Alexander H. Stephens

 

Alexander Stephens was born on February 11, 1812.^[1] His parents were Andrew Baskins Stephens and Margaret Grier.^[4] The Stephenses lived on a farm in Taliaferro County, near Crawfordville. At the time of Alexander Stephens's birth, the farm was part of Wilkes County. Taliaferro County was created in 1825 from land in Greene, Hancock, Oglethorpe, Warren, and Wilkes counties.^[5] His father, a native of Pennsylvania, came to Georgia at 12 years of age, in 1795. According to the Biographical Sketch of Linton Stephens (Linton Stephens being Alexander Stephens's half-brother), Andrew B. Stephens was "endowed with uncommon intellectual faculties; he had sound practical judgment; he was a safe counselor, sagacious, self-reliant, candid and courageous."^[6]

His mother, a Georgia native and sister of Grier's Almanac founder Robert Grier,^[7] died in 1812 at the age of 26; Alexander Stephens was only three months old. In the introduction to Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens, there is this about his mother and her family: "Margaret came of folk who had a liking for books, and a turn for law, war, and meteorology."^[8] The introduction continues: "In her son's character was a marked blending of parental traits. He [Alexander Stephens] was thrifty, generous, progressive; one of the best lawyers in the land; a reader and collector of books; a close observer of the weather, and father of the Weather Bureau of the United States."^[9] In 1814, Andrew B. Stephens married Matilda Lindsay, daughter of Revolutionary War Colonel John Lindsay.^[10]

In May 1826, when Alexander Stephens was age 14, his father Andrew and stepmother Matilda died of pneumonia only days apart.^[11] Their deaths caused him and several siblings to be scattered among relatives. He grew up poor and in difficult circumstances. Not long after the deaths of his father and his stepmother, Alexander Stephens was sent to live with his mother's other brother, General Aaron W. Grier, near Raytown (Taliaferro County), Georgia. General Grier had inherited his own father's library, said to be "the largest library in all that part of the country."^[12] Alexander Stephens, who read voraciously even as a youth, mentions the library in his "Recollections."

Frail but precocious, the young Stephens acquired his continued education through the generosity of several benefactors. One of them was the Presbyterian minister Alexander Hamilton Webster, who presided over a school in Washington, Georgia. Out of respect for his mentor, Stephens adopted Webster's middle name, Hamilton, as his own. Stephens attended Franklin College (later the University of Georgia) in Athens, Georgia, where he was roommates with Crawford W. Long and a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. He raised funds for Phi Kappa Hall, located on the university campus.^[13] Stephens graduated at the top of his class in 1832.

After several unhappy years teaching in school, Stephens began legal studies, was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1834, and began a successful career as a lawyer in Crawfordville. During his 32 years of practice, he gained a reputation as a capable defender of the wrongfully accused. None of his clients charged with capital crimes were executed. As his wealth increased, Stephens began acquiring land and slaves. By the time of the Civil War, Stephens owned 34 slaves and several thousand acres. He entered politics in 1836 and was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, serving there until 1841. In 1842, he was elected to the Georgia Senate.

Stephens served in the U.S. House of Representatives from October 2, 1843, to March 3, 1859, from the 28th Congress through the 35th Congress. In 1843, he was elected to the House as a Whig, in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mark A. Cooper.^[14] This seat was at-large, as Georgia did not have U.S. House Districts until the following year. Stephens was re-elected from the 7th District as a Whig in 1844, 1846 and 1848, as a Unionist in 1850, and again as a Whig (from the 8th District) in 1852. In 1854 and 1856, his re-elections came as a Democrat.^{[clarification needed]} As a national lawmaker during the crucial decades before the Civil War, Stephens was involved in all of the major sectional battles. He began as a moderate defender of slavery but later accepted the prevailing Southern rationale utilized to defend the institution.

