Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southerner apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance.

African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.

My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.

Let men not ask what the law requires, but give whatever freedom demands.

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.

The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise.

A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.