Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 35

4. T[homas] W. MacMahon, Cause and Contrast: An Essay on the American Crisis (Richmond, VA: West & Johnston, 1862). (192 p.)

Confederate imprint defending slavery. The author explains his intent in the preface. “I have undertaken to prove historically, that slavery was originally a universal institution of all great governments and societies; but that the systems of the ancients were radically different from negro subordination in America. I have ventured to show that cannibalism and fetichism [sic] are, and ever have been, the normal and unalterable condition of the negro in his native home—that he is physiologically and psychologically degraded, that he is of an inferior species of the human race, wholly dependent upon the Caucasian for progress, enlightenment, and well-being—and that, servitude and subjection being his natural state, the relation which he bears to superior mastership, in the Confederate States, is merciful to him and the cause of religion and civilization.”