Stephens quickly rose to prominence as one of the leading Southern Whigs in the House. He supported the annexation of Texas in 1845. Along with his fellow Whigs, he vehemently opposed the Mexican–American War, and later became an equally vigorous opponent of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have barred the extension of slavery into territories that were acquired after the war. He also controversially tabled the Clayton Compromise, which would have excluded slavery from the Oregon Territory and left the issue of slavery in New Mexico and California to the U.S. Supreme Court. This would later nearly kill Stephens when he argued with Georgia Supreme Court Justice Francis H. Cone, who stabbed him repeatedly in a fit of anger.^[15] Stephens was physically outmatched by his larger assailant, but he remained defiant during the attack, refusing to recant his positions even at the cost of his life. Only the intervention of others saved him. Stephens's wounds were serious, and he returned home to Crawfordville to recover. He and Cone reconciled before Cone's death in 1859.

Stephens and fellow Georgia Representative Robert Toombs campaigned for the election of Zachary Taylor as president in 1848. Both were chagrined and angered when Taylor proved less than pliable on aspects of the Compromise of 1850. After Taylor supported the ratification of New Mexico's anti-slavery state constitution and threatened to send troops to defend it against Texas's territorial claims, Stephens published an open letter in the National Intelligencer calling for Taylor's impeachment, and he warned that if the United States were to fire the first shots against Texas it would lead to the Southern states to secede from the Union.^[16] Stephens and Toombs both supported said compromise between slave and free states, though they opposed the exclusion of slavery from the territories on the theory that such lands belonged to all of the people. The pair returned from the District of Columbia to Georgia to secure support for the measures at home. Both men were instrumental in the drafting and approval of the Georgia Platform, which rallied Unionists throughout the Deep South.

 

Stephens and Toombs were not only political allies but also lifelong friends. Stephens was described as "a highly sensitive young man of serious and joyless habits of consuming ambition, of poverty-fed pride, and of morbid preoccupation within self," a contrast to the "robust, wealthy, and convivial Toombs. But this strange camaraderie endured with singular accord throughout their lives."^[17]

By this time, Stephens had departed the ranks of the Whig party, whose Northern wing generally was not amenable to some Southern interests. Back in Georgia, Stephens, Toombs and Democratic U.S. Representative Howell Cobb formed the Constitutional Union Party. The party overwhelmingly carried the state in the ensuing election, and, for the first time Stephens returned to Congress no longer a Whig. Stephens spent the next few years as a Constitutional Unionist. He vigorously opposed the dismantling of the Constitutional Union Party when it began crumbling in 1851. Political realities soon forced the Union Democrats in the party to affiliate once more with the national party, and, by mid-1852, the combination of both Democrats and Whigs, which had formed a party behind the Compromise, had ended.

The sectional issue surged to the forefront again in 1854, when Senator Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois moved to organize the Nebraska Territory, all of which lay north of the Missouri Compromise line, in the Kansas–Nebraska Act. This legislation aroused fury in the North because it applied the popular sovereignty principle to the Territory, in violation of the Missouri Compromise. Had it not been for Stephens, the bill probably never would have passed in the House. He employed an obscure House rule to bring the bill to a vote. He later called this "the greatest glory of my life."

From this point on, Stephens voted with the Democrats. Until after 1855, Stephens could not be properly called a Democrat, and even then, he never officially declared it. In this move, Stephens broke irrevocably with many of his former Whig colleagues. When the Whig Party disintegrated after the election of 1852, some Whigs flocked to the short-lived Know-Nothing Party, but Stephens fiercely opposed the Know Nothings both for their secrecy and their anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic position.

 

Despite his late arrival in the Democratic Party, Stephens quickly rose through the ranks. He even served as President James Buchanan's floor manager in the House during the fruitless battle for the slave state Lecompton Constitution for Kansas Territory in 1857. He was instrumental in framing the failed English Bill after it became clear that Lecompton would not pass in order to negotiate the approval.

Stephens did not seek re-election to Congress in 1858. As sectional peace eroded during the next two years, Stephens became increasingly critical of Southern extremists. Although virtually the entire South had spurned Douglas as a traitor to Southern rights because he had opposed the Lecompton Constitution and broken with Buchanan, Stephens remained on good terms with Douglas and even served as one of his presidential electors in the election of 1860.

On November 14, 1860, Stephens delivered a speech titled "The Assertions of a Secessionist." He said:

When I look around and see our prosperity in every thing, agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of education, physical and mental, as well as moral advancement, and our colleges, I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity to—let us not too readily yield to this temptation—do so. Our first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led to believe that their condition would be bettered—that their eyes would be opened—and that they would become as gods. They in an evil hour yielded—instead of becoming gods, they only saw their own nakedness. I look upon this country, with our institutions, as the Eden of the world, the paradise of the universe.^[18]

On the eve of the outbreak of the American Civil War, Stephens counseled delay in moving militarily against U.S.-held Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens so that the Confederacy could build up its forces and stock resources.^[19]

 

In 1861, Stephens was elected as a delegate to the Georgia Secession Convention to decide Georgia's response to the election of Abraham Lincoln. During the convention, as well as during the 1860 presidential campaign, Stephens, who came to be known as the sage of Liberty Hall,^[20] called for the South to remain loyal to the Union, likening it to a leaking but fixable boat. During the convention he reminded his fellow delegates that Republicans were a minority in Congress (especially in the Senate) and, even with a Republican president, they would be forced to compromise just as the two sections had for decades. Because the Supreme Court had voted 7–2 in the Dred Scott case, it took decades of Senate-approved appointments to reverse it. He voted against secession in the convention^[21] but asserted the right to secede if the federal government continued allowing Northern states to nullify the Fugitive Slave Law with "personal liberty laws." He was elected to the Confederate Congress and was chosen by the Congress as vice president of the provisional government.^[22] He took the provisional oath of office on February 11, 1861, then the 'full term' oath of office on February 22, 1862 (after being elected in November 1861) and served until his arrest on May 11, 1865. Stephens officially served in office eight days longer than President Jefferson Davis; he took his oath seven days before Davis's inauguration and was captured the day after Davis.

 

In 1862, Stephens first publicly expressed his opposition to the Davis administration.^[23] Throughout the war he denounced many of the president's policies, including conscription, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, impressment, various financial and taxation policies, and Davis's military strategy.^[24]

In mid-1863, Davis dispatched Stephens on a fruitless mission to Washington, D.C., to discuss prisoner exchanges, but the Union victory of Gettysburg made the Lincoln administration refuse to receive him. As the war continued and the fortunes of the Confederacy sank lower, Stephens became more outspoken in his opposition to the administration. On March 16, 1864, Stephens delivered a speech^[25] to the Georgia Legislature that was widely reported in both the North and the South. In it, he excoriated the Davis Administration for its support of conscription and suspension of habeas corpus and supported a block of resolutions aimed at securing peace. From then until the end of the war, as he continued to press for actions aimed at bringing about peace, his relations with Davis, never warm to begin with, turned completely sour.

On February 3, 1865, Stephens was one of three Confederate commissioners who met with Lincoln on the steamer River Queen at the Hampton Roads Conference, a fruitless effort to discuss measures to bring an end to the fighting. Stephens and Lincoln had been close friends and Whig political allies in the 1840s.^[26] Although peace terms were not reached, Lincoln did agree to look into the whereabouts of Stephens's nephew, Confederate Lieutenant John A. Stephens. When Lincoln returned to Washington, he ordered the release of Lieutenant Stephens.^[27]

Stephens was arrested for treason against the United States at his home in Crawfordville, on May 11, 1865. He was imprisoned in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, for five months until October 1865.^[28]

Stephens's Cornerstone Speech on March 21, 1861, to The Savannah Theatre is frequently cited in historical analysis of Confederate ideology. The speech defended slavery; enumerated contrasts between the American and Confederate foundings, ideologies and constitutions; and laid out the Confederacy's rationale for seceding. Historian Keith S. Hébert describes it as "the most significant speech" ever delivered by Stephens.^[31] It declared that disagreements over the enslavement of Africans were the "immediate cause" of secession and that the Confederate constitution had resolved such issues.^[2]

The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.

