Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 40

10. R[ichard] K[eith] Call, Letter from Governor R. K. Call, of Florida, to John S. Littell, of Germantown, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: C. Sherman & Son, 1861). (31 p.)

Open letter dated February 12, 1861, defending slavery and secession. “There is one disturbing, one dangerous cause,--the angry controversy arising on the institution of AFRICAN slavery, and unless this controversy can be amicably adjusted there must be a perpetual end of the Union, an everlasting separation of the North and South” (emphasis in original). Elsewhere in the letter the Governor describes the institution as follows. “The experiment of African labor proved eminently successful. Here was an animal, in the form of man, possessing the greatest physical power, and the greatest capacity for labor and endurance, without one principle of his nature, one faculty of mind, or feeling of heart, without spirit or pride of character to enable him to regard slavery as degradation. A wild barbarian, to be tamed and civilized by the discipline of slavery.”