"Finally, let us pray that our courage may be equal to every emergency. Even though our cause be just, and our course approved by heaven, our path to victory may be through a baptism of blood. Liberty has its martyrs and confessors, as well as religion. The oak is rooted amid wintry storms. Great truths come to us at great cost, and the most impressive teachers of mankind are those who have sealed their lessons with their blood. Our State may suffer; she may suffer grievously; she may suffer long. Be it so: we shall love her the more tenderly and the more intensely, the more bitterly she suffers. It will not follow, even if she should be destined to fall, that her course was wrong, or her sufferings in vain ... Let it be our great concern to know God’s will. Let right and duty be our watchword, liberty, regulated by law, our goal; and, leaning upon the arm of everlasting strength, we shall achieve a name, whether we succeed or fail, that posterity will not willingly let die."
Rev. James Henley Thornwell
November 21, 1860— twenty-nine days before South Carolina seceded from the United States.
South Carolina League of the South
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