Confederate States Of America (2005)

Source: Alexander Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, Savannah; Georgia, March 21, 1861

The Cornerstone Speech was delivered extemporaneously by Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, and no official printed version exists. The text below was taken from a newspaper article in the Savannah Republican, as reprinted in Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private: With Letters and Speeches, before, during, and since the War, Philadelphia, 1886, pp. 717-729.

[Extract]

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

SOURCE: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, 215-17.

The first address, a eulogy delivered in the Hall of Representatives in springfield, Illinois, on Tuesday, July 6, 1852, in honor of his mentor, Henry Clay, brought together the two dominant themes of his life, the grandeur of "the white man's" Declaration of Independence and the need to defent it and keep it White and pure by banishing all Blacks -- be deportation, colonization, emigration -- from what he considered a White Eden.
Lincoln inherited both ideas from Clay and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom said the words all men et cetera with great eloquence and kept their slaves and never stopped apologizing and asking others to repent before it was too late by sending their slaves -- not the capital derived from thesalves -- "back" to Africa. Lincoln was especially indebted to Clay who, he said, taught him all he knew about slavery. I think the word all is too strong, but that's the word Lincoln used, and he was in a position to know what he was talking about. Did he not tell a crowd of White people at Carlinville, "I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay. doesn't this look like we are akin?" (CW 3:79)

--------

How could a slaveholder lead a movement in favor of the idea that all men are created equal?
Lincoln anticipated that question, saying that although Clay owned slaves he "ever was, on principle and in feeling, opposed to slavery" (CW 2:130). The key words here are on principle and in feeling. Everybody knew that Clay was one of the biggest slaveowners in Kentucky and the major architect of the series of compromises that had saved slavery in American, perhaps forever. Lincoln's fellow Illinoisan, H. Ford Douglass, said that Clay "did as much to perpetuate Negro slavery in this country as any other man who has ever lived" (Zilversmit 65). That elementary fact, known to everybody and most especially to Clay's slaves, who slaved and bled and died not in principle but in fact, was unimportant in the Lincoln ledger. What was important, Lincoln said, was that Clay was opposed to slavery "on principle."

SOURCE: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, 131-4.

[All italics and parenthetical comments as in original]

