i^^ 
 
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 OF THE 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 Edited by 
 
 Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph. D. 
 
Hmerican Crisis Bioerapbies 
 
 Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D. With the 
 counsel and advice of Professor John B. McMaster, of 
 the University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Each i2mo, cloth, with frontispiece portrait. Price 
 $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. 
 
 These biographies will constitute a complete and comprehensive 
 history of the great American sectional struggle in the form of readable 
 and authoritative biography. The editor has enlisted the co-operation 
 of many competent writers, as will be noted from the list given below. 
 An interesting feature of the undertaking is that the series is to be im 
 partial, Southern writers having been assigned to Southern subjects and 
 Northern writers to Northern subjects, but all will belong to the younger 
 generation of writers, thus assuring freedom from any suspicion of war 
 time prejudice. The Civil War will not be treated as a rebellion, but as 
 the great event in the history of our nation, which, after forty years, it 
 is now clearly recognized to nave been. 
 
 Now ready : 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER. 
 Thomas H. Benton. By JOSEPH M. ROGERS. 
 David G. Farragut. By JOHN R. SPEARS. 
 William T. Sherman. By EDWARD ROBINS. 
 Frederick Douglass. By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. 
 Judah P. Benjamin. By PIERCE BUTLER. 
 Robert E. Lee. By PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE. 
 Jefferson Davis. By PROF. W. E. DODD. 
 Alexander H. Stephens. BY Louis PENDLETON. 
 
 In preparation : 
 
 John C. Calhoun. By GAILLARD HUNT. 
 Daniel Webster. By PROF. C. H. VAN TYNE. 
 John Quincy Adams. By BROOKS ADAMS. 
 John Brown. By W. E. BURGH ARDT DUBOIS. 
 William Lloyd Garrison. By LINDSAY SWIFT. 
 Charles Sumner. By PROF. GEORGE H. HAYNES. 
 William H. Seward. By EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr. 
 Stephen A. Douglas. By PROF. HENRY PARKER WILLIS. 
 Thaddeus Stevens. By PROF. J. A. WOODBURN. 
 Andrew Johnson. BY PROF. WALTER L. FLEMING. 
 Henry Clay. By THOMAS H. CLAY. 
 Ulysses S. Grant. By PROF. FRANKLIN S. EDMONDS. 
 Edwin M. Stanton. By EDWIN S. CORWIN. 
 " Stonewall" Jackson. By HENRY ALEXANDER WHITE. 
 Jay Cooke. By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER. 
 
AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 by 
 LOUIS PENDLETON 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY 
 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 
 
 Published March, 1908 
 
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 !28 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A LIFE of Alexander H. Stephens suited to the needs 
 of the modern reader is desirable not only because of 
 the peculiar personality of one of the ablest of the 
 Southern statesmen of the old regime, and because of 
 his association with great events as Vice-President of 
 the Southern Confederacy, but because he was one of 
 the most consistent figures in the long struggle between 
 the champions of State sovereignty and the supporters 
 of Federal supremacy. Though a fellow Georgian, I 
 have found Stephens chiefly interesting as a battling 
 representative of State sovereignty in its conflict with 
 nationalism, and as one of the ablest of those who de 
 fied destiny in the age-long, evolutionary process to 
 which the terms "right" and "wrong" are too indi 
 vidual and personal to apply finally producing a na 
 tion out of a mere confederation. The extent of the 
 author s study of this general subject may be seen from 
 the bibliography at the end of the volume, practically 
 all available sources having been drawn on in order to 
 illustrate the early weakness of the Federal govern 
 ment, the division of sovereignty under our dual sys 
 tem, the conflict between the partisans of State and 
 nation, and the nullification and disunion sentiment so 
 often and so violently manifested in all sections of the 
 country during the first seventy years after the adoption 
 of the Constitution. 
 
 191186 
 
6 PEEFACE 
 
 A volume containing a short sketch of Stephens s life 
 and the most important of his speeches was published 
 by Henry Cleveland in 1866, and a biography with 
 copious extracts from his letters the collaboration of 
 Messrs. Johnston and Browne was brought out in 
 1878. Both of these are of great value as storehouses 
 of facts, but, being put forth by personal friends of 
 Stephens during his lifetime, are inevitably more eulo 
 gistic than discriminating. Moreover, both are now 
 out of print. 
 
 In addition to the matter in these two volumes, I am 
 indebted for information privately received through a 
 number of friends in Georgia who were personally as 
 sociated or acquainted with the subject of this biography, 
 as well as to Mr. Alexander W. Stephens, of Atlanta, 
 who placed at my disposal his great-uncle s scrap-book 
 and the unpublished diary of the latter s prison life at 
 Fort Warren. Much interesting material was also ob 
 tained through a search of the files of Georgia and other 
 Southern newspapers of the forties, fifties and sixties, 
 from old letters, scrap-books of the war period, and 
 from manuscripts in the possession of the government 
 at Washington. 
 
