Included below are the words of the next-highest official both authorized and sufficiently informed to speak for the Confederate States of America (CSA), Vice President Alexander Stephens. It may strike you as contrary to the picture of a noble southern society that had a certain beauty, treated its slaves well, and most of all displayed a vaunted graciousness. The current national reexamination that Black Lives Matter painfully reveals how thin has our been our commitment to “justice for all.” Can any of us claim exception to our boastfulness about America’s world leadership in creating a just society, even sometimes inaccurately? We are still plagued with wishful claims that the Confederacy did not exist to preserve slavery. It merely sought to conserve an accustomed way of life, maintain a lucrative export trade, and most of all validate the political doctrine of State’s Rights.
As a son of the South, I was taught that slavery was indeed evil. But that the Confederate States of America was not formed to defend slavery; it was formed to defend the principle of State’s Rights. Not until adulthood did I learn that creation of the United States of America occurred by each state freely choosing to join as a full partner in the Constitution, thereby transferring its sovereignty to the emerging new country, the indivisible USA. Within a few decades the CSA was formed in the South as in essence a compact of rebellion against southern states’ own earlier pledge of allegiance to the United States.
That is all I have to say in this post. The rest is the truly important part, a speech by the Vice President of the Confederate States of America in which the foundation of the CSA is stated in stunning clarity. To set the stage, the American Yawp Reader explained what CSA faced at that time: “Confederates had to quickly create not only a government, but also a nation, including all of the cultural values required to foster patriotism. In this speech Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, proclaims that slavery and white supremacy were not only the cause for secession, but also the “cornerstone” of the Confederate nation. Now, Stephens’s speech:
CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens
on Slavery and the Confederate Constitution
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among 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 the time.
The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used 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 idea of a Government built upon it-when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago.
Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man…. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man.
The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.
As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society.
Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another in glory.”
The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees, in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief stone of the corner” in our new edifice.
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My thanks to The American Yawp Reader-for this 1861 speech by CSA Vice President Alexander. H. Stephens, more properly footnoted as “Speech of A. H. Stephens,” Frank Moore, ed., Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc. Volume I, (New York: 1861), 45-46.”
John just thinking . . . . 
Daniel, I’m not entirely sure how what I wrote led you to think about abortions, though I can see the connection to the treatment of Native Americans and to reparations.
I strongly believe that those of us who are citizens of the United States of America are responsible for the behavior (and misbehavior) of our government (which after all is “we the people”). Slavery was the original sin of our government, written into our Constitution; even after that mistake was rectified, many other laws were enacted (and Supreme Court decisions made) which deprived black Americans of the full rights and privileges of citizenship. Slavery, Jim Crow, and subsequent government-enforced inequality had direct and indirect financial repercussions for black people in our country, depriving their living dependents of wealth they otherwise would have had. Therefore financial reparations are due, in my opinion, and ideally would be enough to bring black wealth up to par with white wealth.
Women were also deprived of full citizenship, but because in the United States daughters have inherited wealth equally with sons (as far as our laws were concerned), and because of the common practice of women marrying men and sharing wealth, the long term financial repercussions for women have been greatly moderated. Therefore, it is much more difficult to make a case for financial reparations for women as a consequence, and I don’t advocate such. (I do strongly support the Equal Rights Amendment.)
In the case of native Americans, I do not consider citizens of the United States directly responsible for the genocide that occurred before the U.S.A. existed. But we greatly benefitted from it. And we benefitted from the forced treaties and broken treaties that came afterwards. So I strongly believe that we owe financial reparations to native Americans (some reparations have been paid, but not at all sufficient). Again, the reparations ought to be enough to bring Native American wealth up to par with the wealth of white citizens of the United States.
To your last question, “By the way,as a doctor; how do you square the evangelical and noble zeal of the black lives matter movement with statistics that show somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 of black babies are aborted every day in the United States?” I want to clarify, first, that I am not a doctor and have never claimed to be. Therefore, I am not answering as a doctor but as a human being.
In my opinion, embryos are not as human as babies who are closer to being born, and certainly not as human as babies which have been born. This just seem like common biological sense.
