Vice President of the Confederacy Cornerstone Speech

Alexander Stephens vice president of the Confederacy, a Georgian, stood about five feet six inches and tipping the scales at under a hundred pounds, Stephens impressed few with his skeletal presence, but he made up for his ghoulish appearance with keen intellect and oratorical flair. In March 1861, he made the infamous Cornerstone Speech that clearly marked the Confederate goals:

[The Confederacy’s] 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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

~ Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy