Senate extracts from 1850 open a collection centred on the summer of 1858, when Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi toured Maine, speaking at Portland, Belfast and the Augusta state fair. He praises the Union and the Revolutionary fathers while insisting on Southern rights in the territories, the protection of slavery and the sovereignty of the states — the case he would carry into secession.
A primary source, not an argument to admire: these speeches defend slavery, and they show how the coming Confederacy reasoned three years before the war. Download the free EPUB.