The True Meaning Behind the Confederate Flag

[Tolkien R.R.J]

Slavery's Impact On the Cotton States- Slavery Decided by State or Federal?


“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
-10th amendment U.S Constitution

“Slavery has nothing whatever to do with the tremendous issues now awaiting decision. It has disappeared almost entirely from the political discussions of the day. No one mentions it in connection with our present complications.“The question which we have to meet is precisely what it would be if there were not a negro slave on American soil.””
-New York Times quoted in the Richmond Whig April 9 1861

Slavery's involvement in southern secession is often overstated because slavery was the “occasion” to witch the fight over states rights and the nature of the constitution was fought. Just as Calhoun had said of the tariff of abomination was “The occasion, rather than the real cause” that cause was federal power expansion past its constitutional limits and its encroachments upon the rights of the states.

“This consolidation of the states has been the obiet of several men in this country for some time past. Weather such a change can ever be effected in any manner whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars, whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country time can only determine.”
-Richard Henry Lee 1787

“Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.”
-John Calhoun South Carolina Senator 1831

The deep south saw the republicans as violating the 9th and 10th amendment – and Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 Supreme Court ruling for trying to decide the fate of slavery by federal control rather than state and individual. Democratic plank 9 of the 1852 elections [and carried on to 1860] plainly stated that a attack on slavery was a attack on states rights, the two issues could not be separated. The question was, is the federal government confined to the powers in the constitution, or was it allowed to step outside of its delegated powers by the states thus nullifying the constitution and transforming the republic, into a centralized nation.

That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
-Democrat plank 9 1852

That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power made therein ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government; and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.
-Democratic Plank 1 1852

“It has often been said that we were fighting for the perpetuation of slavery. This was not so. We were simply fighting for our right to keep slaves if we wanted to. We were fighting for state rights- rights to be allowed to make our own laws for our particular states”
-Joseph F Burke Confederate colonial


Secession and Slavery a States Rights and Constitutional Issue


“The people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say slavery had everything to do with the war”
-Shelby Foote

“Slavery, although the occasion, was not the producing cause of dissolution”
-Rose Oneal Greehow- My improvement and the first year of abolition Rule in Washington 1863

“Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery”
-Joel Parker New jersey Governor 1863

Slavery had varying degrees of influence on the deep south reasons for secession, from none at all, to the main reason. No question there were some in the south that were willing to leave the union simply to preserve slavery. The slave owner thought slavery was a constitutional, biblical, and state right. A southern slave owner would view a northern abolitionist as a foreigner who was violating their rights. In the cotton states they had more financial gain and loss riding on slavery and were more apt to maintain slavery and their economy. No better example than Mississippi. With 4 billion dollars worth of value and almost the whole economic system of the state dependent on slavery, they wished to defend their economic system that had brought them so much wealth. However even in Mississippi, slavery was not the sole cause.

“Let not slavery prove a barrier to our independence...although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for... if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it”
-The Jackson Mississippian 1864 quoted in McPherson's Battle cry of Freedom

The south viewed slaves as any other legal property that the federal could not interfere with, if they tried to do so, it was tyrannical. Unlike today in antebellum America was at a time when the federal did not extend into the states domain and Southerners who were still of the Jeffersonian tradition well understood that if the federal was allowed to encroach on the states on the issue of slavery [or any other issue] it would continue to expand until it became a tyrannical body that no longer followed its limitations under the Constitution such as we have today.

“When all government domestic and forighn in little as in great things shall be drawn to Washington as the source of all power. It will render powerless the checks provided of one government [states] on another, and will become as vegal and oppressive as the government which we have separated”
-Thomas Jefferson

"The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
--Thomas Jefferson

“I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
– Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” [February 15, 1791]

“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. “
– John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774


“slavery was not the cause, but the occasion of strife...Rights of the states were the bulwarks of the liberties of the people but that emancipation by federal aggression would lead to the destruction of all other rights”
-R.L Dabney A Defense Of Virginia And The South 1867

“If the government has the right to interfere in the private affairs of white men, it can do the same with Nige$s”.
-Mr. Etheridge of Tennessee 1860 quoted in NY Herald column on the debate in the senate on “the slavery question”

It would be hard to accept that southerners were willing to leave the country they loved and fight a war simply to have slavery extended into new territories where it would simply provide more competition to southern slave states domination on cotton. In 1843 many rich southern planters and no less than Calhoun voted against Texas for statehood because they said it would reduce the price of cotton. Instead they would want a monopoly within the south. By leaving the union the south was giving up federal protection for there runaway slaves under the fugitive slave laws, as well as giving up there right to bring there slaves into the united states territories something they fought so hard for.