Stephens contended that advances and progress in the sciences proved that the United States Declaration of Independence's view that "all men are created equal" was erroneous.^[2] His speech criticized "most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution" for their views on slavery, stating that:^[2][32]

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution [Founding Fathers] 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. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it - "when the storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Stephens proceeded to state that in contrast to the United States:^[2][32]

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, 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. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.^[32]

Criticizing the position of Northern evangelicals who were opposed to slavery,^[33] Stephens quoted the Psalm 118:22 and Curse of Ham to biblically justify the institution, and stated that:^[31]

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. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so...

Concluding:^[2]

This stone which was "rejected by the first builders" [Founding Fathers] " — is become the chief of the corner" — the real "corner-stone" in our new edifice.

After the Confederacy's defeat, 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;^[2][34] this explanation by Stephens is widely rejected by historians.^[2] Hébert states that "the speech haunted Stephens to the grave and beyond as he and other postbellum southern Democrats struggled to conceal the clear meaning of his words under the camouflage of a Lost Cause mythology."^[2]

 

In 1866, Stephens was elected to the United States Senate by the first legislature convened under the new Georgia State Constitution but was not allowed to take his seat because of restrictions on former Confederates. He published a U.S. history in 1868–1870, laying out the Lost Cause of the Confederacy in his view: that secession was legal, and that Northern States were the aggressors in this conflict. The thrust of his legal argument was rejected by the Supreme Court in the 1869 case Texas v. White, ruling secession to be unconstitutional.

In 1873, Stephens was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from the 8th District to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Ambrose R. Wright. He was re-elected to the 8th District as an Independent Democrat in 1874, 1876 and 1878, and as a Democrat again in 1880.^[35] He described himself, on the title page of the 1876 edition of his Compendium, as "Professor Elect of History and Political Science at the University of Georgia." He served in the 43rd through 47th Congresses, from December 1, 1873, until his resignation on November 4, 1882. On that date, he was elected and took office as governor of Georgia.^[36] His tenure as governor proved brief; Stephens died on March 4, 1883, four months after taking office.^[37]

Stephens was sickly throughout his life, most painfully from "crippling rheumatoid arthritis and a pinched nerve in his back."^[11] Although his adult height was 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m), he often weighed less than 100 pounds (45 kg).^[38] Almost all of his former slaves continued to work for him, often for little or no money;^{[39][better source needed]} whether this decision was voluntary or the result of few other options existing for former slaves in the Deep South is difficult to determine.^[40] These servants were with him upon his death. Although old and infirm, Stephens continued to work on his house and plantation. According to a former slave, a gate fell on Stephens while he and another black servant were repairing it, "and he was crippled and lamed up from that time on till he died." The veracity of this rumor is difficult to determine as the cited ex-slave was not present when this happened.^[41]

While returning from a trip to Savannah in February, his already poor health further deteriorated from exposure to the elements. His last official act as governor was executed on 28 February. He died shortly before 3:30am on 4 March, surrounded by physicians and friends. That afternoon, commemorative speeches were made by "prominent citizens" in the Georgia Senate chamber. On 6 March, Stephens' body laid in state in the chamber. On 8 March, a grand funeral was held, and all citizens of the state were requested to observe the occasion.

In 1928, Judge Alex Stephens, a nephew, introduced Cyrus Stephens, the last surviving person who had been enslaved by Alexander Stephens, to Georgia governor L. G. Hardman.^[42]

A lifelong bachelor, Stephens never married and never acknowledged direct descendants.^[43][44] An African American family claims to be the descendants of Stephens and a slave he owned, named Eliza;^[44] though their claims were not verified by genetic testing.^[45]

• Speech of Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, on the subject of the Mexican War, delivered in the House of Representatives of the U.S., June 16, 1846. Washington, D.C.: J. & G.S. Gideon, printer. 1846.
• Stephens, Alexander Hamilton (1856). Speech of Hon. Alex. H. Stephens, of Georgia, on the Kansas Election, delivered in the House of Representatives, February 19, 1856.
• Speech of Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, on the admission of Minnesota and alien suffrage; delivered in the House of Representatives, May 11, 1858. Washington, D.C.: Printed at the Congressional Globe Office. 1858.
• Impeachment of Judge Watrous: Speech of Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia in the House of Representatives, December 15, 1858. Impeachment of Watrous. Printed at the Congressional Globe Office. 1858.
• Extract from a speech by Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of the Confederate States,: delivered in the secession convention of Georgia, January 1861. 1861.
• Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861.
• The assertions of a secessionist : from the speech of A.H. Stephens, of Georgia, November 14, 1860. New York: Loyal Publication Society. 1864.
• Carpenter's picture, Lincoln and emancipation : speech of the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, in the House of Representatives, 12th of February, 1878. Washington, D.C.: Darby & Duvall. 1878.

