Stephens, Alexander H. (1812–1883)

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STEPHENS, ALEXANDER H. (1812–1883)

A successful self-taught Georgia lawyer, Alexander Hamilton Stephens was a congressman (1843–1859, 1873–1882), vice-president of the Confederacy (1861–1865), and a lifelong defender of states ' rights. As a southern Whig, Stephens sought to protect state sovereignty and preserve the Union. These objectives led to apparent inconsistencies. Thus, he opposed john c. calhoun and nullification while arguing for the abstract right of secession. Similarly, Stephens was a slaveowner who declared that "I am no defender of slavery in the abstract." He supported annexation of texas to preserve the balance of free and slave states, but he did not support slave extension generally. He opposed the Mexican War because of his unrelenting hatred of President james k. polk, his honest belief that the war was unjust, and his fear that it would reopen the divisive issue of slavery in the territories. But once the war was over he advocated opening the Mexican Cession to slavery. Ironically, he successfully moved to table the Clayton Compromise (1848), even though he supported its purpose, because he believed the Supreme Court would declare that existing Mexican law prohibited slavery in the new territories.

Stephens opposed the compromise of 1850, warning: "Whenever this Government is brought in hostile array against me and mine, I am for disunion—openly, boldly and fearlessly for revolution. " Nevertheless, once the compromise passed, Stephens supported it in Georgia, and at the state's secession convention of 1850 he helped write the Georgia Platform which denounced disunion. Stephens then joined robert toombs and Howell Cobb in organizing a Union Party in Georgia.

In 1854 Stephens became a Democrat. He was the floor manager for the kansas-nebraska act (1854) and worked closely with stephen a. douglas. As chairman of the House Committee on the Territories Stephens supported the lecompton constitution, unlike his Senate counterpart (Douglas). Despite Douglas's apostacy on this issue, Stephens supported his presidential nomination in 1860 and futilely campaigned for Douglas in Georgia.

In November 1860 Stephens opposed secession in Georgia, arguing that Southerners and northern Democrats could block any bill that threatened slavery or the South. His pro-Union speech, reprinted throughout the North, led to a brief correspondence with President-elect abraham lincoln. As a delegate to the Georgia secession convention (January 1861), Stephens supported the creation of a southern nation, provided that it adopted a constitution similar to that of the United States. In the provisional Confederate Congress Stephens helped draft the confederate constitution, which owing in part to his influence resembled the Constitution of 1787. Stephens was then chosen vice-president of the Confederacy. As a moderate who had long opposed secession, Stephens gave the new government legitimacy. On slavery, Stephens was by this time quite "sound." As early as 1855 he had defended slavery on biological and biblical grounds, as well as its role in creating southern society, which Stephens believed was the greatest in history. By 1860 he owned more than thirty slaves. In March 1861 he told the South and the world, in his most famous speech, that slavery was the "cornerstone of the Confederacy."

Throughout the civil war Stephens's relationship with jefferson davis was stormy. Stephens opposed conscription, martial law, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He accused Davis of becoming a dictator and advocated that Georgia seceded from the confederacy to seek peace and sovereignty on its own. Stephens urged that the Confederacy support George McClellan's presidential bid and then seek peace with the United States. He made numerous peace overtures, and in early 1865 met with Lincoln in an unrealistic attempt to negotiate a peace that would preserve a separate southern nation.

Arrested for treason in May 1865, Stephens was incarcerated at Fort Warren (Boston) until President andrew johnson pardoned him in October. He then returned to Georgia where an unreconstructed state legislature elected him to the United States Senate. The Senate responded to this affront by denying Stephens his seat.

In a ponderous and tedious book, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (2 vols., 1868, 1870), Stephens presented an elaborate and unconvincing defense of secession. He responded to his many hostile critics with an even duller book, The Reviewers Reviewed (1872). Reelected to Congress in 1873, Stephens remained for nearly a decade as an ineffectual and somewhat scorned relic of the past. He continued to defend slavery and states' rights, while opposing reconstruction and black rights.

Paul Finkelman
(1986)