The latest reevaluation appears in the endnotes of David H. Donald's book, Lincoln. Summarizing the views of the leading members of the Lincoln establishment, Donald said correctly that it is an error to try to excuse Lincoln's racial views by saying that he grew up in a racist society and that everybody was a racist. He added, however, that Lincoln "fortunately escaped the more virulent strains of racism." What is the evidence for this? The evidence is that Lincoln didn't say hideous things about Blacks -- can anyone say anything more hideous than that a whole race of people is inferior and should be denied equal rights and deported because of its race? -- and that Lincoln's racist views were "nearly [my italics] always expressed tentatively." Donald cited approvingly Don E. Fehrenbacher's statement that Lincoln "conceded that the Negro might not be his equal, or he said that the Negro was not his equal in certain respects" (italics in original).
This is a direct issue not between Lincoln and me but between the Lincoln establishment and Lincoln. Fehrenbacher says with Donald's approval that Lincoln conceded -- note that word -- that the Negro might not be his equal. Where did that word might come from? That's not what Lincoln said. "Certainly," Lincoln said, "the Negro is not our equal in color -- perhaps not in many other respects" (CW 2:520). Is certainly a tentative word? Lincoln didn't think so, for he used it repeatedly: "I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects -- certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment" (CW 3:16, italics added). On at least fourteen occasions between 1854 and 1860, Lincoln said unambiguously that he believed the Negro race was inferior to the White race. In Galesburg, he referred to "the inferior races" (CW 3:222). Who were "the inferior races?" African-Americans, he said, Mexicans, whom he called "mongrels" (CW 3:235), and probably all colored people.
In addition to all this, Lincoln said repeatedly that there was a physical difference between the Black and White races. What did he mean by the word physical? He meant bodily, corporeally, somatically, biologically, in accordance with the laws of nature. He meant that the difference was more than skin deep. He meant that the difference was immutable and was, he believed, going to last forever and would forever forbid Blacks and Whites living in equality. Forever, even probably forever, does not come within the bounds of tentativeness.
The Lincoln defenders are eminent, they are eloquent -- and they are wrong.
Lincoln did say -- repeatedly -- that the Negro race was physically inferior to the White race. He repeatedly poked fun at Blacks in "darky" jokes and habitually used the N-word.
Nor can we agree with the defense of Lincoln's tentative embrace of inequality. If Lincoln said on one occasion that the Negro -- that is to say, a whole race of people -- was not his equal biologically in some respects, he said on other occasions that the Negro race was not his equal in "many" respects. But what are we arguing about here? What is the difference between many and some and forever and probably forever? If, as the defenders concede, Lincoln said that the Negro, that is to say, the Negro race, was not his equal in certain respects or in any respect and should be denied equal rights because of its race, he was a racist and it is a waste of time to try to quantify the degree of racism or to argue over whether he was a biological, social, or empirical racist.
But we see what is involved here. The proponents of this argument would have us believe that Abraham Lincoln was a good racist. He was, God help us, a tentative racist. How, after the Third Reich and the First and Second American South and South Africa, can anyone say that? A man who condemns a whole race and excludes it from the basic rules of the social contract -- the right to vote and to sit on juries and attend schools -- is not a good racist, and if he were not Abraham Lincoln, we would say he is not a good man. If additionally such a man proposes concretely -- not vaguely or tentatively -- to ethnically cleanse a country by deporting a whole people because of its race, we would say he doesn't even share our sense of humanity.
Conor Cruise O'Brien makes an extremely perceptive comment, saying that the worst racists are the counting racists, the men and women who are always counting the reasons the oppressed group is inferior to the oppressing group. George Washington, who was a racist on other levels, was not, O'Brien says, a counting racist.
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were. They had, to appropriate the words he used about Jefferson, "the classical racist itch to identify characteristics [color, intellect, morality, aesthetics] that could be interpreted as indications of genetic inferiority" and as reasons why Blacks should be oppressed.
Most of Lincoln's information on Blacks came from minstrel shows and stag sessions with the boys, and he never really got over the idea that the stock minstrel show figure -- loud, funny, dumb, loquacious -- was the typical Negro. The men who observed him every day and heard him talk publicly and privately said he had a low opinion of Blacks and that he poked fun at them and ridiculed them. Donald said that Lincoln "never described them [Blacks] as indolent or incapable of sustained work", but Lamon, who was there and heard the words from Lincoln's mouth, said the sixteenth president "claimed that those who were incidentally liberated by the Federal arms were poor-spirited, lazy, and slothful" and "as docile in the service of the Rebellion as the mules that ploughed the fields or drew the baggage trains." It is no wonder, then, Lamon said, that "with such views honestly formed... that he longed to see them transported to Hayti, Central America, Africa, or anywhere, so that they might in no event, and in no way, participate in the government of his country" (italics added).
So much for the tentative school.

SOURCE: Professor John Hope Franklin, July 4, 1990 (speech "Who Divided This House?").

As soon as the Union was created, the fissures revealing a deep and almost permanent division became apparent. Despite the professions of equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence, neither Thomas Jefferson, its author, nor many, if any, of the signatories believed a word of it. In their almost reckless haste to pin every conceivable sin on King George III, the Patriots rejected the proposition that he was responsible for slavery, lest a victory on their part would leave them no reason for retaining the institution of human bondage. Their determination to maintain the subjugation and degradation of Africans was considerably greater than any belief they had in the universal rights of humankind. Thus, from the very inception of the independence movement, there was no disposition to transform that movement into a grand, overarching thrust in favor of human brotherhood and universal freedom as well as political independence.
During the War for Independence, the Patriots took every possible step to make certain that the institution of slavery would remain inviolate. The Council of War, led by George Washington, decided at the outset that black men should not be permitted to enlist in the Continental Army. The very flavor of the language banning them is instructive. Recruiters were not to enlist, the order read, any deserter from the British Army 'nor any stroller, negro, or vagabond.' Then, late in 1775 the British welcomed all Negroes willing to join His Majesty's Troops and promised to set them free in return. The colonists were terrified, especially at the prospect of a servile insurrenction. And so the Continental Congress reversed its policy and grudgingly admitted blacks into the Continental Army.
* * *
In 1777 a group of Massachusetts blacks told the white people of that fledgling state that every principle which impelled the colonists to break with England 'pleads stronger than a thousand arguments against slavery.' In numerous other instances blacks, slave and free, reminded the colonists that they were entitled to the same rights as other human beings. Massachusetts slaves told the General Court of Massachusetts that 'they have in common with all other men a Natural and Unaliable Right to that freedom which the Grat Parent of the Unavers hath Bestowed equally on all menkind and which they have never forfuted by any Compact or agreement whatever * * *' Also in Massachusetts, Paul and John Cuffe, well-to-do black businessmen, embarrassed the white patriots by refusing to pay their taxes, since they were denied the privilege of voting. The brothers were promptly sent to jail. Obviously the whites wanted to have it both ways, and just as obviously the blacks were determined that they should not have it both ways.
* * *
It was bad enough to issue a Declaration of Independence that made no reference to human bondage and fight a war that denied freedom for all. And yet, that is precisely what the Founding Fathers did. It was even worse to write into a new Constitution a number of provisions to protect human slavery, principles which would undermine the very foundation on which a free, rational social order could have been built. How can one even entertain the hope that a house will not be divided or can possibly stand when its organic law authorizes the continuation of the slave trade for at least another twenty years, asserts the right to count three fifths of the slaves for purposes of representation in Congress, and calls for the return and reenslavement of those poor, hapless souls who attempted to replicate in their own lives what the white patriots claimed exclusively for themselves.
The year 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met, was a time to speak out for the highest conceivable principles of human relationships and to express, beyond the glittering generalities set forth in the preamble, a commitment to decent, fundamental human relations. Such sentiments and such commitments are absent. There is no passionate advocacy of freedom by anyone from the South or from the North. No one uttered in behalf of the slaves the eloquent words of Patrick Henry, 'Give me liberty or give me death!' There was no real debate on the question of whether the nation should be made up of free people or, indeed, whether the nation should be half free and half slave. The tolerance of the institution of slavery on the part of delegates from the South and the North was remarkable. And to make sure that those who wanted slavery would not be disappointed, the Constitution placed its imprimatur on the institution in every possible way. Meanwhile, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut gave additional assurances to the slaveholders by counseling his fellow non-slaveholders that they should 'not intermeddle' with the operation of the institution of slavery.
If there was any doubt about how divided the house was in 1787, the year the Constitution was written, Philadelphia, the locale of the Constitutional Convention, would provide the scenario for a house divided in the most liberal sense. In November 1787, two months after the Constitutional Convention completed its work, Richard Allen and his fellow black Methodists went to worship as usual in the predominantly white St. George's Methodist Church in downtown Philadelphia. This time, the sexton, carrying out a new policy of the church, directed the blacks to sit in the balcony, instead of along the wall on the main floor. Allen and his friends dutifully complied. During the prayer that followed, one of the trustees of the church, observing that the black worshipers were on the front row of the balcony, went up and pulled Absalom Jones, one of the black worshipers, from his knees and directed him to the last row. Obviously shaken by this peremptory command, Jones asked him to wait until the prayer was over. The trustee persisted and even called on other trustees to assist him in reseating the black communicants. By this time the prayer was over and, as Allen later recounted the incident, 'they all went out of the church in a body and they were no more plagued with us in the church.' This led to the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the largest black group in all Methodism. In 1787 Philadelphia blacks and, indeed, blacks in other parts of the country, had a fair understanding of what few protections, if any, they enjoyed under the new Constitution.
* * *
As we look back on the tragic events of 1861-65, we may well ask, 'Who Divided this House?' I offer this answer, after some considerable reflection. It was divided almost from the beginning, but surely as early as 1640, when colonial law and colonial officials began to make distinctions based on race. It was divided by the Council of War during the American Revolution that preferred an all-white military establishment that would not be fouled by the presence of 'negroes and vagabonds.' It was divided by the Continental Congress that refused to include in the Declaration of Independence a paragraph condemning the King for introducing and maintaining slavery in the colonies. (The King was not responsible for instituting and maintaining slavery, but such niceties did not restrain the colonists from accusing the King of other 'crimes' for which he was not responsible.) The house was divided by George Washington who was at least as diligent in maintaining control over his wealthy wife's slaves as he was in prosecuting the war against Britain. It was divided by Thomas Jefferson who not only graciously acquiesced in the deletion of the antislavery clause from the Declaration of Independence, but also pleaded unsuccessfully with his protege, Edward Coles, not to set his slaves free and migrate to Illinois but to remain in Virginia and uphold the institution of slavery.
The House was divided by James Madison, the 'Father' of the Constitution, who not only was responsible for the 'style' in which slavery was written into the Constitution, but also participated in the enactment of the laws of the first and second Congresses that respectively barred blacks from becoming naturalized citizens and from becoming members of the militia of the United States. It was divided by all the other slaveholders and their accessories, who believed in the obscene incongruity that they could establish a prosperous social order in which they would benefit from the exploitation of a labor force without its consent and with no thought of just compensation for it. The house was divided by the theologians, pseudo-scientists, sociologists, and others who conjured up the most spectacular, if flimsy, defenses and justifications for the exploitation of human beings that by the 1850's had become a craze of the worst conceivable sort.
The house was divided by the articulate, non-slaveholding leaders at the Constitutional Convention and in subsequent years whose fears, like those of Benjamin Franklin, seemed to be limited to the possible Africanization of the country if too many blacks were imported, and by the likes of Oliver Ellsworth who thought that they should not 'intermeddle' with the South and its institutions.

The essential principle that this nation was founded was on the equality of all men before God.

I think nolu has pointed out to you the historical interpretation of that clause. As you may know, Jefferson had a clause in the DOI about slavery, but the Continental Congress took it out. Why would they have taken it out if they subscribed to your interpretation of 'all men are created equal'?

Here is the excised clause. From: Link

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

BTW, you didn't comment on the other part of my post, where the Cherokees pointed out Northern actions against freedom of the press, free speech, habeas corpus, etc. Slavery is surely a great evil, but so are the Northern actions the Cherokees pointed out. Are you honest enough to say that those actions were wrong?

Oh, brother!

Whaddayamean, "oh, brother!"? You're living proof.

You, Eric Foner, James McPherson, Harry Jaffa, the Claremonsters, and all the para-Claremonsters on this board, including you, are part of the Front.

[You, quoting Alexander Stephens] "....It was for their ancient rights, customs and institutions, their liberties achieved and bequeathed to them by their ancestors, that they fought."

Tweeeeeeeeeeetttt! Flag!! Illegal quote!!

Don't you know, you're only permitted to quote that one line from Stephens about "cornerstones" and "immediate causes"? Because.......<all together>

"It was all about slavery!!!!!!!"

</sarcasm>

Slavery is surely a great evil, but so are the Northern actions the Cherokees pointed out. Are you honest enough to say that those actions were wrong?

So far....... <crickets>

[You, quoting the Cherokees]

"The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government."

That pretty much gets it for me. But according to others, the Cherokees must not have understood that

"It was all about slavery!!!"

<tiny chorus>
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
Four legs good! Two legs bad!
Four legs good! Two legs bad!

</sarc>

While in the leading bookstores the other day I picked up a copy of the coffee table/hardback version of McPherson's 'Battle Cry of Freedom' as we discussed previously.

The work is impressive, in terms of layout, maps, graphics, and as far as I could detect, content as well. Although McPherson has made and continues to issue numerous, outrageous, leftist statements through some of the worst left-wing media sources, I did not detect the same slanted agenda views as I scanned this particular book of his.

Mr. McPherson should stick to Civil War history, and clam up on any further unfounded ridiculous attacks on President Bush, the situation Iraq, coupled with tooting the horn for the radical left.

The CSA constitution was the same as the DOI and the original Constitution in that all did not accept the equality of the black man. So please tell me again how the CSA document was different than the others.

I'm not at all sure what you are talking about. Both constitutions accepted the equality of a free black person and a free white person for apportioning representatives. A free person counted as one, regardless of race. Only chattel was counted by the 3/5ths rule. Likewise, the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now the confederate constitution differed from the real Constitution in several ways, not the least of which was the specific protection of slavery and slave imports.

I did not detect the same slanted agenda views as I scanned this particular book of his.

The idea that the Civil War was a vanguard-led "war of liberation" to free the slaves is very Marxist. That thesis and its propagation is the agenda.

Moreover, inculpation of the South's Lost Cause, to darken modern Southerners morally -- this is the game Transactional Analysis calls "Blemish" -- and discredit them before the rest of the nation is a talisman of left-wing politics and front-building.

Wait for it, and rely on it, that McPherson will produce a book about Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Maybe two.

Mr. McPherson should stick to Civil War history, and clam up on any further unfounded ridiculous attacks on President Bush, the situation Iraq, coupled with tooting the horn for the radical left.

I know how you feel. I've always felt that happy, happy Nolu Chan's particular favorite, Lerone Bennett, should stick to writing glowing supports for reparations for slavery and leave the history to the professionals.

