At the Richmond Convention in February 1861, Georgian Henry Lewis Benning, who would later be a Confederate army officer, delivered a speech in which he gave his reasoning for the urging of secession from the Union, appealing to ethnic prejudices and pro-slavery sentiments to present his case, saying that were the slave states to remain in the Union, their slaves would ultimately end up being freed by the anti-slavery Republican Party. He stated that he would rather be stricken with illness and starvation than to see African Americans liberated from slavery and be given equality as citizens: