The South was losing the war, said Cleburne, because it lacked the North’s manpower and because “slavery, from being one of our chief sources of strength at the commencement of the war, has now become, in a military point of view, one of our chief sources of weakness.” The Emancipation Proclamation had given the enemy a moral cause to justify his drive for conquest, Cleburne continued, had made the slaves his allies, undermined the South’s domestic security, and turned European nations against the Confederacy.
