On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens, the new Vice President of the Confederate States of America, gave a speech in Savannah in his native state of Georgia. The speech has gone down in history at the "Cornerstone Speech" for this passage:
"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution of 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... 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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
So according to the Vice President of the Confederacy, slavery was both the cause of the "late rupture and present revolution" against the United States AND the "cornerstone" of the Confederate government and constitution.
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