 It may be worth while to add that some of the facts 
 found slumbering in dusty old newspaper files, though 
 of great interest to the American historian, have never, 
 so far as I am aware, been brought forward before : as, 
 for example, that at a banquet at Swan Tavern, Eich- 
 mond, in 1808, the Jefferson electors toasted the Union, 
 declared secession to be " treason," and hurled that 
 charge at the New England Federalists then plotting 
 the establishment of a separate Northern Confederacy 
 showing that in both North and South the right of 
 
PEEFACE 7 
 
 secession was too often affirmed or denied according to 
 the dictates of sectional interests or party policy, al 
 though, as a rule, that right, in the earlier times, was 
 very generally recognized. 
 
 Louis PENDLETON. 
 
 December, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHRONOLOGY 11 
 
 I. BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE . . 15 
 
 II. LAWYER AND LEGISLATOR ... 30 
 
 III. STEPHENS IN CONGRESS ... 48 
 
 IV. HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR . 68 
 V. A LEADER OF THE WHIG PARTY . 85 
 
 VI. THE SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 102 
 
 VII. NULLIFICATION AT THE NORTH . .117 
 
 VIII. STEPHENS EETIRES FROM CONGRESS . 138 
 
 IX. HE OPPOSES SECESSION . . . 153 
 
 X. GEORGIA SECEDES . . .171 
 
 XI. SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION . .186 
 
 XII. VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERACY 227 
 
 XIII. THE SOUTH s HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 251 
 
 XIV. STEPHENS OPPOSES DAVIS s POLICIES 290 
 XV. DISASTROUS INTERNAL DISSENSION . 307 
 
 XVI. THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE . . 325 
 
 XVII. CARPETBAG AND NEGRO EULE . . 343 
 
 XVIII. LAST YEARS 376 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 395 
 
 INDEX , 399 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1812 Birth of Alexander H. Stephens, February 11, in Wilkes 
 County, Ga. 
 
 1828 Sent by the Georgia Educational Society to Franklin 
 College (later the State University) at Athens. 
 
 1833 A country school teacher. 
 
 1834 Admitted to the bar at Crawfordville, Taliaferro County. 
 
 1836 Elected to the State legislature. Serves four years. 
 
 1841 Resigns to devote himself to his law practice. 
 
 1843 Elected to Congress. 
 
 1844 Speaks, December 19, in favor of the annexation of Texas. 
 
 1846 Speaks, June 16, in opposition to the war on Mexico as 
 unjust. 
 
 1848 Stephens s resolutions on the war become the Whig platform 
 in the presidential campaign. He is brutally assaulted and 
 stabbed by Cone. 
 
 1850 He supports the Clay Compromise and writes that he fore 
 sees a disruption of the Union. 
 
 1851 He contributes largely to the triumph of the Unionists over 
 the Secessionists in the election of Ho well Cobb as Governor 
 of Georgia. 
 
 1852 He campaigns for the Independent Whig ticket with Daniel 
 Webster as candidate, voting for the latter even after his 
 death. 
 
 1854 Speaks on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, February 17, showing 
 that popular sovereignty was the original Southern position, 
 and that the North had already repudiated the Missouri 
 Compromise. 
 
 1855 Stephens routs the Know Nothing party in Georgia. 
 
 1856 Speaks in Congress, June 28, in defense of slavery as a 
 Biblical institution. Challenges Benjamin H. Hill to fight 
 a duel. 
 
12 CHBONOLOGY 
 
 1859 Retires from Congress. 
 
 I860 Opposes the policy of the extremists at the Charleston Con 
 vention and supports the Douglas ticket with its popular 
 sovereignty platform. Speaks before the Georgia legisla 
 ture, December 14, opposing secession as bad policy but as 
 serting the right of a sovereign State to secede, and denounc 
 ing the "faithless States " of the North which had violated 
 the compact of Union through their statutory repudiations 
 of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution. 
 
 1861 Speaks and votes against secession in Georgia s Convention, 
 January 16-21. At the convention of the seceded States he 
 is chosen Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy. Ably 
 assists in forming the new government. Sent as commis 
 sioner to negotiate an alliance with Virginia. Delivers his 
 startling " corner-stone " speech at Savannah. 
 
 1862 Dissatisfied with the policies of the Confederate government. 
 Deplores the habeas corpus acts of both the Lincoln and Davis 
 governments and opposes conscription at the South. Out of 
 harmony with Jefferson Davis. 
 
 1863 He seeks in vain (July 2-6) to arrange for an exchange of 
 prisoners, the United States government refusing to receive 
 him and the proposition being rejected. 
 
 1864 He criticises Davis and the policies of the Confederate gov 
 ernment before the Georgia legislature, March 16. Re 
 sponsible for the "Peace Resolutions " of that body. 
 
 1865 Speaks in the Confederate Senate and urges a change of 
 policy. Is spokesman for the Confederate Commissioners at 
 the Hampton Roads Conference, Arrested, May 11, and 
 taken as a political prisoner to Fort Warren. Released on 
 parole, October 12. 
 
