Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/70

 62 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Let us discard the old superstition that Heaven is revealed in the immediate results of "trial by combat." We know that the Christian civilization of the first centuries went down in the dark- ness of midiaeval times. We know that Paul was beheaded and Nero crowned, and Christ crucified. Our defeat was but another instance of " Truth on the scaffold, and wrong on the throne."

We know that the North succeeded because they mustered 2,500,000 men, and had the world to draw supplies from, while the South failed because she could not muster over 600,000 men all told, and v\as confined to her own territories for supplies.

Northern writers and speakers have attempted to show that the South plunged this country into desperate war for the purpose of perpetuating slavery. Do the facts of history sustain contention ? The colony of Virginia protested again and again to the King of England against sending slaves to her shores. The House of Burgesses enacted laws on twenty-three different occasions against the importation of slaves. The King of England vetoed each act. Then the people of Virginia petitioned the King to stop the traffic. He turned a deaf ear to the appeal. In 1832 the Legislature of Virginia came within one vote of passing a law of emancipation.

On page 88, Vol. I, of Henderson's Life of Stonewall Jackson, you will find an interesting letter written by General R. E. Lee, showing what he thought of slavery before the war. Dr. Hunter McGuire, in his able report on School Histories of the South, made to the Grand Camp of Virginia in 1899, states that Lee set free his slaves before the war began, while Grant retained his until freed by proclamation. Dr. McGuire also says in his report, that not one man in 30 of the Stonewall Brigade owned a slave. Of 80 men of my Company, 40 never owned a slave, nor did their fathers before them own one.

A Northern writer says : "Slavery was the cause of war, just as property is the cause of robbery."

If any man will read the debates between Lincoln and Douglas, just prior to the war, or the emancipation proclamation, he will see that slavery was not the cause of action, or its abolition his intent. Emancipation was a war measure, not affecting the border States.

Mr. Webster said at Capon Springs in 1851 : " I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refused to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of