aching
its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to
the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union."

The best, most candid, conservative, and comprehensive statement
in explanation and vindication of the Confederate Constitution,
the purposes and objects of the nation and people to be governed
by and under it, is found in a speech of Vice-President Stephens
at Savannah, Georgia, delivered ten days (March 21, 1861) after
its adoption.

Here is a single extract:

"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating
questions relating to our peculiar institution--African slavery as
it exists among us--the proper status of the negro in our form of
civilization. _This was the immediate cause of the late rupture
and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated
this as the rock upon which the old Union would split_. He was
right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But
whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock
stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained
by him, and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the
formation of the old Constitution, were that the enslavement of
the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was
wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an
evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion
of the men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of
Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.
This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the
prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured
every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last,
and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional
guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the
day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested
upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an
error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a government
built upon it: when the 'storms came and the wind blew, it fell.'

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its
foundations are laid, _its corner stone rests upon the great truth
that the negro is not equal to the white man_. That slavery--
subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal
condition. This, our new government, is the first in the hist