Alexander Stephens (1812-1883) was a Georgia politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives before being selected as vice president of the newly formed Confederate States of America in 1861. Stephens rose from poverty to become one of the South's most influential politicians. In March 1861 Stephens delivered his "Cornerstone Speech," in which he detailed the Confederate case for war and defended slavery, stating, "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.” Throughout the Civil War (1861-1865), Stephens clashed with Confederate President Jefferson Davis over Davis’ handling of the Southern war effort. After the war, Stephens was reelected to Congress and briefly served as governor of his home state of Georgia.
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Did You Know?
Alexander Stephens was pictured on several versions of the Confederate States of America’s $20 banknote.
Called “Little Ellick” by his colleagues because he weighed only about 100 pounds, Stephens was admitted to the bar in 1834. Though plagued by infirmities, he rose steadily in politics, serving in the Georgia House of Representatives (1837–41), the state Senate (1842–43), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–59). A Whig, he urged the annexation of Texas and supported the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854), both of which attempted to establish criteria for the extension of slavery to U.S. territories. He defended slavery but opposed the dissolution of the Union. When Georgia seceded, however (1861), he followed his state and was shortly elected vice president of the Confederacy.
Throughout the war Stephens opposed the exercise of extraconstitutional war powers by Confederate president Jefferson Davis lest the freedom for which the South was ostensibly fighting should be destroyed. The policy he advocated was to preserve constitutional government in the South and to strengthen the antiwar party in the North by convincing it that the Lincoln administration had abandoned such government; to the same end he urged, in 1864, the unconditional discharge of Federal prisoners. Stephens headed the Confederate commission to the abortive peace conference at Hampton Roads, Va., in February 1865.
After the fall of the Confederacy (May 1865), Stephens was confined for five months at Fort Warren, Boston. In 1866 he was elected to the U.S. Senate but was denied his seat because his state had not been properly reconstructed according to the congressional guidelines. He did serve again in the U.S. House of Representatives (1873–82), however, and as governor of Georgia (1882–83). His book A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 2 vol. (1868–70), is perhaps the best statement of the Southern position on state sovereignty and secession.
Copyright © 1994-2009 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com.
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