y? I must declare to you here, as I have
often done before, and it has also been declared by the greatest and
wisest statesmen and patriots of this and other lands, that the American
Government is the best and freest of all governments, the most equal in
its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its
measures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race
of men that the sun of heaven ever shone upon.

Now for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this under
which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century, in which
we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety
while the elements of peril are around us with peace and tranquility
accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed is the
height of madness, folly and wickedness to which I will neither lend my
sanction nor my vote.

This is one of the most eloquent appeals recorded on the pages of
history, and had Mr. Stephens carried out his first intention as
expressed, "I will neither lend my sanction nor my vote," in his
subsequent career during that war he had so eloquently and prophetically
depicted, he would to-day not only be recognized as one of the ablest
and most brilliant of orators as he is known, but would have stamped his
life as a consistent and constant legislator which is so laudable in any
man. But only a month later, after delivering the great speech at
Milledgeville in defense of the Union he accepted one of the chief
offices in the Confederacy, and began to perpetrate the very wrongs he
had so vehemently deplored, seeking by speeches innumerable to overthrow
that government he had so eloquently eulogized.

At Savannah he spoke something as follows: "The new constitution has put
to rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar
institutions--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 the present revolution. Jefferson in his
forecast had anticipated this as the rock upon which the old Union would
split. 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 to the laws of
nature; that it was wrong in principle socially, morally and
politically."

"Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite i