In honor of Confederate History Month

"Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition." -Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization." - A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union

"It was very much discussed whether the South would carry out its threat to secede and set up a separate government, the cornerstone of which should be, protection to the 'Divine' institution of slavery." -Ulysses S. Grant

"The question before us is, whether [people of African ancestry]...compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."
– Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford

"In spite of all disclaimers and professions there can be but one end to the submission by the South to the rule of a sectional Antislavery Government at Washington; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be the emancipation of the slaves of the South....the people of the non-slaveholding North are not and cannot be safe associates of the slaveholding South under a common Government." - South Carolina's Address to the Slave-Holding States