Posted on 08/28/2019 7:21:47 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
In his 1861 "Cornerstone Speech", Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens said the following:
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."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.
Now you know that if the VICE PRESIDENT of the Confederacy was saying this about the Founding Fathers rejection of slavery, he had plenty of agreement on it. In other more detailed(line by line) words, Abraham Lincoln agreed that the Founders rejected slavery. In his Peoria Speech, Lincoln said the following:
AT the framing and adoption of the constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "PERSON HELD TO SERVICE OR LABOR." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States NOW EXISTING, shall think proper to admit," &c. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less than this our fathers COULD not do; and NOW [MORE?] they WOULD not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther, they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.
In 1794, they prohibited an out-going slave-trade---that is, the taking of slaves FROM the United States to sell.
In 1798, they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa, INTO the Mississippi Territory---this territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was TEN YEARS before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the constitution.
In 1800 they prohibited AMERICAN CITIZENS from trading in slaves between foreign countries---as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.
In 1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two State laws, in restraint of the internal slave trade.
In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance to take effect the first day of 1808---the very first day the constitution would permit---prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties.
In 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared the trade piracy, and annexed to it, the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the general government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation; and by which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within these limits.
Thus we see, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the PRINCIPLE, and toleration, ONLY BY NECESSITY.
Now isn't it interesting that the New York Times in its 1619 project disagrees with both the Confederates and Lincoln? What must it be like to have such a low quantity of shame?
This "Cornerstone Speech" does many things, but most importantly, it shows quite distinctly that there is a lineage break from the Constitution to the Confederacy. Not that the New York Times cares for facts, anyways. But I know that you do.
Read the US Constitution. The Founders gave specific reasons. The Confederacy were nothing more than a bunch of slave owning plutocrats.
Never said that the Civil War was all about slavery. The question was if there had been no slavery from the beginning of America, would there have been a Civil War?
My guess is that without slavery, the wealth and disparity between the North and South would not have developed in the same manner. Would there have been the wealth and the will to execute a decoupling from England through revolution. IDK but my guess is it would have been quite different.
If the Declaration of Independence articulates a right capable of overthrowing the thousand year old British Monarchy, it is certainly equal to the task of dissolving their participation in a government that is only "four score and seven years" old.
Apart from that, the US Constitution says nothing on a state becoming independent, because everything that needed to be said on the subject was said 11 years earlier in the Declaration of independence.
The Confederacy were nothing more than a bunch of slave owning plutocrats.
In terms of who was collecting the money from slave production, it would appear that New York City and Washington DC were making more money off of slavery than were these Southern plutocrats.
Yes, I agree plutocrats are bad, but how about we focus on the more powerful and destructive plutocrats in New York and Washington DC that are destroying us now, just as they destroyed the Southern states then?
Thanks. I had none of this information just a few years ago. I have only recently realized what actually happened in the Civil War, and I have only done so because I kept reading about so many things regarding it which didn't make any sense.
I wounder subsequently if the Americas would have had the will or power to execute the revolution and decouple from England without the wealth that slavery provided the North and the South?
I very greatly doubt they would have had either the will or the means to leave England without the wealth and power they had obtained through slavery and slave trading.
Oh for Christ sake, go take your meds.
Are you aware that almost all the media propaganda agencies are headquartered in New York?
“Never said that the Civil War was all about slavery.”
You are right; you didn’t say that.
The way I phrased my response implied you did, or might have.
I should have made it clear that others have said “it was all about slavery.”
It seems like you have said “if it hadn’t have been for slavery there would have been no war.”
It is a complicated thing. Of the 13 original states, 13 of them were slave states. But of that number, only 13 of them voted to enshrine slavery into the United States Constitution.
I am not totally convinced that the Union slave state of Maryland sent troops to fight in the slave state of Virginia to free the slaves.
Or that the Union slave state of Delaware sent troops to fight in the slave state of North Carolina to free the slaves.
Or that the Union slave state of Kentucky sent troops to fight in the slave state of Tennessee to free the slaves. And so forth and so on.
Jefferson Davis once took an oath to defend and protect the pro-slavery CSA Constitution.
Abraham Lincoln took an oath - twice - to defend and protect the pro-slavery United States Constitution.
“Read the US Constitution. The Founders gave specific reasons.”
You will not find in the Constitution the specific reasons why the founders left England and established free and independent states. For that read the Declaration of Independence.
Oh, when I made my initial statement, it was more predicated on the presumption that minus slavery, there would’ve been so few Africans brought in to the point that it wouldn’t have been an issue. The only reason they were imported in the numbers they were was almost exclusively due to slavery.
It would’ve been curious to see the development of the South had we (White folk) “picked our own (proverbial) cotton.”
No doubt, many northerners did not consider their actions in order to end the slavery practices.
Again, the dicussion in not about what it was. Remove the word slavery from your argument and the discussion takes on another face. Virgina for one was the most industrialized of the slave states and minus the slavery issue would have lined up with the Northern states in any otherwise gendered secession. Without Virginia a secession would have been greatly different. Might have even been mutually agreed upon.
Slavery, if not the wedge, was certainly the glue that held the south together.
And yet we have quasi slavery today. It is interesting how a race can be convinced to serve the same masters' heritage and not see that they have been hoodwinked. The liberal servitude to free, free, free everything, and the destruction of the family have continued as this quasi slavery. This is where slavery resides.
Hopefully there will be an awakening.
I would like to see which speech this was. Where did Davis say that the Founders supported slavery?
Please provide a link or something specific/large enough to reach the original source.
Jefferson wanted to accuse the King of being responsible for bringing slavery to America in the first place.
The Founding Father's had every intention of dealing with slavery as an evil that had to be eliminated.
They might not have thought slaves equal in the sense of civil rights, but they did hold that all men were equal in human rights.
The early history of the Republic was the rise the anti-slavery sentiment that ended it in the North and was on the verge of ending it in the South until the cotton gin and the profitability of cotton. Only then did slavery began to be defended as a positive good instead of seen as an evil that would eventually be eliminated.
The Founder's made sure that slavery did not spread into the Northwest and wanted to stop it's spread.
Correct. They did give reasons though, didn’t they? And none that read had anything to do about keeping slaves.
mark
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us . . .
“Again, the discussion in not about what it was.”
I have misunderstood or misattributed an earlier statement; I don’t want to press my luck.
“They might not have thought slaves equal in the sense of civil rights, but they did hold that all men were equal in human rights.”
That’s an interesting comment. Because of what “they” did to Indians and slaves before the Revolutionary War, and during, and after I did not realize the provisions of the Declaration of Independence were intended to apply to Indians and slaves.
I guess “merciless Indian savages” distracted my understanding.
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