acknowledge that the proud structure of southern society was wholly builded upon sands. The rains descended and the floods beat, and we saw the great fall. Of course we must admit that had our leaders been endowed with unerring prescience they ought to have warned us, and striven heart and soul for compensated emancipation. I need merely allude to State sovereignty, treated fully above. We of the south now see that though in advocating it we showed that the fathers were with us, and thus got the better of the argument, yet that the north was right in historical fact, and right also as to the true interest and welfare of America. Thus I have indicated some important acknowledgments which we of the south must make to our brothers of the north. Now I must state some that they must make to us. The root-and-branch abolitionists and many following their lead interpreted the statement in the declaration of independence that all men are created equal and with inalienable liberty as both intentional and actual condemnation of the slavery then existing in our country. They shut their eyes to the significant fact that the same document published to the world, as one of the causes justifying the solemn act therein proclaimed, that the king had "excited domestic insurrections amongst us"; which means he had instigated the slaves to rise against their masters. Many of the signers owned slaves then and to the end of their lives afterwards. Palpably the declaration did not mean to say that the negroes in America were unjustly held in slavery, but did mean to say that inciting them--as John Brown with the approval of Phillips, Garrison, and such, afterwards sought to do--to gain their liberty by insurrection was inhuman and atrocious. These root-and-branch abolitionists confidently alleged that slavery in America was proscribed by the christian religion. Yet Jesus, the founder, who definitely reprehended every particular sin, never once denounced slavery. Paul, or some one else, whom the canon accepts as speaking with the authority of Jesus, says: "All who are in the position of slaves should regard their masters as deserving of the greatest respect, so that the name of God, and our teaching may not be maligned. Those who have christian masters should not think less of them because they are brothers, but on the contrary they should serve them all the better, because those who are to benefit by their good work are dear to them as their fellow-christians. Those are the things to insist upon in your teaching. Any one who teaches otherwise, and refuses his assent to sound instruction--_the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ_--and to the teaching of religion, is puffed up with conceit, not really knowing anything, but having a morbid craving for discussions and arguments."[146]