Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/316



After dealing at some length with the question of slavery, Judge Reagan said in the course of his speech:

"Comrades, by the laws of nature I can, at most, be with you but a few years longer, and I feel it to be my duty to you and to posterity to make these statements of the facts of history, which vindicate us against the charge of being either rebels or traitors, and which show that we were not the authors of 'a cause-less war, brought about by ambitious leaders' but that our brave men fought and suffered and died, and our holy men of God prayed and our noble women suffered patiently and patriotically all the privations and horrors of a great war, cruelly forced upon us, for the purpose of upholding the constitution and laws of the United States, as preserving the rights of the several States to regulate their own domestic policies, and of protecting the people against spoliation and robbery by a dominant majority, some of whose numbers, because the Holy Bible sanctioned slavery, declared that they wanted an 'anti-slavery Bible and an anti-slavery God' and who because the constitution of the United States recognized and protected slavery, declared that it was a 'league with hell and a covenant with death.'

"Whatever may have been said in the past in the defense of the institution of slavery, and whatever my now be thought of the means by which it was abolished in this country, the spirit of the present age is against it and it has passed away, and I suppose no one wishes its restoration, if that were practicable. Certainly, I would not restore it if I had the power. I think it better for the black race that they are free, and I am sure it is better for the white race that there are no slaves.

"Some great Macauley of the future will tell these grand truths to posterity better and more forcibly than I can in this brief address, and will by reference to history, to the sacred