“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
-Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War

If the south fought only for slavery, with no connection to states rights, it only had to not fight the war. Slavery was protected and not under attack by Lincoln in the states it already existed. At any time as Lincoln promised, the south just had to lay down arms and come back into the union with slavery intact, yet they chose to fight for another cause.

“The emancipation proclamation was actually an offer permitting the south to stop fighting and return to the union by January 1st and still keep its slaves”
-John Canaan The Peninsula campaign

“Peace now would save slavery, while a continued war would obliterate the last vestiges of it”
-Raleigh newspaper July 1863 quoted in Americas Civil war Magazine

Virginia alone freed more slaves prior to civil war than NY, NJ, Pennsylvania,and New England put together. South Carolinian Mary Chestnut said slavery was a curse, yet she supported secession. She and others hoped the war would end with a “Great independent country with no slavery.” On June 1861 Mary Chestnut said “Slavery has got to go of course but they did because the issue was much deeper as it involved states rights, constitutional protection, and the nature of the union.

“When the Government of the United States disregarded and attempted to trample upon the rights of the States, Georgia set its power at defiance and seceded from the Union rather than submit to the consolidation of all power in the hands of the Central or Federal Government..her sovereignty the principles for the support of which Georgia entered into this revolution.”
-Joseph E Brown Georgia Governor 1862

In antebellum America north and south the states resisted federal expansion in various ways. The first federal vs state issue arose over the alien and sedition acts and later internal improvements, national banking, conscription, protective tariffs, land disputes, freedom of speech, free trade, state control of militia, fugitive slave laws etc. No matter what the issue states held firm to the union and fought against federal expansions. The south was doing what states north or south had done in antebellum America, resisted federal expansion past its constitutional bounds. The consequences of the new radical Republican victory over the battle of a centralized nation vs a union of states with a limited federal government has led to the modern tyrannical government that shows no regard for its supposed limitations proving Jefferson correct. See [From Union to Empire- The Political Effects of the Civil war From Union to Empire The Political Effects of the Civil war ]

“The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property, including slave property, and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict. The accession of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the Northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening future."
-James M. McPherson Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism


South Carolina Secession Document
Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

South Carolina was the first state to seceded from the union. If read in full it gives a good example of slavery as a states rights issue. Slavery was an occasion that states rights were fought over, not the sole cause. The cause of dissolving the union is given right off the bat “Declared that the frequent violations of the constitution by the united sates, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union.” The document is a states rights succession document. The writers of the document wanted that to stand out, that is why the first thing noticed at a glance of the document you will see “FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES” capitalized three times in the document to stand out. South Carolina was also letting it be known in their declaration of Independence, that it was “FREE AND INDEPANDANT STATES” and state rights, that they were declaring independence. The document goes into the history of states rights in America mentions the failure of the federal government in upholding the constitution and its interfering with states rights. South Carolina said if they were to stay in the union the “constitution will then no longer exists, equal rights of the states will be lost” and that the federal government would become its enemy. While slavery is mentioned four or five times, states rights, independent state, and state sovereignty is mentioned sixteen times. States rights are mentioned not in connection with slavery, yet slavery is always mentioned in connection with states rights. Just as southern democrats had been saying for decades in there political party planks, an attack on slavery was an attack on states rights. Just as South Carolina when it first threatened to success was over states rights, that time [1830's] over tariffs, not slavery.

 

[Tolkien R.R.J]

Western States Free or Slave?

“The one great evil, from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The Government of the United States is no longer the government of Confederated Republics, but of a consolidated Democracy. It is, in face such a Government as Great Britain attempted to set over our Fathers; and which was resisted and defeated by a seven years’ struggle for independence. ....The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution — –a limited free Government– — a Government limited to those matters only, which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States.... the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away; and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. ”
-Address of South Carolina to Slave-holding States Convention of South Carolina 1860

That when the settlers in a Territory, having an adequate population, form a State Constitution, the right of sovereignty commences, and being consummated by admission into the Union, they stand on an equal footing with the people of other States, and the State thus organized ought to be admitted into the Federal Union, whether its Constitution prohibits or recognizes the institution of slavery.
-Southern Democrat Party Platform 1860

The fight over new western territories was a battle over the very nature of the federal government. Were these states coming into the union allowed their state sovereignty and states rights as had all previous states, or was the federal government allowed to violate those rights and dictate the states? Where states sovereign or subject to a federal master? The republicans and Lincoln said they would not allow new states the rights granted in the constitution to decide on the issue of slavery. What the south asked for was that these new states coming in be allowed on their own to chose. Was the federal allowed to bar slave holders and their property from entering the new territories thus giving political control to the north, ensuring their political and economic agenda? The end results the south would no longer be represented by its government and the constitution would be abolished and replaced by a democracy.


