We feel that our cause is just and holy... [W]e seek no conquest... [A]ll we ask is to be left alone. - Jefferson Davis

We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence - and that, or extermination, we will have.

The past is dead; let it bury its dead. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling. Make your place in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished – a reunited country.

It would grant me much relief to learn your sons were engaged matrimonially to other white men if I was previously faced with the spectre of those same sons wedding negro women, slave or free, and siring negro sons that could presume to claim inheritance of your namesakes and property, or worse, equality with your purer grandchildren.