Publisher's Synopsis
Early in the month of June last, or late in May, an editorial article appeared in the Charleston Mercury, recommending the production and encouragement of Southern literature, with which I was so forcibly impressed, as to resolve upon the composition and publication of the following essay. I felt that, at this crisis in our history, a brief work, containing a comprehensive and popularly written exposition of Southern political philosophy, might be advantageously placed before the world; and although there were far abler pens than mine in the land, upon which might have devolved this duty, their silence impelled me to make the present attempt. In my treatment of the subject, I have endeavored to be brief, lucid, and compendious--to make my little work as compact as possible, and spare the reader from useless or unnecessary reading. 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 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.
