the hearts content of any men of different complexion..." Historian Harry V. Jaffa discusses the speech at length in his 2000 book A New Birth of Freedom. He concludes that "this remarkable address conveys, more than any other contemporary document, not only the soul of the Confederacy but also of that Jim Crow South that arose from the ashes of the Confederacy". Jaffa compared the racism of Stephens and the Confederacy to that of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany: The speech was given extemporaneously. After the war, Stephens attempted to downplay the importance of slavery as the cause of Confederacy's secession. In a 1865 diary entry written while imprisoned, he accused reporters of having misquoted him, and claimed that constitutional issues were more important. Stephens contended that the notes of the reporter who recorded the speech were "very imperfect" and "hastily corrected" by himself, and that his speech was published "without further revision and with several glaring errors". He further expounded on this allegation in his 1868 book A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. According to one scholar, the "misquotations" alleged by Stephens after the war are so numerous as to be highly unlikely. There is a misconception that Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy, was outraged by Stephens's admission that slavery was the reason behind the slave states' secession, for Davis himself was attempting to garner foreign support for the nascent regime from countries that were not very accepting of slavery. However, there is no evidence that this actually happened. Stephens, Davis, and Davis's wife Varina did not discuss any such disagreement in their respective autobiographies, nor did Stephens's official biographers. The first mention of Davis's supposed reaction was in a 1959 biography of Davis by Hudson Strode, who appears to have presented his own conjecture as fact. See also American Civil War South Carolina Declaration of Secession Mudsill theory References External links For the complete speech, see ""Cornerstone Speech" by Alexander Stephens in Savannah, Georgia, March 21, 1861" – Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs Excerpts from the speech. Teaching American History. 1861 in Georgia (U.S. state) 1861 speeches Alexander H. Stephens March 1861 events Political history of the Confederate States of America Secession crisis of 1860–61 African-American history in Savannah, Georgia Scientific racism Anti-Americanism