Alexander Stephens’ A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States

Georgia

Alexander Stephens explains why the Southern states seceded from the Union and created the Confederacy:

“Considerations connected with the legal status of the Black race in the Southern States, and the position of several of the Northern States toward it, together with the known sentiments and principles of those just elected to the two highest offices of the Federal Government (Messrs. Lincoln and Hamlin), as to the powers of that Government over this subject, and others which threatened, as was supposed, all their vital interests, prompted the Southern States to withdraw from the Union, for the very reason that had induced them at first to enter into it: that is, for their own better protection and security.”

The Confederacy was based on the cornerstone of the inferiority of the African race. It was an explicit rejection of the doctrine that “all men are created equal” which had created enormous confusion around the status of the negro.

It was also based on the principle that the federal government was federal, not national, in character. The allegiance of every citizen is due to the “paramount authority” which is his sovereign state, not the federal government.

Note: In the South, the only people who qualified for membership in the political bodies of the sovereign states were White men. The inclusion of the Black Undertow was a strange and alien Yankee practice. In 1860, it was limited to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

10 Comments

  1. Richard Henry Lee, (yes the same Lees of Virginia)

    proposed “to lay so heavy a duty on the importation of slaves as to put an end to that iniquitous and disgraceful traffic within the colony of Virginia.” Africans, he wrote, were “equally entitled to liberty and freedom by the great law of nature.” Such words, coming as they did in 1759, have been called “the most extreme anti-slavery statements made before the nineteenth century.”

    The General, R.E. Lee, freed most of his slaves before the war and paid for some passages to Liberia. According to the biography written by his nephew, Fitzhugh Lee, the General was convinced that his defence of his beloved Virginia was a defence of the right of secession reserved by it upon its entry. There was no consternation about the equality of man in the General’s mind. He did not regret the probable freedom of slaves, although, according to Fitzhugh, he believed that slavery had called a race of savages from superstition and idolatry, and imparted in them the precepts of religion.

    Indeed, he is recorded as saying, at the time that if he owned all the Negroes of the South he would gladly yield them up to preserve the Union.

    General Lee
    by Fitzhugh Lee
    Glasgow, Va. August 1894
    p. 86-87

    http://www.madisonbrigade.com/rh_lee.htm

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzhugh_Lee

  2. D. Jones, add to that his early surrender when other leaders wanted to continue and expression of relief afterwards that the slavery question was decided, and that “public demonstration” at St. Paul’s Episcopal church that happened just after the war.

  3. I agree that “he believed that slavery had called a race of savages from superstition and idolatry, and imparted in them the precepts of religion” is a key point and may at least partially explain the “anomaly” at St. Paul’s, that’s so often cited by liberal Lee apologists. Jackson also, of similar religious mind, broke Virginia law to teach negro Sunday School.

  4. Nothing ever opened my eyes to American history more than my reading of the Anti-Federalist Papers and the Federalist Papers. The seeds of the War Between the States were already planted at the time of the writing and ratification of the Constitution, if not earlier. As a matter of fact, the “Federalists” won a major publicity battle early on by claining the title “Federalists” (which was short for “confereracy”) and sticking the other side with “Anti-Federalists”. Alexander Hamilton was a globalist, big-business, central bank, central government rat. The Constitution did exactly what it was designed to do, namely sap all power from the states. Read the two for yourselves if you have not. You will come away pissed off and the tongue-in-cheek lies of the Federalists, and the rock solid prophesies of the Anti-Federalists. Also, there is a huge difference between believing blacks are part of humanity and believing they are equal and should be marrying our daughters and running our governments. To my knowledge, neither Jackson nor Lee would have agreed to this.

  5. Reading the memoirs of Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, the political theory of John C. Calhoun, the speeches of William Lowndes Yancey and Robert Toombs, the editorials of Robert Barnwell Rhett cannot but leave you with the impression that the worms who serve in Congress today are vastly inferior to their predecessors.

  6. I’m on a jihad right now against “Rainbow Confederates” who are some of the most ridiculous people on the entire internet. Eventually, I want to swing hard into Confederate war propaganda and Confederate political theory, which is still quite useful after all these years.

  7. I can conceive of no reason for any White man at any time in the history of the United States to be confused about “all men are created equal” as it pertains to Blacks. At the time those words were penned Blacks were LIVESTOCK. The Declaration Of Independence no more applied to them than it did to chickens, pigs or cows.

    If the founding fathers suddenly returned to life exactly as they were when they signed that declaration they would put their peculiar shoes so far up every White ass that each and every one of us would have breath that smelled like shoe polish.

    They apparently erroneously assumed that the men who would inherit their nation and the job of governing it would have enough sense to notice that niggers are not men.

    A short explanation in the Declaration of Independence which explained who the founders were talking about when they said “men” would have saved America from TWO civil wars: the last one and the next one.

  8. The confusion continues to this moment right on this site:

    >>> Also, there is a huge difference between believing blacks are part of humanity

    <<<They apparently erroneously assumed that the men who would inherit their nation and the job of governing it would have enough sense to notice that niggers are not men.

    Jefferson could have said: “All men are created unequal yet having equal rights” but then rights would have to be defined clearly. (Folks have right to property, equal treatment before law, etc., but only the “natural aristocracy” may govern. (Hamilton?)

    If the Founders in fact believed in the proposition nation, why did the Naturalization Act of 1790 say the country was open to “FREE WHITE PERSONS”?

    The civil war was The United States vs. The United State. Round 2 is nigh.

  9. I just love this site. Blacks I will say with no tripdation are not human like myself other whites and Asians. I live in an area with a huge number of them and see them acting like animals all the time. I think blacks more than anything else will be the tipping point that brings down the US. White people can only support so many of these animals. Funny 200 years ago blacks supported whites in the south and now Humans have to support the animals in all the big cities.

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