The Perils of Research

I've just spent a productive (for some values of that word) afternoon at the Toronto Reference Library. I have been reading (and taking notes) from a book called Southern Pamphlets on Secession (edited by Jon L. Wakelyn), the contents of which mostly consist of justifications for slavery by politicians, intellectuals and religious leaders. I had never, before today, read in full Alexander Stephens's so-called "Cornerstone" speech. Nor had I even heard of a one-time Florida governor named Richard Kieth Call, who in a letter of February 1861 described the most feverish, bizarre, quasi-Malthusian fantasy of how twenty million black Americans would die of starvation or chaotic violence if slavery weren't allowed to spread throughout the entire world but instead were restricted, as Lincoln had proposed, to the current Southern states.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I really need a bath...