Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abergan.

This day, 1861, Alexander H. Stevens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America,

gave a speech in Savannah, Georgia, in which he drew a sharp contrast between the Confederate

States and the United States, laid out the Confederacy's

rationale for seceding from the United States, a number of states had already done that,

and this speech would come to be known as the quote cornerstone speech

because the other thing he made very clear was that the cornerstone of the

Confederacy was slavery and the enslavement of black Americans.

He argued forcefully for the inferiority of black enslaved Americans

and defended slavery as not just an economic force,

but as a just and moral practice.

This speech, of course, goes right into that big question, which we've just and

just moral practice. This speech of course goes right into that big question which we've touched on a bunch of times and American history has touched on a bunch of times of you know just what was the civil war about what was the Confederacy for? So on and so forth. So here to discuss the so-called

cornerstone speech are, as always, Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there. Hello, dirty. Hey there.

Kelly you teach this in your course? I do. I actually do for a long time. I just only used primary

sources. I've sort of stayed away from textbooks because the

primary sources are so useful at getting at the heart of the matter which is we don't

need to quibble anymore about what the Civil War was about.

The South told us.

Like the succession documents say very clearly, very specifically,

...