The Cornerstone Speech, also known as the Cornerstone Address, was an oration given by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861,[1] delivered extemporaneously a few weeks before the Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. Stephens’ speech defended slavery as a fundamental and just result of the inferiority of the black race, explained the fundamental differences between the constitutions of the Confederacy and that of the United States, enumerated contrasts between U.S. and Confederate ideologies, and laid out the Confederacy’s rationale for seceding from the U.S. In particular, he stated that “Our new government[‘s] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”
