Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina

Gov. Joseph E. Brown  of Georgia

 

  Contrary to the impression sought to be made by some, the resolution relating to the impressment or conscription of slaves was by no means intended to include the arming of them, much less their final emancipation, which I take it would follow as a natural consequence. I supposed that as property their temporary services were within reach of the government like all other property, to be employed as pioneers, erecting fortifications, cooks, teamsters, hospital servants, laborers in the several departments, and wherever, in short, the negro could take the place of an able-bodied white man who could carry a musket. Under no circumstances would I consent to see them armed, which I would regard as not only dangerous in the extreme, but as less degrading only than their employment in this capacity by our enemies. The proposition to emancipate them by the Confederate Government, (which in conscience should be done if they fought in our armies) I regard as entirely out of the question. I imagine that such an idea as abolishing slavery by the General Government, advocated five years ago, would have made people stare, and caused some little excitement. This course would, it seems to me, surrender the entire question which has ever separated the North from the South; would stultify ourselves in the eyes of the world, and render our whole revolution nugatory--a mere objectless waste of human life. I need not allude at all to the constitutional question involved, which I presume must be understood by this time. Our independence, I imagine, is chiefly desirable for the preservation of our political institutions, the principal of which is slavery; and it is only to be won by the blood of white freemen. The slave, however, should certainly be made to do his part as a non-combatant.

  [I]f we are right and Providence designed them for slavery, He did not intend that they should be a military people. Whenever we establish the fact that they are a military race, we destroy our whole theory that they are unfit to be free.
  But it is said we should give them their freedom in case of their fidelity to our cause in the field; in other words, that we should give up slavery, as well as our personal liberty and State sovereignty for independence, and should set all our slaves free if they will aid us to achieve it.
 ...It can never be admitted by the State that the Confederate Government has any power, directly or indirectly, to abolish slavery. ...If we admit the right of the Government to impress and pay for slaves to free them, we concede its power to abolish slavery, and change our domestic institutions at its pleasure, and to tax us to raise money for that purpose. I am not aware of the advocacy of such a monstrous doctrine in the old Congress by any one of the more rational class of Abolitionists. It certainly never found an advocate in any Southern statesman.
  No slave can be liberated by the Confederate Government without the consent of the States. No such consent can ever be given by this State without a previous alteration of her Constitution And no such alteration can be made without a convention of her people.