The speaker went minutely into the outrages perpetrated by the Abolition
party. The list of oppressions had reach a crisis. Meanwhile the cotton
and the cane went on in Dixie land, to the weird ditties and the quaint
folk-lore of the happy-go-lucky race. So the outbreak of the war found
the American slave in the height of his prosperity, unmindful of
so-called wrongs, and utterly unfit for the boasted freedom that was
thrust upon him. The cruel decree was carried out, and millions of
helpless beings were turned adrift without rudder or compass, to bemoan
the loss of the good old times when they were provided with the comforts
of life they were nevermore to know. With the moral question of slavery
this paper has nothing to do. Facts, and facts alone, dictate the
record. But who has been, and who is now, the friend of the erstwhile
slave? The Northerner or the Southerner? Says one: "We have freed you,
but we don't want you." Says the other: "We did not free you, but we
will take you and make you comfortable. We love your people--you, who
have rocked us on your faithful breasts--who have interlarded our very
speech with your dialect, and who were our playmates in the joyous
days of youth. We have laid your hoary heads in honored graves, and
will treasure your memory till the final hour when death shall make all
men equal."






Secession

Read April 11, 1909