Disunion Feed

"The inaugeration of Mr. Lincoln has revived the hopes of patriotism every where. Old Imbecility is out and talent, integrity and courage are installed in his place. [...] Let the line between traitors and patriots be destinctly drawn. [...] It is to these pirates, ruffians, thieves, plunderers, cutthroats, traitors and political debauchees that we are required to make concessions, surrender principles, political rights, the Constitution of our Country, and with it the hopes of the oppressed in all the world."

The Republican read of the inaugural, two days after the Richmond Enquirer's (se-039) — the same speech, heard as relief rather than as a declaration of war. "Old Imbecility" is Buchanan, whose term ended three days earlier. Spellings "inaugeration" and "destinctly" are as printed (sic) and left uncorrected. Non-contiguous sentences from the one editorial joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Quincy Daily Whig and Republican, Mar 7, 1861 ↗

"Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.” [...] 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.]"

The Vice President of the Confederacy states the new nation's founding principle in the plainest terms available, and the audience applauds. The "ideas" he calls fundamentally wrong are the founders' own — Stephens has just argued that Jefferson and his generation believed slavery wrong and expected it to fade. Verified against the 1866 Cleveland volume (which reprints the Savannah Republican's report) rather than a modern teaching transcript: the widely-circulated online text is modernized, printing "corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that..." where the 1866 printing reads "rests upon the great truth, that..." and sets "subordination to the superior race" in em-dashes. The "[Applause.]" is in the source. OCR fixes: "exactlj'" and the "oppo-site" line-wrap. Two contiguous paragraphs joined with [...]; "negro" is the source's word.

Read it in the original — "Corner-Stone" speech, Savannah, Mar 21, 1861 ↗