76. Stephens declared the "corner-stone" of the new
government to be "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the
white man; that slavery ... is his natural and normal condition;" and
said that it was the first government "in the history of the world based
upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." N. and H.
iii. 203; and see his letter to Lincoln, _ibid._ 272, 273. Mississippi,
in declaring the causes of her secession, said: "Our position is
thoroughly identical with the institution of slavery,--the greatest
material interest in the world." N. and H. iii. 201. Senator Mason of
Virginia said: "It is a war of sentiment, of opinion; a war of one form
of society against another form of society." Wilson, _Rise and Fall of
Slave Power_, iii. 26. Green of Missouri ascribed the trouble to the
"vitiated and corrupted state of public sentiment." _Ibid._ 23. Iverson
of Georgia said it was the "public sentiment" at the North, not the
"overt acts" of the Republican administration, that was feared; and said
that there was ineradicable enmity between the two sections, which had
not lived together in peace, were not so living now, and could not be
expected to do so in the future. _Ibid._ 17.
[129] Historians generally seem to admit that the South had to choose
between making the fight now, and seeing its favorite institution
gradually become extinct.
[130] Sometimes, though very rarely, the word was used.
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