A Crumbling Cornerstone

Alexander Stephens refers to "the equality of races," a principle that the founders of our nation considered to be a natural law governing all humankind, as an "error" and a "sandy foundation."  I find this idea, the fulcrum of Stephens' argument in his famed Cornerstone Speech on the eve of the Civil War, ludicrous.  Stephens nods to Thomas Jefferson's premonition that slavery would be "the rock upon which the old Union split."  Sure enough, less than a century after the Declaration was boldly endorsed by 56 revolutionary men, the Confederacy sought to wrench itself away from the newborn nation.  Stephens spits the signers' words back at them, claiming irrationally that the enslavement and subsequent gross mistreatment of African people should be the proverbial cornerstone of a nation.  The vice president of the Confederacy asserts that what Jefferson and the other signers thought to be an "evanescent" trend in labor and trade is instead a solid foundation.  Stephens even goes so far as to call those opposed to slavery "fanatics," blaming a "defect in reasoning" for anti-slavery sentiments felt by many Americans.  It is a travesty that Stephens and others in favor of slavery were so narrow-minded.  Had these men considered how much their own freedom rested upon the Declaration's guarantees of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" to all men, perhaps they would have noticed the cracks in their "cornerstone."