This Day in History: 1861-03-21

Unintentionally and preemptively exposing later, persisting revisionist lies about the reason for the Civil War, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens delivers the “Cornerstone Speech” in Savannah, Georgia, laying out the rationale for secession and identifying slavery as the “immediate cause” of secession.  Stephens declared that Thomas Jefferson’s and other founding fathers’ ambivalence about slavery, was misplaced and unwarranted, and that servitude and subordination to the white race was the “natural and normal condition” of blacks in the South. Learn more.