Alexander Hamilton Stephens, LL. D., Vice-President of
the Confederate States was one of that body of great men who stood
firmly by the venture on independence made by the Southern people in
1861.
He was born February 11, 1812, in Georgia, near Crawfordsville, where
he is buried, and where a monument erected by the people speaks of his
fame. Educated during his early youth in the schools of the times, he
was graduated in 1832 at the age of twenty years, and was admitted to
the bar in 1834.
After declining political honors and seeking to pursue without
interruption a professional life, he represented them in political
office. His county sent him in 1836 to the State legislature, repeated
their selection until in 1841 he positively declined re-election. But
in 1842 he was chosen State senator.
His record as a State legislator shows him diligent in protecting all
common interests, and in advancing the State's material welfare. His
first entry into the United States Congress occurred in 1843, after
which he served 16 years with distinction constantly increasing until
in 1859 he returned to private life by his own choice. He had been a
firm advocate of the compromise measures of 1850, and having
subsequently participated in the settlement of the Kansas troubles,
accepted the result as an end of sectional strife so far as the South
was concerned. He was elected a member of the Georgia convention of
1861, and after strenuous effort to delay the passage of an ordinance
of separate State secession, he yielded when the act was passed and
gave his entire energies to maintain the Confederacy.
The Provisional Congress chose him to be Vice-President of the
Confederate States. His talents and commanding influence throughout the
South caused his services to be put to immediate use.
Mr. Stephens considered the Southern cause hopeless after returning
from the Hampton Roads conference, and finding the administration
resolved on defending Richmond to the last, he left Richmond for his
home February 9th and remained in retirement until his arrest on the
11th of May.
He was confined as a prisoner for five months at Fort Warren, which he
endured with fortitude and without yielding up his convictions. His
release by parole occurred in October, 1865, and on the following
February the Georgia legislature elected him United States senator, but
Congress was now treating Georgia as a State out of the Union, in
subversion of the Presidential proclamation of restoration and he was
therefore refused a seat.
Later, when the reconstruction era was happily ended, he was elected
representative to Congress, in which he took his seat and served with
unimpaired ability. In the year 1882 he was elected governor of
Georgia, and during his term was taken sick at Savannah, where he died
March 4, 1883. Extraordinary funeral honors were paid him at the
capital and in the State generally, and his memory is cherished warmly
as one of the great men of his times.
Source:
Home of the American Civil War. Alexander Hamilton Stephens.
