Cornerstone Speech And The Nast Cartoon Analysis

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The Cornerstone Speech and the Nast cartoon play a significant role in our history. The Cornerstone Speech is also known as the Cornerstone Address, which was expressed by Vice President Alexander Stephens on March 21, 1861. This speech is one of the most famous speeches associated with the Confederacy. Just to give you a little history on Stephens, he had a reputation as a moderate and a unionist, and a strong supporter of slavery. The Cornerstone of the confederacy was slavery. Stephens main argument in the Cornerstone Speech was that Negros were not equal to white men. He defended his pro-slavery stance of the Confederate constitution, he declared, “rest upon the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination …show more content…

He was raised in Kentucky and went onto become the 16th President of the United States. The presidential election of 1860 was one of the nation’s most memorable one. The north and the south sections of the country had a different vision of how they envisioned their home land. What made it worst was that their views were completely opposite of each other. The north, which was mostly republican supporters, wanted America to be free; free of slaves and free from bondage. The south supporters, mostly democratic states wanted slavery in the country because it was show they earned their daily living and profit.
President Lincoln was a civil rights activist and on January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery. In the nineteenth century political cartoons were a way to carry news. There were neither computers nor internet so political cartoons were the way to substitute for this. They were used as a promotion for a campaign, an illustration of an event, or even as a way to show how bad something was and how it affects things around it. (PBS).
In the Nast cartoon, the North received it as promoting peace and happiness and the south received it was being forceful and a