Fight Over the Expansion of Slavery- A Fight to Control the Government and Agrarians vs Industrialist

“They are now divided, between agricultural–and manufacturing, and commercial States; between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. Their institutions and industrial pursuits, have made them, totally different peoples.”
-Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States Convention of South Carolina 1860

“It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.”
-Mississippi Declaration for Causes of Secession

“The struggle over the expansion of slavery into the territories....was almost a purely political issue”
-Robert William Fogel The rise and Fall of American Slavery

The Souths primarily agrarian and agricultural lifestyle contrasted with the growing northern industrial and urban lifestyle led to difference of opinion on culture, education, religion, role of government, tariffs, trade policies, internal improvements and many other differences. There were as many factories in the north, as there were factories workers in the south. From Americans agrarian roots the south had “little dynamic change, weather through immigration, the growth of new cities or new industrial manufacturing, was allowed to come in and stir up the pot.”

[For a in depth look at the cultural, political and religious differences between agrarians and industrialist see here I Wish I Was In The land Of Cotton- Southern Agrarian vs Northern Industrialization

I Wish I Was In The land Of Cotton- Southern Agrarian vs Northern Industrialization

“Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. We never want to see it otherwise. It is the freest, happiest, most independent , and, with us, the most powerful condition on earth”
-Montgomery Daily Confederation 1858

“1850's southern agrarians had mounted a counter attack against the gospel of industrialization”
-James McPherson Battle cry of freedom

“Leisure orientated agrarian society is the antithesis to materialistic northern life”
-Rapheal Semmes CSA navy commander

As argued in the book “I'll Take my Stand the south and the agrarian tradition.” The main cause of the war was the fight over western territories coming into the union. All men are created equal, so slave owners had just as much rights to go into the territories [federal owned land] as northerns did. Before the civil war northern big business and industry needed industrial workers for factories for expansion, not farmers and planters. If these states were allowed to decide on their own slave or free, than the south might maintain agrarian, free trade, policies.

“The political and economic implication of agrarian expansion westward were alarming to certain mercantile interests in the east who red the loss of their political and economic control of an expanding America”
-Merrill Jensen The New Nation Northeastern University Press

“The struggle in our territories between the free and slaveholding States, has not been a struggle for the emancipation of slaves. It has been a contest for power, between the two great sections of the Union...The Southern people, in claiming a right to settle in territories with their slaves, assert a right sanctioned by the Constitution. The Northern people, in attempting to preclude the Southern people, by the legislation of Congress from our territories, war against the Constitution. This is the declaration of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the Northern position has prevailed by the late Presidential election, as the Northern people maintain, it has overthrown the Constitution. For by this result, a party hostile both to the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court, have been placed in control of the Government. This alone would justify a dissolution of the Union....Whether all the States composing the United States, should be slaveholding or non-slaveholding States, neither the Northern nor Southern States ought to have permitted to be a question in the politics of the United States. ”
-Repot on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861

If they were to all become free, than northern industrialist would dominate congress and high tariffs, protective tariffs and internal improvements would rise. Both the industrialist and the southern planters backed politicians in the fight over western territories. Northern politicians thought slavery “Stifled technological progress, inhibited industrialization, and thwarted urbanization” and would lead to the “Destruction of all industry” Something had to happen.

“Professor Holt quotes Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings explaining: “To give the south the preponderance of political power would be itself to surrender our tariff, our internal improvements [a.k.a. corporate welfare], our distribution of proceeds of public lands . . .”
-Micheal Holt The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War quoted by Thomas j Dilorenzo

“Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.”
-Clyde Wilson Professor of History at the University of South Carolina

“The game plan of northern industrialist, who were fighting not for black freedom, but for the freedom to exploit and devolve the American market...The only people who could say “free at last” after the civil war were northern industrialist and their allies”
-Lerone Vennett JR Forced into Glory Abraham Lincolns White Dream

The industrialist “hired” politicians to go anti-slavery and pro industrial expansion, fighting hard for western states to go anti slavery. Former slave trader James De Wolf became anti slavery when he started manufacturing companies. All of a sudden he wanted internal improvements and protective tariffs. The south wanted agrarian lifestyle, free trade, and states to decide on slavery. So as was said “The south had to be crushed out, it was in the way, it impeded the progress of the machine” if slavery could be abolished, than southern agrarian representation in congress would be reduced, if not