Human DNA isn’t what makes something human—if it was, my sperm cells, my trimmed hair, cells sloughed off my skin, would all have to be considered just as human as I am. That makes no sense. Nor does it make sense to think that a human egg cell is just as human as I am. Whether combined with sperm DNA or not, it is just an extremely small cell.
Gradually, over the course of approximately nine months, a human being develops from the fertilized egg, if nothing goes wrong. But it is a gradual development. It is biological nonsense to think that some magical human soul gets infused at fertilization. Whatever becomes human has to gradually develop in the womb.
An embryo is clearly less human (less like you or me) than a cat or dog or cow or any other mammal that has actually been born. This is so obvious that I find that I can’t take anti-abortion warriors seriously unless they are also vegan warriors.
So the mistake that I see anti-abortion advocates making is a religious mistake: believing in the myth of a soul getting infused into an egg or embryo at the beginning of pregnancy. That is obviously not right, and is the result of theological beliefs that are incorrect and in fact pernicious.
At some point during pregnancy, the fetus develops enough to become largely human. Personally I would tend to put that point around the time of quickening, or something identifiable like that. Others would pick different points of development. All are pretty arbitrary. Roe v. Wade arrived at a timeline based on weeks of development and viability outside the womb. I don’t see how viability equates to how human a fetus has become, so I wouldn’t embrace viability as the rule. But a decision was arrived at which made abortion generally illegal after the second trimester. I can accept that as reasonable.
Prior to that point on the timeline, at the very least, the embryo and fetus look to me like a project being carried out by the body of the woman who is pregnant. It is therefore her body, and therefore, (for all intents and purposes, in terms of political theory) her decision whether to try to complete the project. I don’t see how this could be controversial, except for the theological nonsense propagated by some religions. That nonsense simply doesn’t line up with biological reality.
This is probably not the answer you wanted to hear.
(Dwight)
I thought I was replying to a statement from Dwight Tapley that was embedded in a Carver post. I thought Tapley was a medical doctor. Sorry for the confusion. As for whether a fetus is a human being, it would be hard to argue that a fetus is not a potential human being with the unalienable rights of LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Daniel, you wrote, “As for whether a fetus is a human being, it would be hard to argue that a fetus is not a potential human being with the unalienable rights of LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It seems from this that you believe a fetus’ potential to become a human being entitles it to all the rights and privileges human beings should have.
But sperm and a woman’s unfertilized eggs also have the potential to become a human baby. Indeed, the science of cloning a human being from stem cells or even from DNA found in our hair may only be a few years or decades away. Therefore, even our hair has the potential of becoming a human baby (not right now, but someday).
Since potential is the same as actual, according to your argument, it must follow that unfertilized eggs and sperm and stem cells and hair must all deserve the full rights and privileges of human beings.
Your argument breaks down because when we say something has the potential to become a baby, it necessarily means it is not (yet) a baby. The human DNA in sperm does not make it human. The fertilized egg is not suddenly human. It’s humanity arrives later after months of gradual development from something non-human into something human. At birth, we clearly have something human, but just as clearly it didn’t start out that way.
The mistake of trying to identify the single point where God infuses a soul into a body Is behind the misconception that abortion is murder. It’s theology devoid of any common biological sense.
There is no getting around the fact that the production and growth of a fetus is a project that is carried out by a female body. Who owns the project? Not me or you, since we are men. The woman who is pregnant owns the project, and that means she ought to own the decision to keep the pregnancy going or to abandon it. The word “project” may seem jarring, since the potential result is the birth of a new, wonderful human being, but I use that word to remind you that pregnancy starts with something that is non-human and only has the potential, after months of gradual development, of becoming a human baby.
You also bizarrely blame the Black Lives Matter movement, which is a protest movement against police brutality against black people, for not being something it’s not: an anti-abortion movement. BLM is an example of single issue advocacy. Perhaps you would like the movement to get distracted by other issues and lose its focus? But single issue movements succeed by being laser-focused on a single issue.
