As in a world where folks such as Henry Clay are praised to the heavens for mouthing that they are against slavery "on principle." In practice, he and his ilk kept as many slaves as possible and never let them go. What was important, per Lincoln and his apologists, is that his mentor said he opposed slavery "on principle."
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)
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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."