“Then the old whig economic agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, and central banking, which had become the republican agenda, would continue to fail in congress”
-Thomas J Dilorenzo Lincoln Unmasked

“The more the north became industrialized, the more the need arose for stronger national government to support its growth and finical interests.” The industrialist wanted higher tariffs as well to slow the flow of trade on the Mississippi. They instead wanted trade to flow west through railroads supported by higher tariffs and internal improvements. Northern General Sherman said the civil war was a war between agriculturalist vs mechanics. Confederate General Jubal Early said Lee's army was defeated by “Steam power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resources of physical science”

The freeing of the slaves was “Only an accident in the violent clash of interests between the Industrial north and the Agricultural south”
-African American Ralph Bunche

“The south saw the attack on the issue of slavery not so much as an attempt to end slavery in the united states as much as an attempt to end southern influence in the national government”
-Walter D Kennedy Myths of American slavery

In the book Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War by Marc Egnal he said “Economics more than high moral concerns produced the civil war.” The heart of the war was economical differences growing between the protectionist, manufacturing northeast and the free trade agrarian south. In the book I'll take my stand a book on southern agrarian life, the authors argue if no other differences, the war would have still happened over industrial vs agrarian interests. The industrialist won. After the war the north profit went up 45% the south down 15%.

“Military defeat moved the scepter of wealth from the agrarian south to the industrial north”
-Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

“If the North triumphs, it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy,infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce, the banks, factories. ”
-Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

“Southern movement was a revolt of conservatism against the modernism of the north” a “Reaction to industry.”
-E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State university press

 

[Tolkien R.R.J]

Slave Insurrection

“They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.”
-Texas Causes of Secession

“An incursion has been instigated and actually perpetuated into a sister State the inevitable consequences of which were murder rapine and crimes even more horrible. The felon chief of that murderous band has been canonized as a heroic martyr by public meetings by the press and pulpit of all of the Northern States – others of the party have been demanded by the Governor of the State they invaded and their surrender refused by the Governors of two States of the Confederacy, demanded not as fugitives from service but as fugitives from justice charged with treason and murder. ...By the agency of a large proportion of the members from the non slaveholding States books have been published and circulated amongst us the direct tendency and avowed purpose of which is to excite insurrection and servile war with all their attendant horrors.
-Florida Causes of Secession

With recent slave uprising in Hati as well as Nat Turners uprising and finally John browns raid caused the south concern similar events would take place brought on by northern abolitionist inciting violence and uprising throughout the south. The most concern was over the northern reaction to John Browns raid. R.L Dabney said the event would have been trivial if not for pulpits and newspapers praising Browns actions.

“thousands of men who a month ago scoffed at the idea of a dissolution of the union...now hold the opinion that its days were numbered”
- Richmond Enquirer

While the north celebrated Browns raid, Virginia and the south saw itself as invaded by a foreign enemy. Southerners were concerned that innocent woman and children were at danger and they should resists such violence on its people.


Northern Violation of Fugitive Slave Laws

“The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [editor's note: the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.
-Texas causes of Southern secession

“They have disregarded the plain obligations of the Constitution of the United States, to deliver up fugitives bound to service, without which guarantee on their part, they know, that the Constitution would never have been formed; and by acts passed in their State Legislatures, they have practically nullified it.”
-Report on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861

The south from the creation of the union had constitutional protection of its property that included recognized slave property. The north by violating that right [and Dread Scott supreme court ruling/ fugitive slave laws] would not allow them their property and would in essence, steal it [by not working with federal workers]by not returning slaves. The south were not second class citizens and their property was constitutionally to be treated as any other property. It would be the same as if a Vermonters horse wondered across the border to New York, only to have a resident of that state keep the horse and say we dont recognize your right to this property. That is not a protection of the individuals property as granted under the constitution and was a cause of secession. Northern federalist Daniel Webster said in 1851 that if the north would not comply with the fugitive slave law, “The south would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other side”

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
-Article 4 clause 3 us Constitution

“Any person held to service or labor in one state escaping into another should not, in consequence of any law or regulation theorf, be discharged from such service or labor, but should be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor might be due by laws of his state. Thus and thus only, by the reciprocal guarantee of all the rights of every state against interference on the part of another.”
-President Franklin Pierce 1856


Abolitionist Ignored the Constitution to try and Abolish Slavery

“It is not slavery that [Thomas] Jefferson fears as “the death kneel of the union” it is antislavery, the notion that has been raised for the first time that congress could tamper with the institutions of new states as a condition for admission”
-Clyde Wilson from Union to Empire

