In my opinion, Alexander Stephens and the state of Mississippi regard slavery as a “necessary evil” just in the way many slave owners at the dawn of our nation saw it. According to Mississippi’s “Declaration of Causes,” slavery is “the greatest material interest of the world” and “these products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions.” They viewed slaves as objects/products; they did not respect them or see them as human beings. In Alexander Stephens’s “Cornerstone Speech,” he states that “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,” believing that blacks were beneath the whites and slavery was normal and just business. Moreover, he stressed that it was a law of nature that some races were superior while others had to serve them.
The Union’s impending abolishment of slavery was the main reason Mississippi seceded from it. Slave owners who lived in the state felt that they would be losing a lot of money if they had to grant freedom to their slaves. They also wanted to extend slavery into the new territories. In the text of the Cornerstone Speech, the major reason for the state’s secession is revealed. It is stated, “We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billion of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.” This sentence can be seen as an illustration of the reasons for Mississippi’s secession from the Union as well as their views on the matter. They were simply trying to protect their way of life and their beliefs.