"But our chance of success is not the real question before us. It is a bigger one. The question before you is bigger than the South. It is bigger than the Republic. It is bigger than the Continent. It may involve the future of civilization.
"The employment of these negro troops, clothed in the uniform of the Union, marks the lowest tide mud to which its citizenship has ever sunk. The profoundest word in history is race. The ancestral soul of a people rules its destiny. What is the ancestral soul of the negro? The measurement of the skull of the Egyptian is exactly the shape and size of six thousand years ago. Has the negro moved upward? This republic was born of the soul of a race of pioneer white freemen who settled our continent and built an altar within its Forest Cathedral to Liberty and Progress. In the record of man has a negro ever dreamed this dream?
"The Roman Republic fell and Rome became a degenerate Empire. Why? Because of the lowering of her racial stock by slaves. The decline of the Roman spirit was due to a mixture of races. The flower of her manhood died on her far-flung battle lines. Slaves and degenerates at home bred her future citizens.
"Have we also placed our feet on the path of oblivion? History is littered with the wrecks of civilization. And always the secret is found in racial degeneracy—the lowering of the standard of racial values. Civilization is a name—an effect. Race is the cause. If a race maintains its soul, it must remain itself and it must breed its best. Race is the result of thousands of years of this selection. One drop of negro blood makes a negro. The inferior can always blot out the superior if granted equality.
"This uniform is the first step toward racial oblivion for the white man in America. It is the first step toward equality. A people of half breeds have no soul. They are always ungovernable. The negro is the lowest species of man. Through Slavery he has been disciplined into the family of humanity. We cannot yet grant him equality. Abraham Lincoln who has consented to arm these blacks against us has himself said:
"'There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid them living together on terms of political or social equality.'
"How can he prevent social and political equality once these black men are clothed with the dignity of the uniform of a Nation? He has declared his intention of colonizing the negro race. General Lee also holds this as the solution. If Slavery falls, it is the only solution.
"In the meantime we hold fast to the faith within us. Dare to arm a negro, drill and teach him to kill white men, and we are traitors to country, traitors to humanity, traitors to civilization. Robert E. Lee himself is the supreme contradiction of the sentimental mush involved in the dogma of equality. His genius and character is a racial product.
"The man in gray stands for two things, Reverence for Law and the Racial
Supremacy of the White Man.
"If we must clothe negroes in gray to save the Confederacy, let it go down in blood and ashes. We'll stand for this. And hand our ideal down to our children. If defeat shall come, we may yet live to save the Republic. We hold a message for Humanity."