The “Cornerstone Speech” of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in March 1861 is regarded as a historically important statement of the aims and motivations of the Confederate government. The New York Times reported in 1864 that Stephens was “believed to possess the clearest mind and frankest heart in the Confederacy” and that “he still retained a large measure of Northern respect” and was regarded as “the most moderate and sagacious of the Southern leaders.” The report adds that,
His speech at Savannah, in which he styled Slavery the corner-stone of the Confederacy, and declared that “Slavery must become the controlling power of the Continent,” and in which, also, he pronounced it probable that “all the great States of the Northwest will gravitate this way,” is well remembered.
Stephens’ speech is indeed well remembered to this day. Like many other historical sources, the Cornerstone Speech has been reinterpreted over time through a revisionist lens. It is now widely seen as evidence that the top priority of the Confederate States of America was to entrench slavery, and that a desire to safeguard slavery was the primary motivation in all CSA decisions beginning with the decision to secede and to defend Fort Sumter. Supporters of that perspective highlight Stephens’ comments on racial hierarchy and white supremacy, in order to harness the Cornerstone Speech as further evidence of the theory that the CSA was formed to defend slavery.
Readers will be familiar with Murray Rothbard’s view that the Confederate States had a right to secede. This article will not revisit the secession debates, as the aim is to highlight three gaping holes in the revisionist claim that the Cornerstone Speech should be read as a defense of slavery.
First, the revisionist claim avers that the Confederate States supported slavery while the Union States were against slavery, failing to consider the fact that nine states who were still in the Union at the time of Stephens’ speech were slave states. Gene Kizer Jr points out that:
When Lincoln’s naval mission arrived in Charleston on April 12, 1861, it was one of five military missions sent into Southern waters by Abraham Lincoln in March and April to get the war started… There were nine slave states in the Union at that time because Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina had voted not to secede.
Clearly, Stephens’ remarks about slavery lose their provocative character when it is recalled that slavery was still legal in the Union at the time of his speech and that Lincoln had repeatedly insisted that he had no desire—and indeed no legal power—to abolish slavery. Viewed in this light, Stephens’ speech would by now have been long forgotten, consigned to the obscure corner of American history reserved for vice presidents. The significance of his remarks on slavery is artificially amplified by the expedient of forgetting that there were slave states still in the Union at the time of his speech. Indeed, as Kizer points out, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Missouri and Kentucky were slave states that remained in the Union through the war, and, as Kizer adds, “West Virginia came into the Union as a slave state later (and Lincoln was glad to have that slave state and did not require it to end slavery, and it was exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation as were all the Union slave states.)”
Revisionists seek to create the impression that Stephens was elevating slavery to prime position in the CSA, and to that end his remarks on other important issues are sidelined. His remarks about the rights to life, liberty, and property in the Confederate constitution are disregarded: “it amply secures all our ancient rights, franchises, and liberties. All the great principles of Magna Charta are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers under the laws of the land.” Also disregarded are his views on the question of tariffs:
We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.
Instead, the laser-like focus of revisionists is on Stephens’ belief in the superiority of the white race, which he defended by reference to the laws of nature and the laws of God:
The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.”
The natural law principle of self-ownership of all human beings has been addressed elsewhere; the point here is that the outrage over Stephens’ remarks overlooks a second gaping hole in the revisionist theory, namely, that Stephens’ views on race were held by both Confederates and Unionists. Indeed, Abraham Lincoln also defended white supremacy:
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermingling with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
A third gaping hole in the revisionist theory is that Stephens’ view is also expressed by William T. Sherman, whose statue still stands proudly in New York City, and who is revered as a hero by court academics and historians. In “General Sherman, The Negro, and Slavery: The Story of An Unrecognized Rebel” Robert K. Murray outlines Sherman’s pro-slavery opinions. Sherman saw nothing wrong with slavery, and even advised his wife to purchase a slave. He also wrote to his wife that,
All Congresses on earth can’t make the negro any thing else than what he is; he must be subject to the white man, or he must amalgamate or be destroyed. Two such races cannot live in harmony save as master and slave.
Murray implies that Sherman was merely reflecting opinions that were commonly held in the South, but there is no reason to suppose that Sherman did not know his own mind and his own opinions or that he had somehow acquired these opinions from the mere fact of having been stationed in Florida before the war. Sherman was explicit about his anti-abolitionist views:
I would not if I could abolish or modify slavery. I don’t know that I would materially change the actual political relation of master and slave. Negroes in the great numbers that exist here [in the South] must of necessity be slaves. Theoretical notions of humanity and religion cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with.
Murray also quotes from Sherman’s letters to his brother, advising him to steer clear of abolitionists and assuring him that, “I have never seen the least sign of disaffection on the part of the negroes.” Sherman also disapproved of the attempts by the abolitionist John Brown to free slaves by use of force in his attack on Harper’s Ferry. Murray observes that: “To Sherman, John Brown was an insane fanatic who would put defenseless women and children at the mercy of an inferior race.” Nor did Sherman initially support the election of Lincoln. Murray notes that: “Sherman regarded Lincoln with suspicion and predicted serious trouble if he were elected.”
Sherman was very clear in distinguishing between slavery, which he supported, and secession, which he vehemently opposed. Murray highlights Sherman’s opposition to the abolitionist cause: “As to abolishing slavery in the South or turning loose 4,000,000 slaves, I [will] have no hand in it.” Sherman’s position was the exact opposite of libertarian abolitionists who opposed slavery but supported secession. Despite being against abolition, Sherman supported waging war on the seceding states:
On the negro question I am satisfied there is and was no excuse for a severance of the old Union, but will go further and say that I believe the practice of slavery in the South is the mildest and best regulated system of slavery in the world. . . . On the question of secession however I am ultra. I believe in coercion.
Sherman maintained these views even after war broke out, writing to his wife in 1862: “When negroes are liberated either they or masters must perish. They cannot exist together except in their present relation.” He maintained this as he marched through Georgia: “I care not a straw for n------.” After the war—and even after abolition and during reconstruction—Sherman continued to oppose Northern plans for enfranchising black people, saying, “The white men of this country will control it, and the negro, in mass, will occupy a subordinate place.”
Unlike Stephens’ remarks in the Cornerstone Speech, Sherman’s views on the racial issues of his day do not help to substantiate the revisionist argument that Lincoln’s war was all about slavery, and this is why they have been all but forgotten. It would be impossible to study Sherman’s views and still hold to the revisionist interpretation that Sherman was fighting a war “to free the slaves.” And thus, in an age when historical facts are selected for their usefulness to the dominant narrative, Sherman’s remarks have fallen into oblivion while the Cornerstone Speech continues to frame the discourse on the CSA.