 

• A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results, presented as a series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company. 1868. ISBN 978-0608399591.
• A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results, presented as a series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company. 1870.
• The reviewers reviewed; a supplement to the "War between the states," etc., with an appendix in review of "Reconstruction," so called. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1872. ISBN 9780608399607.
• Pictorial History Of The United States - A Comprehensive and Popular History of the United States Embracing A Full Account of Each of the Colonies Their Union as States; The French and Indian Wars; the War of the Revolution; the Mexican War; the Great War between the North and South; and its Results; The Centennial Of Our Independence; The Assassination of President Garfield; And Events Down To The Present Time. By Alexander H. Stephens. Embellished with more than 300 fine Historical Engravings and Portraits. Pub. by The National Publishing Co., Philadelphia, Pa... 1882
• A compendium of the history of the United States from the earliest settlements to 1872 : designed to answer the purpose of a text book in schools, colleges as well as to meet the wants of general readers. Columbia, S.C.: W. J. Duffie. 1883. 1875
• A compendium of the history of the United States from the earliest settlements to 1883. Designed to answer the purpose of a text-book in schools and colleges as well as to meet the wants of general readers. New York: E.J. Hale & Son. 1887. 1875

 

• Stephens is pictured on the Confederate States $20.00 banknote (3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th issues).
• Stephens County, Georgia, and Stephens County, Texas, bear his name, as does A.H. Stephens State Park, near Crawfordville,^[46] containing his home Liberty Hall.
• A collection of Stephens's personal papers has been digitized and is available at the Rubenstein Library, Duke University.^[47]
• A sculpture of Stephens appears in the National Statuary Hall Collection, representing one of two figures from Georgia history, the other being Crawford W. Long. (There have been calls of late to replace Stephens's sculpture in the collection with that of some other Georgian, such as Martin Luther King Jr.^[48])
• According to Bruce Catton, Stephens was "given one of the most haunting nicknames ever worn by an American politician: 'The Little Pale Star from Georgia.'"^[49]

• Cornerstone Speech
• List of signers of the Georgia Ordinance of Secession

Notes

• Georgia's Historic High Country Travel Association (January 25, 2009). "Alexander Stephens". Georgia's Blue and Gray Trail. Archived from the original on May 9, 2006. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
• Lincoln, Abraham. "Abraham Lincoln Praises Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, in 1848". Shapell Manuscript Foundation. Retrieved March 10, 2018. I just take up my pen to say, that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, a little slim pale faced consumptive man, with a voice like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech, of an hour's length, I ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet. If he writes it out any thing like he delivered it, our people shall see a good many copies of it.
• Stephens, Alexander H. (March 21, 1861). ""Corner Stone" Speech". TeachingAmericanHistory.org. Archived from the original on August 22, 2013. Source: Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private: With Letters and Speeches, Before, During, and Since the War (Philadelphia, 1886), pp. 717–729.
• Pendelton, Louis Beauregard (1908). Alexander H. Stephens. Philadelphia, G. W. Jacobs & company.
• The Papers of Alexander H. Stephens at Duke University
• The Papers of Alexander H. Stephens at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
• The Papers of Alexander H. Stephens Archived October 29, 2020, at the Wayback Machine at the University of Georgia
• The Library of Alexander H. Stevens at the A.H. Stephens Historic Park
• Link for Stevens Pictorial History of the United States: https://lccn.loc.gov/01010249
• United States Congress. "Alexander H. Stephens (id: S000854)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Works by Alexander H. Stephens at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
• Works by or about Alexander H. Stephens at the Internet Archive
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Alexander Hamilton Stephens collection, 1821–1935
• Guide to the Alexander H. Stephens Collection 1870–1876 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center