English people from that time to this have found the statement incredible; but the fact is that this imposing movement, in which rich and poor, gentle and simple, astute men of state and pious clergymen, went hand in hand to the verge of ruin and beyond, was undertaken simply and solely in behalf of slavery.  Northern writers of the time found it so surprising that they took refuge in the theory of conspiracy, alleging that a handful of schemers succeeded, by the help of fictitious popular clamour and intimidation of their opponents, in launching the South upon a course to which the real mind of the people was averse.  Later and calmer historical survey of the facts has completely dispelled this view; and the English suspicion, that there must have been some cause beyond and above slavery for desiring independence, never had any facts to support it.  Since 1830 no exponent of Southern views had ever hinted at secession on any other ground than slavery; every Southern leader declared with undoubted truth that on every other ground he prized the Union; outside South Carolina every Southern leader made an earnest attempt before he surrendered the Union cause to secure the guarantees he thought sufficient for slavery within the Union.  The Southern statesman (for the soldiers were not statesmen) whose character most attracts sympathy now was Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, and though he was the man who persisted longest in the view that slavery could be adequately secured without secession, he was none the less entitled to speak for the South in his remarkable words on the Constitution adopted by the Southern Confederacy:  “The new Constitution has put at rest for ever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution, African slavery.  This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.  The prevailing ideas entertained by Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was wrong in principle socially, morally, and politically.  Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not the equal of the white man; that slavery—­subordination to the white man—­is his natural and normal condition.  This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.  The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to the Creator’s laws and decrees.”  Equally explicit and void of shame was the Convention of the State of Mississippi.  “Our position,” they declared, “is thoroughly identified with slavery.”