Reference:On Slavery

On Slavery is a book by L. Cheves McCord which sought to defend slavery in the Confederacy not only morally, as past writers have done, but economically.

Introduction

"Slavery is truly and fairly a subject for the investigation of Political Economy... [it is] a system which it is recently the fashion to contemn, but which must now come boldly forward to claim its true place in the world’s development; and it is before the tribunal of Political Economy that it must claim this place, and prove the justice of its cause." My mother wrote these words in 1856, and not by even the slightest degree have they faded in truth or intensity in the years since. Slavery feeds the world. Slavery clothes the world. Slavery carries the world: and for this the world should be eternally grateful, yet what do we receive in return? Condemnation and harassment from the Yankees to the north and Mexicans to the south, and from all the mongrel peoples of Europe. Only their leaders are wise enough to see the value that slavery has brought to the world...

Chapter 1: On Rights

Man lives, but life cannot support itself, and only through the use of his faculties to appropriate and assimilate the elements of the world in which he lives can he, Man, preserve and develop his life. This basic fact cannot be disputed; anything more, for instance that it is God who bestows life upon Man, is a matter of faith. But God has provided much evidence for His existence. The same cannot be said for the too-common assertion that all men are equal or all men are born equal. "In what sense can this broad assertion be maintained as matter of fact? Or so stated as not to be liable to cavil and contradiction?"