Alfred Iverson’s Farewell Speech

Adam Goodheart, in his most recent post to Disunion, features the farewell speech of Alfred Iverson, U.S. Senator from Georgia, 150 years ago today (January 28, 1861).  Iverson was resigning his seat and spoke rather emotionally as he addressed the Senate for the last time.  His mood produced one of those moments of unintentional candor, as he admitted what really was behind the South’s departure from the Union.  Responding to the eleven hour efforts to keep the nation together, Iverson stated, “I may safely say, however, that nothing will satisfy [the seceding states], 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.”

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