Usually every year I put the Declaration of Independence up on the 4th but today I want to put up a piece of a different speech that ironically was arguing for the dissolusion of Ameirca.
Alexander Stephens was a member of the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate. He was elected to Congress in 1843 and served till 1859. When Georgia was contemplating session he was voted to the provisional congress of the Confederacy and was elected Vice President of the Confederate states. After the Civil War he was re-elected to congress in 1873 leaving congress after being elected governor of Georgia serving until his death in 1883.
He was one of the more ardent supporters of session and after session but before the shooting began (March 21st 1861) he gave a speech touting the improvements in the new Constitution of the confederacy, from the single presidential terms, the lack of a national tariff, cabnet members having seats in congress and a prohibition of the national government to make internal improvements in individual states.
He closed his list of improvement with a defense of Slavery not only arguing that it was the cornerstone of the confederacy
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
Thus unknowingly dispelling the revisionist history that some push today arguing that Slavery was not the primary cause of the war. But more interesting to us is what immediately precedes this paragraph, namely an attack on the founding fathers of the Republic from which he has departed.
All emphasis mine
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.”
Take a note of what he says here. He not only states that Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen were opposed to slavery and considered wrong on every count and that said idea was the prevailing idea of the time, but that those founding fathers held that idea based on an assumption of the equality of the races.
It’s important to note here that his was not mere rhetoric. Stephens despite poor beginnings was not only well read in an age were illiteracy was common, but well educated (Top of his college class) a successful lawyer, married to the daughter of a Revolutionary war colonel but at the time of this speech had been an elected representative in the state of Georgia and congress for over a quarter of a century. Few men in the entire nation were in a better position to know the history and the sentiment of the Founders than he.
The irony of Alexander Stephens exposing the woke fools of today for the virtue signaling fools that they are is that Stephens considered the founders opposition to slavery and assumption of racial equality a fault.
So the next time the Kaepernicks of the world try to tell you how backward the founding fathers were on race and demand they be removed, remind them of this speech and the contempt that the speaker had for their opinions on race and equality.
