Now, I want to say one other quick thing before we get to the substance. Stephens delivering this Cornerstone Speech, declaring that, “Hey folks, it’s all about slavery and its preservation?” How did we get there? Today I want to talk about, we’re going to dwell on, ultimately, the Southern defense of slavery - the arguments over time that they developed, layer upon layer, drawing upon earlier arguments and building them into new ones - sometimes quite original - toward ultimately a virtually utopian defense of slavery as a perfecting, perfectible, if not perfected system. Our system, therefore, so far as regards this inferior race, rests upon this great immutable law of nature.” You always have to get worried in history when people start talking about how human beings or human behavior is rooted in nature.īut how do we get to 1861 and that secession crisis with Alexander H. He is not his equal by nature and cannot be made so by human laws or human institutions. Subordination to the white man is his normal condition.
The quote goes on: “As a race, the African is inferior to the white man. Stephens, a Georgian, a slaveholder, an old friend and colleague of Abraham Lincoln’s, ironically, said the cornerstone of the Confederacy, the cornerstone of their political movement, was what he called “American Negro slavery.” It was the cornerstone on which they had founded their revolution. Stephens, gave a speech that became quickly known to history as his “Cornerstone Speech.” This is Spring, 1861. In a speech before the Virginia Secession Convention, in 1861, in late April, in the wake of the firing on Fort Sumter, the newly elected - sort of appointed - Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, by Julian Vannerson, 1859 / Library of Congress
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