s's 'language' (you say) 'could not be applied to slavery; it
would be a strange misapplication of terms to call slavery a physical,
philosophical, and moral truth.' But irresistible as your logic is, did
you really suppose that the 'plain men' who (according to your motto) in
troubled times like these 'read pamphlets,' were any of them so stupid
as to think that your wonderful distinction amounts to anything? Did you
suppose any man of decent intelligence would fail to see that it makes
no practical difference--since slavery, as an institution, was to be the
inevitable consequence of the _great truth_ about it--and that therefore
Mr. Stephens's declaration amounts substantially to saying that slavery
was to be the corner stone of his new Government; and so your assertion,
that 'he has made no such declaration,' is a paltry verbal quibble,
unworthy of a sensible and fair-minded man.

So of your way of proving that the rebel Government have adopted no such
corner stone. It is like yourself, and unparalleled but by yourself.
First, you allege that even if Mr. Stephens had said so, his individual
assertion is no law for the Government; next, that 'there is not one
word in the Constitution of the Confederacy that gives color to any such
idea as slavery being the corner stone of their Government; on the
contrary, section ix, article i, _clearly repudiates it_.' You did not
quote the article you refer to. Your 'plain men,' when they come to see
it, will perhaps have an opinion on the question why you did not. The
article is as follows: '_The importation of African negroes from any
foreign country other than the slaveholding States of the United States,
in hereby forbidden, and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall
effectually prevent the same._'

Now did you really think that this article 'clearly repudiates' the idea
of the rebels intending to have slavery for one of their fundamental
institutions, or did you presume on the ignorance or stupidity of those
you have undertaken to instruct in political knowledge? The article
itself contains no such repudiation, nor is there anything to warrant
your inference that such was its purport, and everybody that knows
anything about it, knows that it is a gross misrepresentation of its
real object to say so.

The rebel Constitution was framed by delegates from the seven Lower
Slave States. It was adopted February 8, 1861. Neither Tennessee nor
Virginia nor any of the Border