January 28, 1861 (Monday)

"We will rise again and again."

A Senatorial Farewell Speech:

"The South will rise again."

In an article written by the Disunion -- New York Times, Adam Goodheart writes a narrative on several of the farewell speeches that were given by various Southern Senators as they left the U. S. Senate.  One in particular was Senator Alfred Iverson of Georgia.  One of the famous American rally cries comes from this speech:  "The South will rise again."  Here are a few excerpts from his speech. 

"You may acquiesce in the revolution, and acknowledge the independence of the new confederacy, or you may make war on the seceding States, and attempt to force them back into the Union with you.  If you acknowledge our independence, and treat us as one of the nations of the earth, you can have friendly intercourse with us; you can have an equitable division of the public property and of the existing debt of the United States.  If you make war upon us, we will seize and hold all the public property within our borders or within our reach.

You boast of your superior numbers and strength.  Remember that 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.'  You have your hundreds of thousands of fighting men.  So have we; and, fighting upon our own soil, to preserve our rights, vindicate our honor and defend our homes and firesides, our wives and children from the invader, we shall not be easily conquered. 

You may possibly overrun us, desolate our fields, burn our dwellings, lay our cities in ruins, murder our people and reduce us to beggary, but you cannot subdue or subjugate us to your government or your will.  Your conquest, if you gain one, will cost you a hundred thousand lives, and more than a hundred million dollars.  Nay more, it will take a standing army of 100,000 men, and millions of money annually, to keep us in subjection.

You may whip us, but we will not stay whipped.  We will rise again and again to vindicate our right to liberty, and throw off your oppressive and accursed yoke, and never cease the mortal strife until our whole white race is extinguished and our fair land given over to desolation.

The Rubicon is passed,"  Iverson concluded, "and it shall never, with my consent, be recrossed." [There was still a chance, he conceded, that other Southerners might agree to a compromise.]  "I may safely say, however, that nothing will satisfy them, or bring them back, short of a full and explicit recognition of the guarantee of the safety of their institution of domestic slavery and the protection of the constitutional rights for which in the Union they have so long been contending, and a denial of which, by their Northern confederates, has forced them into their present attitude of separate independence."

As the last Southern senators left, "the balance of power had shifted for good that week, in the nation and in Congress.  Throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction years, a Congress dominated by Northern Republicans would pass legislation that, collectively, would change America forever.  And the South might 'rise again and again' over the following century, but it would never regain the political leverage that it had just willingly abdicated."  (Adam Goodheart, The South Rises Again and Again, and Again, Disunion -- New York Times narrative, January 27, 2011)

New York Times, January 29, 1861 article commented on the speech with the following: 

"Senator Iverson's valedictory, today, was quite as full of brimstone and cayenne pepper, in matter and manner, as would be expected from him."