This week in history: Alexander Stephens gives Cornerstone Speech

On March 21, 1861, vice president Alexander Stephens of the newly formed Confederate States of America gave his famous Cornerstone Speech. Speaking extemporaneously, Stephens outlined the differences between the United States of America and the new nation and underlined the importance of slavery for the CSA.

After Abraham Lincoln’s November 1860 election as president of the United States, South Carolina seceded from the Union. This act was followed by the secession of several other Southern states whose people stated they would no longer remain a part of the USA if a Republican were elected to the White House. By February 1861, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia and Texas had joined South Carolina.

Representatives from the seceded states met it Montgomery, Alabama, that month to form the Confederacy. The body soon selected former U.S. Senator and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis as the new nation’s provisional president, and it quickly selected Stephens of Georgia as the provisional vice president.

A Georgian lawyer and slave owner, Stephens had served in state government before being elected to the U.S. Congress in 1843 as a Whig. Like Whig Congressman Lincoln, Stephens had opposed the Mexican-American War, fearing the conflict would only deepen sectional rivalries within the United States. He also opposed Pennsylvania Democrat David Wilmont’s provision to the war appropriations bill, which outlawed slavery in any new territory acquired from the war.

Stephens initially opposed secession, believing whatever problems Southerners had with the Union could be solved through compromise and good faith. Though Lincoln, his former colleague in the House, was now president, he believed that it was still possible for Southern states to remain in the Union and protect the institution of slavery. Lincoln stated he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it already existed, but that he would oppose its extension to the new Western territories.

With the secession of Georgia on Jan. 19, 1861, Stephens accepted the state’s position and worked to ensure its security, attending the congress in Montgomery and participating in the creation of the Confederate Constitution.

Davis and other moderates believed that in order to justify secession and the formation of the new nation to the world, it was necessary to downplay the role of slavery, (for instance, while the British government was generally sympathetic to the fledgling CSA, the British people strongly opposed slavery).

By March, several slave states remained in the Union, including Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland. In order to encourage their secession and to encourage established Confederate states to ratify the new Confederate Constitution, many notables in the new government began to make speeches, often times highlighting the importance of slavery to the new nation. Stephens began making many such speeches before the address that left its stamp not only on the Confederate States of America, but also upon the post-Civil War American South for generations to come.

On March 21, at a public meeting in Savannah, Georgia, Stephens offered his views of how the new Confederate Constitution differed from the United States Constitution, and how those differences had led to secession:

“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions — African slavery as it exists among us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”

Stephens noted that former United States president and slave owner Thomas Jefferson believed that slavery was morally wrong, and that it was opposed to the very laws of nature. Indeed, in Jefferson’s only book, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” he had written with regard to slavery that, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Now, approximately 75 years after Jefferson wrote those words, Stephens stated that this view was incorrect: “Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was in error.”

Stephens then offered the philosophy which lent its name to the speech:

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite of ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…”

Despite Davis’ desire to downplay the role of slavery in the formation of the new nation, Stephens highlighted it. Indeed, in this moment of truth, when all of the rhetoric of “states rights” and the economic and cultural differences between the American North and South had been stripped away, one can see plainly the true cause of the Civil War: to protect the institution of slavery.

In his book, “Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America,” historian William C. Davis wrote: “When reports of (Stephens’) speeches got back to Montgomery, Davis and other moderates were chagrined to see the vice president undermining the very posture they wanted to assume for the world. What they did not understand was that Stephens was playing to the audience, playing on race and the social standing that slavery accorded to the (slave owners) to get them behind ratification…”

Twenty years later, after the Civil War had left nearly 600,000 Americans dead and the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution had guaranteed freedom for African-Americans, Davis wrote his own views of the war and the Southern cause. “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government” appeared in 1881.

In that book, Davis cited numerous reasons for the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Many events, he noted, nearly exploded into Civil War and most of them only tangentially connected with slavery. Davis noted the “sectional hostility” leading up to the Missouri Compromise in 1820; the issue of the protective tariff and subsequent Nullification Crisis of 1832; the tension over the Texas annexation question in 1844; and the sectional problems that sprang out of the Mexican War. All of these, he noted, could easily have devolved into Civil War. Always present, he noted, slavery merely became a convenient scapegoat. He wrote:

“The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. In the later controversies that arose, however, its effect in operating as a lever upon the passions, prejudices or sympathies of mankind, was so potent that it has been spread, like a thick cloud, over the whole horizon of historical truth.”

Despite Davis’ claims and justifications, it was his vice president’s speech from 20 years earlier that maintained the ring of truth. While undoubtedly the United States suffered very real sectional differences over various economic, cultural and political issues prior to the Civil War, slavery remained the nation’s fatal stumbling block.

The Civil War did not break out over Northerners’ moral objections to slavery, but rather Southerners’ fears that slavery would be curtailed. For 80 years, North and South had existed in a symbiotic relationship — Southern states cotton feeding Northern factories. The Mexican War, and the subsequent acquisition of Western territories, propelled a fundamental question into the national spotlight: Which economy, Northern or Southern, would spread West? Would the vast Western lands enjoy an economy of opportunity, an economy of capitalist institutions of banks, factories and commerce? Or would the West be a closed economy, benefiting the relatively few and enslaving many?

When Lincoln announced he would not allow slavery to expand to the West, is when Southerners decided to leave the Union, believing that if their peculiar institution weren’t allowed to expand, it would die out eventually. In this they were most likely correct. Stephens’ speech highlighted this absolute belief in racial inequality and just how deeply most Southerners believed in it.

Wars rarely start with rational motives. Human beings are capricious and passionate, and often make irrational decisions. When considering the overwhelming advantage in material and manpower that the North enjoyed over the South prior to the Civil War, it is difficult to understand just how Southerners thought they could win. Yet their conviction to protect their peculiar institution proved a powerful motivation for war.

Cody K. Carlson holds a master’s in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: [email protected]