Item Description
Letter, February 12, 1861, Richard K. Call, Lake Jackson, to John S. Littell, Germantown, Pennsylvania, 31 pp., lamenting the destruction of the Union, placing the blame on ''the angry controversy arising on the institution of African slavery,'' and providing a lengthy apology for slavery and secession: ''The institution of slavery, then, demands the earnest attention and the unprejudiced consideration of every American citizen . . . [n]ot as an abstract question of right or wrong, not as a blessing or a curse, but as an existing reality, for good or evil, thrown upon us by inheritance . . . for which no man of the present day is in any manner the least responsible. It should be considered as it is, an institution interwoven and inseparably connected with our social and political system . . . and a national institution, created by the American people and protected by the Constitution of the United States. . . Portugal, in 1503, sent from her possessions on the coast of Africa the first African slaves to America . . . Here was an animal, in the form of man, possessing the greatest physical power, and the greatest capacity for labor and endurance, without one principle of his nature, one faculty of mind or feeling of heart, without spirit or pride of character, to enable him to regard slavery as a degradation. A wild barbarian, to be tamed and civilized by the discipline of slavery. . . This race, so distinctly marked by nature with inferiority, physical, moral, and mental, as forever to forbid amalgamation, and keep it distinct from our own, has become a great class of laboring, civilized people, domesticated with the white race, and dependent on the discipline of that race for the preservation of the civilization it has acquired. . . The North and South can never live in peace together except on terms of perfect social and political equality, therefore a separation, with war, and all its attendant calamities, will be far better than a discontented unity, with the confinement of slavery to its present limits. . . rather than bear this insult, and endure this calamity, I prefer that the last Southern man should fall, on the last battle-field of the terrible war, in which we may soon be engaged. . .'' Includes Littell's reply to Call dated March 4, 1861, informing Call that the letter was at the printer's.
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