[1] The improvised speech, delivered a few weeks before the Civil War began, defended slavery as a fundamental and just result of the supposed inferiority of the black race, explained the fundamental differences between the constitutions of the Confederate States and that of the United States, enumerated contrasts between Union and Confederate ideologies, and laid out the Confederacy's rationale for seceding.

The war itself would not begin until the U.S. base of Fort Sumter was attacked by the Confederates in mid-April, so open, large-scale hostilities between the two sides had not yet begun.

Referring to the general lack of violence, Stephens stated that the secession had to that point been accomplished without "the loss of a single drop of blood".

[4] Stephens' speech criticized the Founding Fathers, and Thomas Jefferson in particular, for their anti-slavery and Enlightenment views, accusing them of erroneously assuming that races are equal.

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 African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically.

[8] He stated that advances in science proved that enslavement of black Americans by white men was justified and that it coincided with the Bible's teachings.

[9] After the Confederacy's defeat at the hands of the U.S. in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Stephens attempted to retroactively deny and retract the opinions he had stated in the speech.

Denying his earlier statements that slavery was the Confederacy's cause for leaving the Union, he contended to the contrary that he thought that the war was rooted in constitutional differences as detailed below.

[11] In the speech, Stephens mostly outlined how the Confederate constitution eliminated the tariff and prohibited the central government from spending on internal improvements.

The reasoning was on a states' rights argument, with the Georgia Railroad as a first example: The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise.

Nay, more not only the cost of the iron—no small item in the aggregate cost—was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad.

The President was to serve a single six-year term in the hope that it would "remove from the incumbent all temptation to use his office or exert the powers confided to him for any objects of personal ambition".

The seven states that seceded, Stephens thought, were sufficient to form a successful republic, with a population of five million (including blacks) and a land area larger than that of France, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom combined.

Stephens said that surely North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas would be members in the near future and that Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri would eventually join.

The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations.

The spoils is what they are after—though they come from the labor of the slave.Finally, Stephens predicted that the nascent Confederate regime would succeed or fail based on the character of its constituent body politic.