"Table talk today:
This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous. The Yankees, since the war has begun, have discovered it is to free the slaves they are fighting—so their cause is noble. They also expect to make the war pay. Yankees do not undertake anything that does not pay. They think we belong to them. We have been good milk cows. Milked by the tariff, or skimmed. We let them have all of our hard earnings. We bore the ban of slavery. They got the money. Cotton pays everybody who handles it, sells it, manufactures it, &c&c—rarely pays the men who make it. Secondhand, they received the wages of slavery. They grew rich, we grew poor. Receiver is as bad as the thief. That applies to us, too—we received these savages they stole from Africa and brought to us in their slave ships. Like the Egyptians, if they let us go, it must be across a red sea of blood."
