The Part of the Alexander Stephens’s Cornerstone Speech that (Usually) Doesn’t Get Quoted — Keith Harris History

To be quite honest, the principles question is one with which I regularly grapple…and suspect my students do the same. But it is a question worth asking. My analysis of the Cornerstone Speech, and other early Rebel iterations, has made it quite clear that white southerners understood a salient problem: the pre-secession United States government did not have the explicitly stated principles, much less the policies in place, to to maintain white supremacy indefinitely…and it was up to the new Confederate nation to correct where the founders had gone wrong. They were going to keep the abolitionist fanatics from perverting what Stephens claimed was a racial hierarchy ordained by God.

So let’s perhaps rethink things. Sure, the majority of the founders were racist by our standards. And…I’ll bet my next paycheck on the fact that a bunch of them had a real interest in maintaining some sort of racial hierarchy. But if that was the case then they were not so explicit…and the seceding Confederates took notice. The founders had left doors ajar – doors that Civil Rights leaders, both black and white, would open in the future and force the issue to make good on the stated principles of the United States – principles that do indeed point toward “equality.” It was these doors that Confederates meant to close with their “more perfect” Constitution. Stephens noted: “All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics.” From Stephens’s perspective, the founders’ reasoning was flawed, and most importantly, it threatened the cornerstone of white southern society.