The Cornerstone Address

Historical evidences can still be understood for what they are despite the epistemological limitations that stop people from knowing if events in the human historical record happened as opposed to if it seems that they happened.  History is also not what core truths about something like racism reduce down to, as strictly logical truths underpin all historical, moral, existential, and theological details relevant to this subject.  There is still a tendency for people to focus on historical claims over foundational, provable truths about racism that transcend mere history.  With respect to the American Civil War, it is not entirely uncommon for some people to think that historical evidence does not point to the Confederacy being founded directly and openly on white supremacy.

The Cornerstone Address (according to the epistemologically fallible evidences available) was delivered by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens not long before the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.  In it, Stephens affirms the superficial similarities of the Confederacy to broader American government and philosophy, which had and still has its own major flaws, before he moves on to tackle what would be obvious distinctions.  He claims the Confederacy will abolish discrimination on grounds of belonging to various industries in the business world, that Confederate presidents can hold office for six years instead of four and be ineligible to take a second term, but he soon states that the American form of slavery, which is very different from the Biblical kind, reflects the deserved status of black people.  He goes so far as to call American slavery "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution" in reference to the division of the states.

Stephens even articulates his contradiction and assumption-riddled ideas about how the metaphysical equality of the races is a mere assumption entertained by clouded Americans.  This is not even someone trying to pretend or at least say they are not racist while they state that people of a certain race are inferior; this is someone who seems to genuinely want others to know the supposed grand "truth" at the heart of Confederate philosophy.  Though there could have been and were according to evidences other factors that certainly did not help thwart the departure of some states and the looming Civil War, racism against blacks and its particular manifestations in American slavery had no small role.  This is the idea that Andrew Stephens treats as if Confederate philosophy largely reduces down to it.

Making assumptions of any kind, including negative ones, about present day Southerners is irrational in all cases and racist in some cases.  The actions and beliefs of past Southerners would not prove that current people of the same regions share identical invalid philosophies or misunderstandings of Christian theology.  Moreover, that some Southerners of the antebellum and Civil War (and later) eras were staunch white supremacists would not even mean that everyone living in the South at the time had the same asinine worldview as the leadership of the Confederacy.  Then there is the objective fact that human experiences can never prove that any war, presidency, or event besides the aforementioned exception ever occurred in history because it does not logically follow from any mere evidence that something beyond evidence being perceived is true by necessity.

Those who believe history is knowable despite the human epistemological limitations that prevent one from knowing if there even was an external world three seconds ago--people can still believe, but they do so irrationally and without an ability to know one way or another--might inanely think historical documents actually have some grand role in establishing why racial supremacy is idiotic.  One can prove all of these things with logic and logic alone, realizing that absolutely nothing about personality, talent, moral character, and intelligence is tied to skin color.  An inverse error here is that of the people who would believe that the historical evidence does not actually suggest that the Confederacy was based from the start on racism against black people.

Without misunderstanding the historical evidences available or wrongly believing books and speeches could ever prove past events happened at all, a person can see that there is still nothing but assumptions that would lead someone to think that slavery and issues of racism were not integral, primary factors leading to the American Civil War according to the very documents that serve as evidence.  The Cornerstone Address sees a top leader of the Confederacy say without irony that black people are inferior to whites.  The leaders of the Confederate States of America mistakenly embraced racism against blacks as a "great physical, philosophical, and moral truth" that must be understood and accepted for there to be rightful political stability.  What Southerners outside of the leadership of this new country thought is not even relevant to focusing strictly on this point: the evidence clearly presents the Confederacy's highest leaders as intentionally forming a new nation to celebrate white supremacy.