States had then joined the rebel
Confederacy. Most of these States were opposed to the reopening of the
African slave trade from principle and sentiment. The material interests
of Virginia were strongly opposed to it. The staple product of Virginia
was slaves. She lived only by breeding negroes for the market of the
slave-consuming States of the Lower South. To reopen the African slave
trade would destroy the profits of her great staple. The price of
negroes would go down from _one thousand_ dollars to _two hundred_. It
was well known, however, that there had been for several years a clamor
in the Lower States for the repeal of the law of the Union prohibiting
the African slave trade, that the determination to have the trade
reopened '_in the Union or out of the Union_' had been publicly
proclaimed in South Carolina, and that the matter of demanding it from
the Congress of the Union had been before the Legislature of that State,
on the recommendation of the Governor, three or four years before the
breaking out of the rebellion.

Under these circumstances the rebel Constitution was framed. And however
important to the slave-buying interest of its framers and of the people
they assumed to represent, the opening of the African slave trade may
have been felt to be, it was felt to be far more important at that
crisis to secure the accession of Virginia and the Border States to the
rebel cause by prohibiting it. Hence the adoption of the article you
refer to without quoting, and of the next very significant article,
which you neither quote nor refer to: '_Congress shall also have power
to prohibit the importation of slaves from any State not a member of
this Confederacy._' The first of these articles, prohibiting the African
slave trade, is a guarantee to the interests of the slave breeders if
they join the Confederacy; and the second a threat, that if they do not
join it, they may have no benefit from the prohibition in the first. Yet
knowing all this, or bound to know it, you represent the prohibition of
the African slave trade in the rebel Constitution as a 'clear
repudiation' of the idea of slavery being intended to be a fundamental
institution under their Government! Shame on you! It is a thousand miles
away from having any such meaning or purpose; and I confess I am utterly
unable to conceive how any man of decent intelligence could in good
faith make the representation you do. _Suppressio veri, allegatio
falsi._

Bes