Confederate leaders declared racial inequality the foundational principle of their state

Evidence

In February 1861, Jefferson Davis took the presidential oath of the new Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. In his Inaugural Address in March, Lincoln did not object to the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, which would make slavery untouchable and potentially reunite the union. But Lincoln did swear that he would never allow the extension of slavery. On March 21, the Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander Stephens, responded to Lincoln’s pledge in an extemporaneous speech. The Confederate government, he declared, rested “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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” This “great … truth,” Stephens said, was the “corner-stone” of the Confederacy. The speech became known as his “Cornerstone Speech.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 571

Categorization

• XREF: The Cornerstone Speech is a critical test case for Kendi’s inversion—here a racist idea (Black inferiority) appears to precede and justify Confederate policy, which the reader is specifically tracking.
• DEFINE: Establishes the Confederate self-understanding as explicitly founded on a segregationist idea, not merely on property rights or states’ rights.