The States of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee were engaged in practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists.
George Lunt
(Massachusetts)
And if the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our enemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings. We were born to this social order, we had to do our duty in it according to our lights, and this duty was made indefinitely more difficult by the interference of those who, as we thought, could not understand the conditions of the problem, and who did not have to bear the expense of the experiments they proposed.
Basil L. Gildersleeve
Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s resolutions on the abolition of slavery introduced for extended debate in the Virginia Assembly, 1832
Alabama secedes, 1861
January Twelfth
We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil,
Fighting for our liberty, with treasure, blood, and toil.
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far:
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
Harry McCarthy
January Thirteenth