Style of language

The language of Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone speech is formal and complex, which matches the seriousness of the topic and Stephens’ position as vice-president of the Confederacy. The phrasing sounds rather old-fashioned for today’s readers, which is indicative of the time when the speech was delivered.

When it comes to sentence length, Stephens uses mostly long and middle-length sentences to argue his views. For example, Stephens uses a very long sentence when he discusses what Thomas Jefferson and others who helped draft the constitution of the United States believed about the rights of African Americans: 

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the ...