When it comes to the southern states, I used to actually live in Louisiana for a year.

America's soldiery, like its war dead, comes disproportionately from its southern states and from its aspiring poor - both white and black.

In 1775, no fewer than nine colonies had established churches, ranging from Congregational establishments in New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts to Episcopal churches in the southern states from Maryland on down.

Before the Civil War, the Southern states were selling a lot of cotton to England and didn't seem to mind British occupation. By and large, the Revolutionary War wasn't at all great for business.

If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong - if those laws of the Southern States, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong - nothing is wrong.

The secession of the Southern States, individually or in the aggregate, was the certain consequence of Mr. Lincoln's election.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law nonetheless.

Nothing manifests more persuasively the American contradiction than that the author of the Declaration of Independence, a slave owner, wrote an antislavery clause into the document - as if to compel himself to be better than he was - which then had to be edited out so the Southern states, including Thomas Jefferson's own, would sign it.

After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing firearms.

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

I stand today on this floor to appeal for protection from the strong arm of the government for her loyal children, irrespective of color and race, who are citizens of the southern states, and particularly of the State of Georgia.

As much as I value an union of all the states, I would not admit the southern states into the union, unless they agreed to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it would bring weakness and not strength to the union.

East and Gulf Coast states are at risk of hurricanes; prairie and other central and southern states are constantly threatened by tornados; and western states commonly face damaging droughts. Extreme weather does not discriminate by American geography.

Yet thousands of slaves throughout the southern states are thus handed over by the masters who own them to masters who do not; and it does not require much demonstration to prove that their estate is not always the more gracious.

The people of the Southern States now own near five millions of these negroes, and they are worth to them near three millions of dollars.

Southern states in the confederacy were not ready to give up their fight to secede or give up their way of life, which was made possible in large part through the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves.