All we ask is to be let alone.

In Davis’s usage, the plea to “be let alone” functions as a political claim: that the Confederacy (or the seceded states) sought noninterference rather than conquest. The phrase compresses a larger argument common in Confederate rhetoric—secession as a defensive act to preserve a perceived constitutional order and local autonomy, and war as something forced upon them by federal coercion. Read critically, the line also works as a rhetorical strategy: it frames the speaker as a victim seeking peace and self-determination, while bracketing the central moral and political issue that made “being let alone” contentious—slavery and its expansion/protection. Its enduring afterlife reflects how succinct slogans can outlast their contested premises.