"While the agitation for reopening the African slave trade seemed growing, Northern sentiment was aghast at the thought that the traffic might already reach significant proportions. In this spring of i859 the Southern Commercial Convention, meeting at Vicksburg, significantly reversed its stand on the subject. It voted three to one for the repeal of all laws prohibiting the foreign slave trade, State or Federal, and some members were hot for a declaration that the Federal prohibitions ought to be flouted as unconstitutional." The convention had no sooner adjourned than an African Labor Supply Association, with the tireless De Bow as president, was organized to conduct a crusade for repeal.
Additional journals, such as the Richmond Whig, were demanding a renewal of the trade. Yancey and De Bow, in a widely publicized correspondence, called for the removal of the Act of 1810 from the statute books, for the government, declared Yancey, "should have no concern with slavery except to protect it."
Although part of this might be bravado, a deeper significance had to be attached to speeches of the most eminent Southern leaders. Alexander H. Stephens, retiring from Congress and, as he thought, from all public life, was tendered an impressive dinner at Augusta this summer. In his carefully prepared speech he asserted that the revival of the slave trade might be considered a necessity if the institutions of the South were to expand. States could not be made without people, and slave States could not be made without Negroes; unless the South had more Africans, it could not colonize more territory and might as well give up its race with the North. In the same month (July, 1859) Jefferson Davis made a defiant address to the Democratic State Convention at Jackson, Mississippi. He pronounced the law of 1820 insulting to the South, and added that he deemed it unconstitutional. It would be best, he thought, to leave the importation of Africans to the decision of the various States; he would oppose it for Mississippi, but other States might do as they pleased. What had been the result of the Federal law? "it has magnified the horrors of the middle passage; it has led to an alliance with Great Britain, by which we are bound to keep a naval squadron on the deadly coast of Africa....under the false plea of humanity; it has destroyed a lucrative trade for ivory, oil, and gold dust."
-"The Emergence Of Lincoln" p. 33 by Allen Nevins
N/S, do you know why you don't get a rise when you excoriate J. Davis?
The problem my damn Yankee friend, is that Lincoln's words live and breathe and animate and inspire. The words of Davis are as dead as he is -- they are as dead now as when he was living.
Lincoln is attacked by these sorry neo-reb sumbucks -- because he matters.
LONG LIVE THE UNITED STATES AND SUCCESS TO THE MARINES!
Walt