On the brink of the Civil War, Stephens gave his famous Cornerstone Speech in Savannah, Georgia on March 21, 1861. In it he reaffirmed that "African Slavery … was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution." He went on to assert that the then-prevailing "assumption of the equality of races" was "fundamentally wrong." "Our new [Confederate] government is founded … upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition", and also: "With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system." Stephens suffered from illness and disease throughout his life, and weighed only 96 pounds. While his voice was described as shrill and unpleasant, at the beginning of the Civil War, a northern newspaper described him as "The Strongest Man in the South" because of his intelligence, judgment, and eloquence. A staunch states rights enthusiast, actions of the Davis government soon drove Stephens into political opposition. He returned to Georgia and became a champion of Governor Joseph E. Brown. In 1862 Stephens became the leader of the Senate opposition to the Davis administration.[citation needed] However, he stayed good friends with Jefferson Davis, and was a stanch supporter of Davis. On February 3, 1865, he served as one of the commissioners representing the Confederacy and met with President Abraham Lincoln on the steamer River Queen, at the Hampton Roads Conference which attempted to reach a peaceful ending to the Civil War. He was arrested at his home in Crawfordville, Georgia, on May 11, 1865.