to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa, and carry them there?"
His question was, of course, unanswerable. Le might also have said that if it was right to own negroes it was right to buy them wherever they were on sale and take them to any place where they were needed. Although he did not know it, he was clearing the much-befogged road leading to the point of view from which might be seen the real evil principle at the bottom of slavery.
At Vicksburg, in 1859, a convention of commercial men resolved by a vote of forty to nineteen that "all laws, State or Federal, prohibiting the African slavetrade onght to be repealed;" also that "the convention raise a fund to be dispensed in premiums for the best sermons in favor of reopening the African Slavetrade!"
The reopening of the trade was also advocated on the floor of Congress. Omitting many quotations that might be made from the words of slave-holding Congressmen it will be sufficient to note what two who were representative of their class said. Alexander Stephens, in his farewell address to his constituents, according to reputable reports, used these words: "Slave-States cannot be made without Africans. . . . [My object is] to bring clearly to your mind the great truth that without an increase of African slaves from abroad you may not expect or look for many more slave-States."
Jefferson Davis, while opposing an immediate reopening of the trade, denied "any coincidence of opinion with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinful-
