Analysis Of Corner Stone Speech In Savanah

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Similarly, Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens, in his “Corner Stone” Speech in Savanah Georgia in 1861, argues that black freedom is a threat to all society, which the constitution of the Confederacy corrects. African-American liberty is against the laws of nature and god, and to pursue black freedom is to undermine religious truths and government. Stephens denounces the Constitution of the United States because it, “rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error… They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.” As written, the US Constitution violates the will of god because it attempts to make all men, black and white, equal. Thus, the Confederate Constitution refuses …show more content…

Of course the abolitionist movement was born out principles of freedom that suggest they should believe in racial equality. Their idea of liberty comes from the same Enlightenment principles that Thomas Jefferson used when writing the Declaration of Independence. Also, liberty is hailed as part of the revolutionary ideology the US is founded upon. However, most abolitionists’ definition of liberty for African-Americans was different from the definition of liberty they believed in for themselves; their idea of black freedom meant gradual freedom from slavery and rejection of the possibility of former slaves becoming full American citizens with the same rights as themselves. This is because they did not want to see blacks integrated into American society. Instead, they connected black freedom with recolonization, a deeply racist practice of forcibly removing freed slaves from the United States and relocating them back to Africa. Black freedom meant their faithful application of Enlightenment principles of freedom from slavery, but it was decoupled from equality for blacks as if one could be free without be …show more content…

Respectful of black rejection of recolonization, inspired by religious ideas of perfectionism, these hardcore abolitionists believed in true equality linked to African-American freedom. In contrast to racist white Southerners, this group saw religious belief as validating rather than rejecting equality. Thus, they used a moral argument to try and change public opinion; according to one of the great orators of this movement, Wendell Phillips, their goal was to “alter public opinion” through radical agitation, trying to create a fervor around abolition, and creating enough noise to change people’s moral opinions about slavery and affect as many Americans as possible, even if they didn’t join the movement

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