“By focusing upon slavery, the bona fide story of the death of real states rights and the beginning of imperial america is overlooked...we stand naked before the awesome power to our federal master”
-Al Benson Jr and Walter Kennedy Lincolns Marxists

Most abolitionist were influenced by various abolitionist works of fiction like Uncle Toms cabin. Because of this they came to view southern slavery as a great moral evil and a biblical sin. Slavery was a vast enough evil in there eyes that the constitution, and state sovereignty had to be overlooked. Speaking of the constitution a famous abolitionist said

“Covenant with death and an agreement with hell”
-William Lloyd Garrison

The sinful slave owning south had to end. The north was also more influenced by the federalist party with a more centralized view of government. Further many immigrants joined the ranks of abolitionist from socialist backgrounds. The south who had first hand knowledge of American servitude saw the vast majority as being beneficial to the native African, elevating his position from slavery in Africa. They saw the slaves generally well treated and cared for. The majority did not see slavery as a great morale evil or a biblical sin. They viewed the northern abolitionist movement more from a political viewpoint.

“ When abolition overthrow slavery in the south, it also would equally overthrow the constitution”
-R.L Dabney 1867 A Defense of Virginia and the South

 

[Tolkien R.R.J]

CSA Vice President Alexander Stevens Corner Stone Speech

Alexander H. Stephens “Corner Stone” Speech Savannah, Georgia March 21, 1861
"Cornerstone" Speech - Teaching American History

Whenever a discussion is brought up on the causes of southern secession Stevens cornerstone speech that has a small section that some take as him saying slavery was the cause of secession will be brought up [I will get into more detail on this speech soon] His speech has been named the “cornerstone speech” however the majority of his speech is on tariffs, internal improvements and economical issues. Why take the small [misunderstood] section of his speech on slavery and try and paint the entire cause of the confederacy? Why not take a section like this

“The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new.”

or

“the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system.”

Than I find it interesting that Stevens seems to have been granted the authority to speak for all the people of all the sovereign states that made up the confederacy of the deep south. I think no one person or opinion should decide the matter. If any one person is granted that authority it should have been Jefferson Davis. I think too much priority is given to Stevens speech in his home state, and the deep south state of Georgia. But I think there are also other reasons to be cautious on the importance and understanding of the speech.

1] It is not his actual words, no transcript survived. The speech was done "Impromptu" and according to the newspaper reporter who transcribed it

"Is not a perfect report, but only a sketch of the address of Mr .Stevens"

Therefore it is an interpreted and partial from his actual speech.

2] Stevens said the speech was misinterpreted and misunderstood. He said he was merely restating what Baldwin of the US supreme court had said. Richard M Johnson in 1884 summed up Stevens speech by saying

"On the subject of slavery there was no essential change in the new [C.S.A] Constitution from the old as Judge Baldwin [of Connecticut] of the US supreme court had announced from the bench several years before, that slavery was the corner-stone of the old Constitution [1781-89] so it is of the new" [1790]
-Quoted in Lochlainn Seabrook Everything you Were taught About American Slavery is Wrong Sea raven Press 2014

3] It is clear from the speech that Stevens is clarifying disputed subjects that are know clarified and beyond dispute in the CSA Constitution. Subjects like tariff, internal improvement and slavery etc.

4] Later when Stevens could write what he thought secession was over he said

“Not over slavery but centralization and local sovereign government going back 70 years to federalist and anti federalist...they[ The south] quit the union to save the principles of the constitution"
-Alexander Stevens A Constitutional View of the late war Between the States 1870

All these reasons make me think the speech should be used with caution and low importance to determining the southern causes of secession. I would also add most of his speech is on non slavery related disagreements between the cotton states and the north.

Jefferson Davis President of the Confederate States of America

“Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that the government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a national government, set up above and over the States...The creature has been exalted above its creators; the principals have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves.”
-Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861

farewell address to congress
https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=87
First inaugural in Montgomery
https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=88
Richmond inaugural
https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=107

As I said above if anyone person has the authority to speak for southern secession it should be Davis. His three most important speeches his farewell to congress, first inaugural in Montgomery, and his inaugural in Richmond all speak to causes of secession. He mentions liberty, states rights, tariffs, the constitution and the founders were the main reason for states leaving the union. Davis mentioned slavery in two and only in passing in his three most important speeches yet not as the main cause. The south was leaving because Davis said the north fell to simple majority [Democracy not constitutional republic] what Davis called the “Tyranny of unbridled majority.”

"I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."
- Jefferson Davis

So why is it that Stevens speech given in his home deep south state, given far more weight in determining the causes of southern secession than Davis three speeches?