Do you likewise want anti-abortion organizations to lose focus on their single issue? Or are you just trolling BLM?
(Dwight)
I have no statistics, but I would wager that a very large percentage of abortions are performed on well developed babies, with arms, legs, head, heart (beating) as shown by ultrasound. As for the Black Lives Matter “movement”. there is ample evidence that this is a loosely organized Marxist group of professional (paid) agitators that has been infiltrated by arsonists, looters, and murderers to the extent that it is hard to tell one group from the other.
It’s folly for anyone to say some unproven act or condition cannot possibly be true. So I cannot attest to or deny the “no statistics…wager” or “ample evidence” suppositions, any more than I can charge that two families who go to your church are secret Muslims or that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. I do know that a great deal of what people are willing to “wager” or “evidence” for which isn’t supplied is best laid aside until there is such evidence (that doesn’t include “evidence of things unseen”). We humans don’t have a sterling history of sticking with a strict method of what is best considered evidence of “evidence.”
Oh, come on, friend John. Your assumption that abortions are performed to remove mere globs of protoplasm unrecognizable as human is nonsense. By the time a girl suspects she might be pregnant and decides what to do about it, and then arranges to abort, several weeks may have passed. In the meantime, the fetus has developed into a recognizable human being, with an identifiable sex, with a beating heart, and with recognizable stubs of limbs. Some say the fetal heartbeat can be detected as early as three weeks after fertilization. Laws making abortion illegal after a fetal heartbeat has been detected have been reversed, but that appears to be based on political considerations rather than the “health” of the mother (and certainly not on the health of the baby). When Does a Fetus Develop a Heartbeat? | Human Life International
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| | | | When Does a Fetus Develop a Heartbeat? | Human Life International
As growing numbers recognize the humanity of the unborn, one way to bring the point home is ask the obvious ques… |
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We all know your intelligence far exceeds the average yokel, but how about applying some common sense to your prodigious store of knowledge? DDH
Dan, to my knowledge I’ve not stated a view on abortion in this blog. My default position, however, is to accept a pregnant woman’s decisions concerning her own body. Is there a limit on that? Perhaps, as long as the fetus is still a natural part of the woman’s bodily systems and structure. But those words are an incomplete position, one too shallow in coherence for me to act as if I’ve carefully considered the matter. I normally don’t choose to adopt a dubiously established position as long as I think my reasoning is far too thin to stand behind and defend. Further, I have in the past limited readers’ comments to topics raised in my posts themselves, no matter whether in agreement or disagreement with my views. I suppose, then, it goes without saying that I’ll also not take a position on whether my “intelligence far exceeds the average yokel.”
William Shakespeare
“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Or could just as well be “John just thinking” – such men are dangerous.
Thanks, Dwight, for that coherent mini-history. I was particularly moved by “If we can’t preserve those principles, and then make them real, the American experiment is lost,” as well as “It was the abolitionists who stuck to the traditional American principle that all men are created equal. They were conservatives in the deeper sense: not conservation of the nation’s status quo, but conservation of the nation’s principles.”
Please forgive the technical error (mine) that led my response to Dwight to seem as if contributed by “Anonymous.”
Do you believe the carvings of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson should be blasted off of Stone Mountain?
Dan, I regret to say I’ve not thought about that question enough to feel I have a coherent response. What I can say now is the Civil War was instituted for slavery, only secondarily for “states rights,” the latter so paramount as to justify war to protect the former. I find it peculiar that a horribly deadly rebellion and the evil institution that pretended it was justified are memorialized with uncountable cast and carved idols to shame across our land.
Daniel, I first climbed Stone Mountain as a Boy Scout in the 1960’s, years before the carving was completed. I didn’t like it then, and wished the natural mountain had never been marred. If money (and physics) was no object, I would obliterate the carving and restore the mountain to its original beauty. I grew up in the South, a Georgia boy, and I am by most definitions a southerner, but I have never felt like a southerner. As kids we used to play war, Union against Confederacy, North against South. I always chose the side of the North and disliked the Confederacy, even as a child. And I was glad the North had won.
