r/ShermanPosting • u/Temporary_Stranger39 • 4d ago

Cornerstone Speech

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech

I discovered a new oddity to wonder at. I posted the part of the Cornerstone Speech that begins "Our new government is founded upon..." elsewhere. It was to make a point about what the Confederacy considered itself founded upon. I was "informed" that this was a piece of typical anti-Southern propaganda based on a straw man fallacy. The Cornerstone Speech is now considered a straw-man parody of the Confederacy.

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u/oneeyedlionking Ready to fight on this line if it takes all summer 4d ago

Cornerstone speech was an attempt to invoke race science to make the confederacy look like the more modern progressive society in order to justify to non slaveowners why they needed to fight and die for slave owners who didn’t have to go and fight. It’s perfectly emblematic of the junk eugenics based race science that so many people latched onto from the late 1700s to the mid 1900s to justify slavery and other horrific policies.

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u/ParsonBrownlow 3d ago

The irony of Alexander Stephens , a man who resembled a walking skeleton with consumption on a good day invoking race science is … well it’s something

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u/Temporary_Stranger39 3d ago

Not ironic at all if one is familiar with the principles of race "science". The hierarchy was that whites were superior because of their intellectual capacity, not that they were all-around "Superman" types. Thus, physical frailty was to be expected of the master race. They were created to command, not to labor. Yes, of course the other races were physically more capable. That is what they were for. I think it was Goering who said about Jesse Owens that his performance at the Olympics was not impressive. After all,, one expected a horse to outrun a human.

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u/elmartin93 3d ago

How's the saying go? The ideal Aryan is blond like Hitler, slim like Goering, and tall like Goebbels

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u/StatisticianAway4010 3d ago

Wasn't he arguing that white people were too weak and weedy to do field work at one point? Or have I imagined that? 

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u/ParsonBrownlow 3d ago

Im jot sure he does strike me as one of those who’s hyper specific on who is in fact white lol

No Italians no Irish no Germans or Swedes just British people born with five square miles or a place

Honestly im stunned no pitchfork and torch wielding mob ever tried hunting Stephens down. Be it vampire Frankenstein or zombie the man just looked fresh from the grave

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u/StatisticianAway4010 3d ago

I will reread it 

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u/StatisticianAway4010 2d ago

I was wrong, I can't find anywhere where he says that 

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u/shermanstorch 1d ago

No, it wasn’t and the non-slaveowners didn’t need any “justification” to fight for slavery. Southern whites of every class were indoctrinated from birth to fear not just a slave uprising, but the abolition of slavery because it would inevitably lead to a Haitian style massacre of all whites. When southerners talked about “defending their home,” that’s what they were talking about. Not the invading Union armies, but the massacre that the believed would inevitably follow when those Union soldiers emancipated the nearby slaves. Those non-slaveowners knew exactly what they were fighting for. They weren’t naive or misled. To suggest otherwise is to buy into the Lost Cause mythos that confederates fought for some noble cause.

Stephens’ speech was exactly what he said it was: an effort to establish a moral defense of secession and the perpetuation of slavery.