Yancey (s.) explained his course in the Southern Commercial Conventions in preceding years when he had advocated the repeal of the laws against the slave trade. He thought that the laws of Congress defining the slave trade as piracy placed a stigma on the institution, condemned it from the point of view of the government, and thus violated the spirit of the Constitution by discriminating against the South. He did not then advocate the reopening of the slave trade, nor would he do so at this time. For two reasons he insisted that the Confederate Congress should prohibit the slave trade: (1) already there were as many slaves as were needed; (2) to induce the border states to enter the Confederacy. Dowdell (s.) of Chambers proposed an amendment to the ordinance of prohibition, declaring that slavery was a moral, social, and political blessing, and that any attempt to hinder its expansion should be opposed. He opposed reopening the slave trade, though he considered that there was no moral distinction between slavery and the slave trade. The border states, he said, need not be encouraged by declarations of policy; they would join the Confederacy anyway. Slavery might be regulated by Congress, but should not be prohibited by organic law. He expressed a wish that he might never see the day when white immigration would drive out slave labor and take its place, nor did he want social or political inequality among white people whom he believed should be kept free, independent, and equal, recognizing no subordinate except those made as such by God. The legislature, he thought, should be left to deal with the evil of white immigration from the North, so that the southern people might be kept a slaveholding people. But, he asked, can that be done with slaves at $1000 a head? And must the hands of the people be tied because a fantastical outside world says that slavery and the slave trade are morally wrong? Watts (s.) of Montgomery proposed that the Confederacy be given power to prohibit the importation of slaves from any place. Smith (c.) of Tuscaloosa said that the proposal of Watts was a threat against the border states, which would lose their slave market unless they joined the Confederacy; that the border states must be kept friendly, a bulwark against the North. A resolution was finally passed to the effect that the people of Alabama were opposed, for reasons of public policy, to reopening the slave trade, and the state's delegates in Congress were instructed to insist on the prohibition. The debates show clearly the feeling of the delegates that, on the slavery question, the rest of the world was against them, and hence, as a measure of expediency, they were in favor of prohibiting the trade. Some wished to have all the whites finally become slaveholders; others believed that the negroes were the economic and social enemies of the whites, and they wanted no more of them. But all agreed that slavery was a good thing for the negro.