(Dwight)
Seems like you are assuming that a great number of the 900 black abortions per day are merely globs of unrecognizable soft tissue in the early stages of development. I have no statistics on that, but I seriously doubt that’s the case. On the contrary, the pro-choice people are actively pushing to legitimize abortion at any stage of an embryo’s development. Do you really believe the BLM folks care one way or the other? Are they protesting the rampant black-on-black murders in Chicago? I stick to my original point, i.e., BLM does not seriously believe that black lives matter.
John, thanks for posting this. I don’t recall reading Stephen’s speech when I studied this period in American history in college (though probably I did).
Stephens reinforces the notion that the generation who wrote the Constitution knew that slavery was morally unjustified, and only acquiesced to southern slavery to entice slave states to join the union—the great compromise, etc. And it supports the notion that the founders believed slavery would eventually disappear in the years after the end of slave importation specified in the Constitution.
But what I find interesting is that Stephens even believed this to be so among southerners of the previous generation, even as late as 1830. “This truth [that “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition”] has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago.”
This supports the proposition that after the invention of the cotton gin and development of large profitable cotton plantations (owned primarily by an elite set of oligarchs in the south, as averred by anti-slavery southerner Hinton Helper), a new generation of southerners doubled-down on slavery and defended it in the only “morally plausible“ manner they could invent in their self-interested minds: by abandoning the spirit of the American Revolution that all men are created equal, and insisting that blacks were naturally inferior and intended by God to be the slaves of white men. This suited their pocket-books. They invented this self-serving justification of slavery so that they could reap its financial rewards without having to ever entertain the possibility that they were doing evil.
Not that this isn’t’ already a common interpretation among historians of the mindset change that overtook southerners in the decades leading up to civil war. But it does show that their new-found justification of slavery was not founded on a desire to conserve traditional American principles, but on a rejection of that conservatism and those principles. (Of course, Americans had yet—have yet—to live up to those principles.)
It was the abolitionists who stuck to the traditional American principle that all men are created equal. They were conservatives in the deeper sense: not conservation of the nation’s status quo, but conservation of the nation’s principles.
And that really is what what the civil rights struggle, and BLM today, has always been about: over-throwing an oppressive, brutal status quo in order to preserve our nation’s founding principles. If we can’t preserve those principles, and then make them real, the American experiment is lost. Very literally, the well-being of black Americans lies at the center of this whole attempt at self-government. It fails if we can’t get to the point where black lives matter, and matter equally.
Do you feel the same way about native Americans? Seems to me when “reparations” are considered, blacks should get in line behind native Americans. Or was that justified genocide? To my way of thinking, “red” lives should matter just as much as any other lives. By the way,as a doctor; how do you square the evangelical and noble zeal of the black lives matter movement with statistics that show somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 of black babies are aborted every day in the United States?
I’ve nothing to contribute, Dan. I’m not sure how I’d go about dealing with a comment as confounded as this, a mixing of issues, some only minimally related to each other. Having any reparations at all is assumed here, though not the type of reparation (money, some type of education or other assistance?), then who should be prioritized if there is more than one benefitted group, or different recipients within a group. Whether genocide was “justified” in any part of this combination adds another variable that may not be relevant at all. I am not sure whether your opinion that “‘red’ lives . . . matter just as much as any other lives” is meant to affect the reparations calculations, but if not I can’t tell why it appears in your comment. If the matter weren’t tangled enough, you’ve then thrown in black abortion as a consideration with no indication of how you’d connect these very different matters. I’m an easy guy and really don’t mind having my leg pulled. However, I am too rushed in these times to play the game.
OK, I’ll focus on one thing at a time. I contend that the Black Lives Matter “movement” does not seriously believe that black lives matter, or they would concentrate on finding ways to lower the huge number of black babies killed via abortion every day (some statistics allege 900/day average). You can argue whose statistics are accurate, but you get the point, I hope. The BLM leaders and their minions would do their race a huge favor by encouraging black fathers to stay around to help the mother raise their children and provide a safe and loving home for them. That just might result in young blacks having a better chance in life, ya think?