Cornerstone Speech

The Cornerstone Speech, also known as the Cornerstone Address, was an oration delivered by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861.

Delivered extemporaneously a few weeks before the Confederacy would start the American Civil War by firing on the U.S. Army at Fort Sumter, Stephens' speech explained the fundamental differences between the constitutions of the Confederacy and that of the United States, enumerated contrasts between U.S. and Confederate ideologies and beliefs, laid out the Confederacy's causes for declaring secession, and defended the enslavement of African Americans.

The Cornerstone Speech became so known for Stephens's declaration that the perpetuation of slavery was the principal goal and purpose of the secession and the Confederacy:

Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] 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.

The speech was given weeks after the secession of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and then Texas and less than three weeks after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th United States president. The war itself would not begin until Fort Sumter was attacked in mid-April, so open large-scale hostilities between the two sides had not yet begun (there had been isolated incidents such as the attack on the Star of the West steamship). Referring to the general lack of violence, Stephens stated that the seceding states' declarations of secession had been accomplished without "the loss of a single drop of blood".

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