Cornerstone Speech Quotes

Cornerstone Speech”,

mean, not everyone in that group is a racist. I’m just saying,” Davy said quietly. Titus turned his full attention to Davy. “So, not everyone in the Sons of the Confederacy Cricket Hill Regiment Number 2239 thinks slavery was an acceptable economic system for the South?” Titus asked. “I … uh.” “I’m sorry, let me put it another way. Not everyone in the Sons of the Confederacy Cricket Hill Regiment Number 2239 thinks the rightful place of the negro is to be subservient to the white man, like Alexander Stephens said in the Cornerstone Speech?” Titus said.

The Belt and Road is global in nature. Its ruling principle is interdependence, a close network of common interests by which every country’s development is affected by the development path in other countries. In his Jakarta speech, Xi called it a “community of shared destiny.” The expression featured in Chinese official pronouncements since at least 2007, when it was used to describe relations between Taiwan and the Mainland. Applied to relations outside China’s borders, it was a reformulation—a modern version—of the traditional concept of Tianxia (天下), which scholars such as Zhao Tingyang had been popularizing with extraordinary success. Zhao argued that the most important fact about the world today is that it has not become a zone of political unity, but remains a Hobbesian stage of chaos, conflict, noncooperation and anarchy.16 Looking for a way to frame new political concepts distinct from Western ideas of world order, the Chinese authorities quickly appropriated Tianxia—a notion that originated about three thousand years ago—and made it the cornerstone of their most ambitious geopolitical initiative. The idea of a community of shared destiny and the Belt and Road develop the two sides of every human action. Both have their own emphasis: the former belongs to the idea, the concept or type, the latter is aimed at practice. Together they form the “dialectical unity of theory and practice, goals and paths, value rationality and instrumental rationality.”17

Alexander Stephens, the longtime friend of Lincoln who supported Stephen Douglas until the bitter end, was now the vice president of the Confederacy. Elected by the Confederate Congress the same day as Jefferson Davis as President, he traveled across the South speaking about the new government. Stephens gave his Cornerstone Speech of March, 21, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina. In it he defined Confederacy’s nature. The speech echoed the racist nationalism Southerners held to for years— that Blacks were a lesser order of humanity, and slavery was their natural condition: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone 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. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

In the month before Fort Sumter, Alexander H. Stephens, the vice president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, made his “Cornerstone Speech” in Savannah, Georgia. The crowd was raucous; feeling ran high. The Confederacy’s “foundations are laid,” Stephens said, “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.

31 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS The Declaration of Independence was the first solemn declaration, by a nation, of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced in practical form to the world the transcendent truth of the inalienable sovereignty of the people. It stands, and must forever stand, alone — a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light. So long as this planet shall be inhabited by human beings, so long as man shall be of a social nature, so long as government shall be necessary to the great moral purposes of society, so long as it shall be abused to the purposes of oppression, the Declaration will stand a light of admonition to the rulers of men, a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed; for it will hold out to the sovereign and to the subject the extent and the boundaries of their respective rights and duties, founded in the laws of nature and of nature's God.

Free speech is the cornerstone of a society that aspires to genuine progress. It encourages the exploration of unconventional ideas, paving the way for paradigm shifts and breakthroughs that propel us forward. By embracing the diversity of thought, we ensure that our collective journey is marked by continual discovery, innovation, and the dynamic evolution of the human experience.

On March 21, the Confederacy's vice president, Alexander Stephens, responded to Lincoln's pledge in an extemporaneous speech. The Confederate government, he declared, rested '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.' This 'great...truth,' Stephens said was the 'corner-stone' of the Confederacy.