Alexander
Stephens was born near Crawfordsville, Georgia, and was orphaned as a child. He graduated
from Franklin College in 1832 and was admitted to the bar in 1834. As a Whig, he served in
the Georgia state house, 1834-1841, was elected to the state senate in 1842, and served as
a U. S. Representative, 1843-1859. A proponent of state sovereignty and a defender of
slavery, Stephens favored the annexation of Texas, played a leading role in the Compromise
of 1850, and supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. After the Whig party collapsed, he
joined the Democrats and backed Douglas in the presidential election of 1860. Toombs,
along with fellow-Georgians Howell Cobb and Robert Toombs, formed a triumvirate opposing
Southern secession. After Lincolns election in 1860, Cobb and Toombs endorsed
secession, but Stephens stood firm against it at the Georgia state convention. When the
delegates voted to secede, however, Stephens acquiesced and was later elected Vice
President of the Confederacy. He was a leader of the moderate faction of Confederates and
an advocate of a peaceful resolution of the war. After the war, he was imprisoned in
Boston for five months in 1865, then released, whereupon Georgians reelected him to the U.
S. Senate under the terms of President Johnsons lenient Reconstruction plan. Radical
Republicans, however, refused to recognize the new state governments in the South and
Stephens was not allowed to take his seat. With the formal end of Reconstruction, he
returned to Congress, serving in the House from 1877 until 1882, when he was elected
Governor of Georgia. He was the author of A Constitutional View of the Late War Between
the States (1868-70). He died in Atlanta, Georgia.
Robert C. Kennedy, HarpWeek
Sources consulted: Harpers Encyclopedia of United States History; Mark Boatner,
Civil War Dictionary |
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Alexander Hamilton Stephens
(11 February 1812 - 4 March 1883)
Source: Harper's Weekly |