The new constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions--african slavery as it exists among us--the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. this was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution [...] the general opinion of the men of that day [revolutionary period] was, that, somehow or other, in the order of providence, the institution [slavery] would be evanescent and pass away [...] our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.