mar 21, 1861 - Cornerstone Speech

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AKA: Cornerstone Address

An oration given by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861, delivered extemporaneously a few weeks before the Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter. Stephens' speech defended slavery, 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 causes for attempting to secede from the U.S.

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