That one quote I agree is pushing the envelope a bit, but would you discard the remaining content of his book?

I too am in full accord with those who fought hold the Union, together along with dismantling the slave empire, which locally would have freed the slaves.

Not taking the pro-Confederate, pro-slavery side during the Civil War does not make one a commie loving Marxist swine.

Reconstruction and the Jim Crow period are valid subjects which should not be swept under the rug.

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

Source: Michael T. Griffith, From the History Books: Facts That Support the Southern View of the Civil War

LINK

"Robert Gould Shaw, member of a prominent Massachusetts merchant family, was a lieutenant in the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteers.... His regiment saw duty on the coast of Florida and Georgia.... [The editor then quotes from one of Shaw's letters:]
'We arrived on the southern point of this island [St. Simon's Island, Georgia] at six in the morning. I went ashore to report to Colonel Montgomery....
'At 8 A.M. we were at the mouth of the Altamaha river, and immediately made for Darien....
'On the way up, Colonel Montgomery threw several shells among the plantations, in what seemed to me a very brutal way, for he didn't know how many women and children there might be.
'About noon, we came in sight of Darien, a beautiful little town.... The town was deserted, with exception [sic] of two white women and two Negroes.
'Montgomery ordered all the furniture and movable property to be taken on board the boats. This occupied some time; and, after the town was pretty thoroughly disembowelled [cleaned out], he [Montgomery] said to me, "I shall burn this town".... I told him "I did not want the responsibility of it"; and he was only too happy to take it all on his shoulders. So the pretty place was burned to the ground, and not a shed remained standing -- Montgomery firing the last buildings with his own hand.... You must bear in mind, that not a shot had been fired at us from this place.... All the inhabitants (principally women and children) had fled on our approach, and were, no doubt, watching the scene from a distance....
'The reasons he [Montgomery] gave me for destroying Darien were, that the Southerners must be made to feel that this was a real war, and that they were to be swept away by the hand of God, like the Jews of old.... Then he says "We are outlawed, and, therefore, not bound by the rules of regular warfare." But that makes it none the less revolting to wreak our vengeance on the innocent and defenseless....
'Remember not to breathe a word of what I have written about this raid, for I have not yet made up my mind what I ought to do. Besides my distaste for this barbarous sort of warfare, I am not sure that it will not harm very much the reputation [of Shaw's unit] and of those connected with them.
'All I complain of is wanton destruction. After going through the hard campaigning and hard fighting in Virginia, this makes me very much ashamed of myself.'"
(Commager, editor, The Civil War Archive, pp. 335-336)

[M. Espinola] The work [McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom] is impressive, in terms of layout, maps, graphics, and as far as I could detect, content as well.

SOURCE: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 860-61

The North -- along with a few countries of northwestern Europe -- hurtled forward eagerly toward a future of industrial capitalism that many southerners found distasteful if not frightening; the South remained proudly and even defiantly rooted in the past before 1861.
Thus when secessionists protested that they were acting to preserve traditional rights and values, they were correct. They fought to protect their constitutional liberties against the perceived northern threat to overthrow them. The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the founding fathers -- a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict. The accession to power of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening, revolutionary future. Indeed, the Black Republican party appeared to the eyes of many southerners as "essentially a revolutionary party" composed of "a motley throng of Sans culottes . . . Infidels and freelovers, interspersed by Bloomer women, fugitive slaves, and amalgamationists." ⁷ Therefore secession was a pre-emptive counterrevolution to prevent the Black Republican revolution from engulfing the South. "We are not revolutionists," insisted James B. D. DeBow and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War, "We are resisting revolution. . . . We are conservative." ⁸
Union victory in the war destroyed the southern vision of America and ensured that the northern vision would become the American vision. Until 1861, however, it was the North that was out of the mainstream, not the South.
7. New Orleans Daily Delta, Nov. 3, 1860; Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in south Carolina (New York, 1970), 287.
8. DeBow's Review, 33 (1862), 44; Rowland, Davis, VI, 357.

I would question Mr. Bennett on the effects to the nation, plus the continuation & expansion of the slave empire if Jefferson Davis and the Confederates had actually won the Civil War. Maybe Mr. Bennett would not hold Lincoln to such a high standard if the outcome had been reversed.

Montgomery was an a******. Col Robert Gould Shaw was a moral man but forced to submit to the corrupt Montgomery based on superior rank.