Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/253

 Address of Colonel Edward McCrady, Jr. 247

which differences the war was inevitable from the foundation of our government, did but turn.

That it was not slavery in itself for which we fought, is shown by the thousands and thousands of volunteers who owned no slaves, and yet who were the first to hasten into our ranks. Take the instance of our own State. The census cf 1860 shows that there were but 26,701 slaveholders in South Carolina, and yet she gave 44,000 vol- unteers during the first eighteen months of the war. Supposing, then, that every slaveholder went into the service, we would have over 17,000 volunteers from the State who owned no slaves. But as you and I, my comrades, well know, the slaveholders, as a class, were by no means more prompt in offering their services than those who did not own slaves ; and, you recollect, there was a provision in the Conscript Act actually exempting from service those who owned and worked a certain number of slaves. I think we may safely assume that two-thirds of the volunteers owned no slaves.

I say it was not for slavery for which we fought, but that it was for the sovereignty of our State and for the supremacy of our race. The instinct of our people felt that the one was involved in the other.

We fought for State's rights and State's sovereignty as a political principle. We fought for the State of South Carolina, wilh a loyal love that no personal sovereign has ever aroused. But more, you and I, my comrades, whether owning slaves or not, could not but foresee, wilh the conviction of certainty, the calamities that would, that must follow, that have followed the emancipation of the negro by the fanatical party which, by a mere minority of votes, obtained posses- sion of the government in 1860. We of this generation had no part in the establishment of slavery in this country as early as 1741 South Carolina unsuccessfully endeavored to check the importation of slaves with which the mother country was crowding the province ; but we were born to the question : what was to be done with an institution which we had inherited from England, which had been augmented by the casting off the slaves of the North upon the South ? Northern philanthropists who had sent and sold their slaves to the South might safely, if not honestly, advocate their emancipation. But with us the question was not only as to the positive good or evil of the institu- tion, but what would the negro be, and what would we do with him, and what would he do to us if freed ?

Had slavery never existed, I believe the war between the two sec- tions of this country was inevitable, and, as we know, had all but commenced in 1832 ; while on the other hand its existence rendered