a blessed immortality. They are moral beings, and it will be found that in the culture of their moral nature we reap the largest reward from their service. The relation itself is moral, and in the tender affections and endearing sympathies it evokes it gives scope for the most attractive graces of human character. Strange as it may sound to those who are not familiar with the system, slavery is a school of virtue, and no class of men have furnished sublimer instances of heroic devotion than slaves in their loyalty and love to their masters. We have seen them rejoice at the cradle of the infant, and weep at the bier of the dead; and there are few among us who have not drawn their nourishment from their generous breasts."[81]
Such was the teaching from those who called themselves appointed of God to preach the Gospel of purity and peace. Church and State, morals and religion, everything that could give strength and respectability to their cause, were brought in to aid the work of the conspirators. So thorough were the teachings, that South Carolina became almost a unit on the question of Secession.
The people of the South charge the Union army with desecrating their church edifices. Is it a wonder that soldiers, reasoning from cause to effect, concluded that the religion which was foremost in precipitating a Rebellion which sustained such an inhuman system was not worth serious consideration? Is it a wonder that, after experiencing the horrors of Rebel prisons, they lost reverence for a religion which could uphold a government guilty of such fiendish cruelties?