and even in
Europe. More than ever the South was thrown on the defensive, and in
impassioned speeches Robert Toombs now glorified his state and his
section. Speaking at Emory College in 1853 he had already made an
extended apology for slavery;[1] speaking in the Georgia legislature on
the eve of secession he contended that the South had been driven to bay
by the Abolitionists and must now "expand or perish." A writer in the
_Southern Literary Messenger_,[2] in an article "The Black Race in North
America," made the astonishing statement that "the slavery of the black
race on this continent is the price America has paid for her liberty,
civil and religious, and, humanly speaking, these blessings would
have been unattainable without their aid." Benjamin M. Palmer, a
distinguished minister of New Orleans, in a widely quoted sermon in 1860
spoke of the peculiar trust that had been given to the South--to be the
guardians of the slaves, the conservers of the world's industry, and the
defenders of the cause of religion.[3] "The blooms upon Southern fields
gathered by black hands have fed the spindles and looms of Manchester
and Birmingham not less than of Lawrence and Lowell. Strike now a blow
at this system of labor and the world itself totters at the stroke.
Shall we permit that blow to fall? Do we not owe it to civilized man to
stand in the breach and stay the uplifted arm?... This trust we will
discharge in the face of the worst possible peril. Though war be the
aggregation of all evils, yet, should the madness of the hour appeal to
the arbitration of the sword, we will not shrink even from the baptism
of fire.... The position of the South is at this moment sublime. If
she has grace given her to know her hour, she will save herself, the
country, and the world."

[Footnote 1: See "An Oration delivered before the Few and Phi Gamma
Societies of Emory College: Slavery in the United States; its
consistency with republican institutions, and its effects upon the slave
and society. Augusta, Ga., 1853."]

[Footnote 2: November, 1855.]

[Footnote 3: "The Rights of the South defended in the Pulpits, by B.M.
Palmer, D.D., and W.T. Leacock, D.D., Mobile, 1860."]

All of this was very earnest and very eloquent, but also very mistaken,
and the general fallacy of the South's position was shown by no less a
man than he who afterwards became vice-president of the Confederacy.
Speaking in the Georgia legislature in opposition to the moti