The End of Slavery by David Barton

While Republicans were working to end slavery and secure civil rights, the new nation of southern Democrats was determined to head in an opposite direction. In fact, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens delivered an 1861 speech entitled: “African Slavery: The Corner Stone of the Southern Confederacy.” In that speech, Stephens first correctly acknowledged that the Founding Fathers  even those from the South had never intended for slavery to remain in America: 1864 freedmen’s bill, 1864 military pay bill democrat Alexander Stephens’ speech as vice president of the confederacy.

The prevailing ideas entertained by him Thomas Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature that it was wrong in principle socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that somehow or other, in the order of Providence the institution would be evanescent temporary and pass away.

So what did Vice President Stephens and the new Confederate nation think about these anti slavery ideas of the Founding Fathers? Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races.

This was an error. And the idea of a government built upon it. Our new government the Confederate States of America is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery subordination to the superior white race is his natural and moral condition. This our new Confederate government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

There was indeed a clear difference between the philosophies of Republicans and Democrats on the issue of race and racial equality. Southern Democrats had been willing to form an entire nation on the foundation of white supremacy and there was no doubt that the South was strongly Democratic. As a leading South Carolina Democrat testified during an 1871 congressional hearing: democrat Alexander Stephens

Almost nine hundred and ninety nine out of every thousand of the decent people of South Carolina belong to the Democratic Party; the Republican Party is composed entirely of the colored people. When it came time for the presidential election of 1864, southern Democrats were still fighting against the Union; therefore, the presidential candidate for the Democrats that year was a Northern Democrat: Union General George B. McClellan. Although McClellan was actually running for president against his own commander-in-chief, there was a clear difference between the two. In fact, Abraham Lincoln had twice replaced McClellan for failing to obey Lincoln’s orders to launch aggressive attacks against the Confederacy.