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The "famous" Cornerstone Speech as you refer to it may or may not be accurate on whatever website you choose, since no copy of it exists, or apparently ever did. What is called 'the speech' was nothing but a hearsay newspaper article from a speech of a politician that did not represent the Confederacy.

If you think quoting Stephen's comments is useful, then it would be more accurate to examine what is actually recorded, officially..:

From the Confederate Convention records as listed in Vol. 1 The Civil History Of The Confederate States :

"With regard to slavery and the slave trade the provisions of the Constitution furnished an effective answer to the assertion so often made that the Confederacy was founded on slavery and intended to perpetuate and extend it.

"Property in slaves already existing was recognized and guaranteed just as it was by the Constitution of the United States, and the rights of such property in the common territories were protected against any such hostile discrimination as had been attempted in the Union.

"But the extension of slavery, in' the only practical sense of that phrase, was more distinctly and effectually precluded by the Confederate than by the Federal Constitution. The further importation of Negroes from any country other than the slave holding States and territories of the United States was peremptorily prohibited, and Congress was further endowed with the power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State or territory not belonging to the Confederacy.

"Mr. Stephens, next in official rank, said concerning this constitution,

"The whole document negatives the idea which so many have been active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set of conspirators, whose object was the overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the United States and the creation of a great slave oligarchy instead of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed."

He authored that and that is documented.

What is called 'the speech' was nothing but a hearsay newspaper article from a speech of a politician that did not represent the Confederacy.

"Did not represent the Confederacy"? He was their vice president. And as much as you might try to claim that the reporter somehow got it wrong, here's what Stephens wrote himself in his memoir about what he was trying to express: "The relation of the black to the white race, or the proper status of the coloured population amongst us, was a question now of vastly more importance than when the old Constitution was formed. The order of subordination was nature's great law; philosophy taught that order as the noraml condition of the African amongst European races. Upon this recognized principle of a proper subordination, let it be called slavery or what not, our State institutions were formed and rested. The new Confederation was entered into with this distinct understanding. This principle of the subordination of the inferior to the superior was the "corner-stone" on which it was formed."

http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/cw/cw223.htm

In other words, the Confederacy wasn't founded on the cornerstone of slavery, it was founded on the cornerstone of racial subordination of blacks, "let it be called slavery or what not." Yes, that's much better.

Mainly because Stephens' remarks were made extemporaneously. But Stephens himself admits that he did edit the reporter's article before publication and that he did not dispute the overall accuarcy of the account.

And as for Stephens being "a politician (who) did not represent the Confederacy", he was the vice-president at the time he made those remarks. If the vice-president did not represent the confederacy then who did?

"But the extension of slavery, in' the only practical sense of that phrase, was more distinctly and effectually precluded by the Confederate than by the Federal Constitution.

Utter nonsense. Article 1 section 9 states that "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed" meaning that the confederate legislature could not legislate any restriction on slavery. Then a later clause clearly states that when the confederacy conquers new territories then in "all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government..." There is no way that any rational person can read the confederate constitution and come to the conclusion that it precluded the extension of slavery at all, much less to a greater extent than the real Constituion did.

The relevant point about the "Cornerstone Speech" is not whether Mr. Stephens spoke the exact words attributed to him or not. It is that these recorded words were widely distributed in southern newspapers and universally praised as the best possible statement of southern ideals and goals.

While softened by Christian sentiments, the ideology it expresses is essentially one of the white man as the master race. It flatly rejects the Declaration of Independence for being wrong when it asserts that "all men are created equal."

I have never seen any contemporary statement from Mr. Stephens in which he clarifies or denies any of the statements attributed to him in this famous (and very eloquent, if disgusting) speech.

As far as the "extension of slavery" goes, it is well known that many in the South viewed the Caribbean and Latin America as a future field for such expansion. As far as I know, the Confederate Constitution did not provide for the prohibition of slavery in any territory acquired in the future by the Confederacy.