Letter to Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, March 20, 1865

1st. Negro slavery, to both the white and red man, exists and has existed, by God's own law and appointment, from the days of Noah---of Shem, Ham and Japhet---to the present hour. See 9th Ch. Genesis, vs. 25, 26, 27:---25th Ch. Leviticus, 39th to 55th vs., where the distinction between *hired* servants---or the servitude of one equal to another---and the perpetual slavery of the negro (Canaanitish heathen) is made so plain that the "way-faring man, though a fool," cannot fail to see it. See also, the books of Samuel, Judges, Kings and Ezekiel---1st Timothy, Ch 6 vs 1 to 6---and other Apostles on the same subject. And, finally, read the 14th and 15th verses of the 6th Chapter of Revelations, where it will be seen that when the world passes away as a scroll with kings and mighty men, there will also be BONDMEN (slaves) as well as freemen to hide "themselves in the dens and rocks of the mountains." In every part of the bible, as all translations agree, the terms "bondman" and "bond servant" mean *slaves*, as contradistinguished from hired, or temporary servants. These are old truths---old as the written word of God---true as the gospel. From the establishment of the independence of the old thirteen United States, however, the monarchies of Great Britain and their dupes, the fanatical Puritans of New England have deluged this country, North and South, with infidel tirades against slavery---ignoring the plainest bible truths, and trampling under their impious feet the wisest monuments of God, in his provisions for the political government and temporal welfare of man. These long hidden truths have been in the process of exhumation since about the year 1835. The Confederate States, the pioneers in the process, now ackowledge their efficacy and their divine origin. They had taken hold in good soil, in the North, Great Britain, and France before this war began, and were steadily gaining ground. Since the war the eyes of all Europe have been drawn to them, and their growth has been almost as rapid as sympathy for our cause, and admiration of the unparalleled heroism of our soldiers in the field. The rising generation in these countries, as infidel politico-philosophers pass away, will accept them as the living, unrepealed word of God, and anti-negro-slavery infidelity will pass away, as its twin sister, French Jacobinism has passed away, only to be remembered with horror. God will not permit destruction of this beneficent institution, while warm and tropical countries exist in America, Africa or elsewhere, to be cultivated by negro slaves, under the white or red man's control. It will exist, as seen from the isle of Patmost, by St. John, the best beloved of our Savior, till the world shall pass away as a scroll. And in so far as the Yankees steal, kill, and by disease and starvation, destroy these members of our Abrahamic households, they are only paving the way for the importation of more from the forty millions of heathen negro slaves in Africa, now writhing in naked wretchedness under the bastinadoes of their savage negro monsters. Yankee ships, with their accustomed hypocrisy in search of the almighty dollar, will be first to engage in this trade, provided we should ever descend so low as to permit them to pollute, by their touch, anything destined for our country.

2d. If we would be true and faithful to the defenders of our liberty---the great mass of non-slaveholding men in our army and their families at home---we must at all hazards and to the last extremity preserve this Bible ordained institution. For upon its continued existence depends the liberty-- or as the Texas declaration of 1861 expresses it, the ''Equal, Civil and political rights"---of the poor white man with those of the rich. This is the chief cornerstone of a truth that should be the foundation of the political faith of every man and every woman who desires to perpetuate in these Confederate States vital, soul-inspiring liberty to all white men---rich and poor---learned and unlearned---halt and lame. The preservation of our republican governments, State and Confederate, with political and civil equality of rights to all of our own race, depends upon the preservation of negro slavery. Destroy that admirable system, to say nothing of the many other terrible calamities to follow, and, as certain as water flows downwards, the poor white man, his wife, sons and daughters, will be forced here with us, as they are now and have been in every populated country since history began, to become the slaves of the rich. Look at Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia---all of Europe---look into the great East---look even at the old States of Yankeedom, the first settlement of which is but 245 years old---and see the condition of the toiling, down trodden millions, slaves to all interests and purposes to the pampered and titled of their own labor and blood! It is a law from which no people, after passing their infantile existence on new and cheap land have ever escaped, excepting those who have enslaved a different race. For one, much as I loathe the present character of its people, I earnestly pray the North may resume and preserve its liberty after this war is over. This it may do in a limited sense, by making wealth or property the passport to the ballot box, to office, to political power. This, as in England, may give liberty and a high state of development to the rich, but as in England, it will dethrone and grind to powder, the laboring millions. This condition---absolute monarchy---or disintegrating monarchy---is to be the future of the North. One of the three postulates is inevitable. Republican liberty, with equality of civil and political rights, in the absence of negro slavery, is to them an impossibility. The poison is in the system. The moment this war is over and they have no distant South to divert their attention, the poison will rapidly manifest its dormant power---and then---history a century hence, will record the sad result.

Mr. Editor, it is my fortune, to be poor, and practically a non-slaveholder. I have sons and daughters, the jewels of my heart. With the institution of negro slavery preserved, I could die and feel that I was leaving them, however little property, a rich legacy, liberty, equality with the first in the land, in political rights, in civil rights and, as belonging to the sovereigns, the nobles, the rulers---in a word, to the white race of the land---in the high road to the rich mine of self-respect, of happiness and religion of our Savior, unpolluted by the infidelisms of France, Germany, England or the United States of the North. The institution destroyed, and I should die, as dies the poor father of white slavery countries, agonising in the conviction that my children and my children's children were doomed to the bidding, mayhaps, of some bloated, purse-proud, heartless Sir Hudson Lowe, or Beast Butler---an English noble fool, or a Yankee blood sucker.

This war, to the astonishment of the world in general and the Yankees in particular, has demonstrated the extraordinary powers of a slaveholding country, under the most adverse circumstances. It has triumphantly refuted the sophisms, the speculations the slanders and the ravings of English and Yankee abolitionists from 1783 to 1865, 82 years, from Wilberforce, the tool of English despotism, the enemy of negro and the friend of white slavery, down the stream of time, to his vile, traitorous disciples, Andy Johnson and W.G. Brownlow. It has vindicated the memory of the Catholic Bishop England, the Presbyterians Ross and Stringfellow, the Methodist President Smith, the Baptist Dr. Fuller, the Episcopal Hopkins, the philospher Bledsoe, the illustrious Calhoun, and all the bright galaxy of eminent men, who from 12 to 30 years ago, ventured in the face of a frowning misled world, to take up the gauntlet of truth and defend negro slavery, morally, socially and politically. It has, by its ennobling inspirations, elevated our countrymen, despite contumely and immense opposition, as well from within as without, to be, as a mass, the most liberal, enlightened, humane, magnanimous, courageous and Christian people on earth, and our women---the mothers, wives and daughters of the Confederate States!---who but one with pen dipped in the refiner's fire can speak their praise!

P.S.---Suffer a grateful heart to offer its homage to Cols. Ashbel Smith, Clayton C. Gillespie, and several anonymous writers of recent date, in both the News and Telegraph, for their powerful and characteristic contributions to the cause of truth in this behalf; and to you, Mr. Editor, for the publication of Governor Allen's thrilling message and the soul-inspiring speech of Senator Henry, of Tennessee---a worthy son of that noble State. This outpouring of patriot intellects---including Mrs. M.J. Young's matchless letter to the immortal 5th Texas---has gone like a succession of electric sparks, through thousands of hearts, and put to shame the Satanic whisperings of fear, doubt and cowardice.