In the mystic web of human society, slavery has been interwoven from the remotest ages—it dwelt in the tents of the early patriarchs.  It existed by the shores of the Nile when the Pyramids were young, and amidst the pastoral scenes of the earthly Canaan.  It was an institution of the Jewish commonwealth and the republics of Greece and Rome.  It was sanctioned alike by the law of Jehovah enunciated amid the sublimities of Sinai, and by the codes of Greece and Rome. When we trace it back to its beginnings, it is found in intimate association with the world’s earliest civilization, walking hand in hand with the arts, the sciences, and literature, which have adorned and dignified humanity, the servitor and indissoluble companion of human progress.

No nation of the ancient world which rose to any high degree of intellectual development, or left an enduring impress on human history or human mind, can be pointed out, in which slavery did not exist.  It was the broad and massive foundation of the resplendent superstructure of ancient civilization.  It was the substructure of all those societies which, in ancient times were ennobled by philosophy, and letters, and contributed to the advancement of the arts and sciences.

If we are warranted by the evidence of history in saying that but for slavery it is not probable we would have inherited the rich intelectual legacy which the ancient world bequeathed to the modern, and to which we are chiefly indebted for what of literary and scientific progress we of the present age can boast.  It is the opinion of the most profound philosophical historians that to the serfdom of the feudal system, modern Europe chiefly owes its peculiar civilization.  It was upon the soil of slavery that civilization grew [?????] into the consummate flower whose beautiful fragrance we now enjoy.

Not less favorable has slavery been to human freedom than to intellectual development and social progress.  It was in the slaveholding republics of antiquity that liberty flourished through many centuries, while despotism overshadowed the rest of the world.  It was slaveholding America that in modern times presented the first example of republican freedom.  And here in the slaveholding South is found the last refuge and home of rational and constitutional liberty on the Western continent.  The philosophical mind of Burke recognized the intimate connection between slavery and freedom, when be offered that eloquent vindication of the institution, in reply to those who alleged that it would be found an element of weakness in the American colonies, then struggling for independence.

Slavery imparts an elevated tone to society.  It fosters the manly and heroic virtues.  It is the conservator of common sense, and the enemy of fanaticism.  It develops a higher and purer civilization than can be attained by a society denied its elevating influences.  The present war has forced the civilized world to admit these beneficent results of the institution, which Burke pointed out nearly a century ago, and to materially modify its opinions on the subject.  The noble, heroic and magnaminous qualities displayed by the Southern people in this struggle for independence, have extorted the admiration of mankind, and convinced the most prejudiced opponents of slavery in the old world that they have been entirely mistaken as to its effects upon the character of a nation.

Nor is slavery exclusively beneficial to the dominant class.  On the contrary, it is a greater blessing to the slave than to the master.  It is the best possible condition for the negro.  It is that for which he was fitted by nature and nature's God.  The prophetic curse pronounced upon the posterity of Ham was in reality a blessing in disguise.  Slavery in this country has elevated the negro from the savage and brutalized condition in which he is found in Africa, to the enjoyment of the blessings of Christianity, and that measure of intelligence and civilization of which he is capable.  It is gradually bringing him up to the level of the Caucasian race, and fitting him to become the civilizer and regenerator of his own continent.  It is the star of hope to Africa, the harbinger of her redemption from immemorial barbarism.  In the mysterious providence of God, it seems to have been ordained as the means by which the Light of Christianity and civilization is to be ultimately diffused over that benighted continent.

Viewed in its economic results, the institution has been equally beneficial.  It created the wonderful and unexampled prosperity of the former United States, and, especially of New England, now so fanatically hostile to its continuance.  It developed the agricultural wealth of the South.  It gave to the old Union those great crops—the cotton, the tobacco and rice—which fed its growing commerce until it rivalled that of the mistress of the seas.  It was the great source of the boasted wealth of the North, now suicidally employed for its destruction.  But for slavery the Union would not, in less than a century, have outstripped the oldest nations of Europe in wealth and power, and become the envy and admiration of the world.

It was well said by Vice President Stephens that slavery is the corner stone of this Confederacy.  It is the foundation of both the prosperity and civilization of the South.  Interwoven with her whole social structure, her. habits, our wits, and interests, the institution of slavery is vital to her—to her wealth, her happiness and freedom.  The fate of Jamaica, blighted and desolated by the cause of emancipation, warns us of the doom which awaits the South should the abolitionists succeed in their wicked and impious effort to uproot an institution planted by the prudence and sanctioned by the law of an All wise God.

Our enemies, utterly reck1ess of consequences, and prompted only by blind hate and unreasoning fanaticism, are waging this war for the destruction of slavery.  Their success would inflect incalcuable injury on the black as well as the white race of the South.  It is astonishing that the people of the North should be willing to turn Ioose upon the country four and a half millions of slaves, when they regard a free negro population as an intolerable nuisance, against which they guard themselves, by State legislation, and which they are unwilling to endure. (It only shows that the hateful influence of fanaticism has extinguished both common sense and statesmanship at the North.)