 1866 Elected to United States Senate, but is not allowed to take 
 his seat. Speaks before the Georgia legislature, February 
 22, counseling submission, courage and hope, and urging 
 just treatment of the liberated slaves. Manly testimony, on 
 April 16, before the Reconstruction Committee of Congress. 
 
 1867 Begins to write his Constitutional View of the War. 
 
 1868 In an interview in the New York Herald he deplores the 
 disappearance of "the last vestiges of Constitutional free 
 dom," referring to the disfranchisement of a majority of 
 Southern white men and the bestowal of universal manhood 
 suffrage on the negroes. 
 
CHEONOLOGY 13 
 
 1871 Becomes editor of the Southern Sun and continues his labors 
 as a historian. 
 
 1873 Returns to Congress, and during his second career there 
 renders patriotic service as a peacemaker. 
 
 1882 Retires from Congress and is elected Governor of Georgia at 
 the age of seventy. 
 
 1883 Dies on March 4 in the governor s mansion at Atlanta and 
 is buried at his old home, " Liberty Hall," Crawford ville. 
 
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 
 
 THE life of Alexander H. Stephens may be said to 
 have covered the period of disunion agitation in the 
 United States. It is true that his birth, on February 
 11, 1812, occurred fourteen years after the Virginia 
 and Kentucky nullification resolutions of 1798, and 
 about eight years after the New England movement of 
 1803-4, toward the formation of a separate Northern 
 confederacy, which was also to include New York and 
 perhaps New Jersey. But he was nearly three years 
 old when the Hartford Convention of December, 1814, 
 revealed a continuing disunion sentiment in New Eng 
 land ; he was a boy in his teens when the State of 
 Georgia successfully defied the decree of the feeble 
 Federal government as to the disposal of the Creek In 
 dians ; he was a youth of twenty when, in 1832, South 
 Carolina nullified the acts of Congress and did not 
 yield until the great peacemaker, Clay, had secured a 
 satisfying reduction of the offending tariff; he was 
 thirty-two years old when, in 1844, the legislature of 
 Massachusetts resisted the annexation of Texas to the 
 extent of resolutions threatening that such an event 
 would l drive these States [of New England] into a 
 dissolution of the Union " ; he had come to middle life 
 
16 ALEXAtfDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 when, in 1850-51, the determination of Southern 
 Democrats to exercise the right of secession was with 
 great difficulty voted down by Southern Whig 
 unionism ; and he had reached the age of forty-nine 
 years when, in 1860-61, eleven Southern States 
 brought an issue as old as the Constitution to its 
 supreme and final test by repealing the ordinances 
 whereby they had made themselves members of the 
 Union of States and by proclaiming themselves once 
 more separate and sovereign republics. 
 
 It is one of the interesting facts of history that, al 
 though disapproving of this action on the part of the 
 eleven States as unwise and avoidable, Alexander H. 
 Stephens consistently held to the State sovereignty 
 idea, including the right of secession, throughout his 
 life, and, among all the Confederates, was its ablest 
 defender. 
 
 When a delicate male child was born to Andrew B. 
 and Margaret Stephens on a Georgia farm in 1812, no 
 local prophet could have found the slightest basis for 
 the prediction that he would become a great lawyer ; 
 that he would serve with distinction in the forum of 
 the nation for many years ; that he would be chosen 
 Vice- President of the Southern Confederacy ; and that, 
 after the tragic collapse of the secession movement, in 
 spite of lifelong physical frailty, he would survive the 
 nightmare of reconstruction, retain his hold on the 
 confidence of his people, and die in the governor s 
 mansion of his native State. For, although he came 
 of good stock, nobody in his family before him had 
 achieved distinction. Like most of the leaders of men 
 in this country s earlier period, he was what might be 
 called an accident, rising to power and fame from 
 
BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 17 
 
 humble surroundings, arid illustrating afresh the truth 
 that the fire of genius, raining down from the stars, 
 may light a flame where least expected.^ 
 
 Alexander Stephens, grandfather of the subject of 
 this biography, emigrated from England to Pennsyl 
 vania at an unknown date, married Miss Baskins, the 
 daughter of the owner of a ferry at the junction of the 
 Juuiata and Susquehanna Eivers, and, after serving 
 in the war for American independence, removed to 
 Georgia, where he lived as a small farmer on rented 
 land in Wilkes County until the day of his death. His 
 youngest son, Andrew B. Stephens, spent his life in the 
 same neighborhood, farming on a limited scale and 
 teaching a country school. The children of Andrew 
 B. Stephens by his first wife, Margaret Grier, were 
 Mary, Aaron Grier, and the afterward famous Alex 
 ander. His second wife, Matilda Lindsay, bore him 
 one daughter and four sons Linton, the youngest of 
 the latter, who rose to the position of Judge of the 
 Supreme Court of Georgia, being throughout life the 
 object of a remarkably strong affection on the part of 
 his half-brother, Alexander. 
 
 * Poverty and toil were the chief distinguishing 
 features of Stephens s childhood. His almost in 
 cessant labors were too often beyond the strength 
 of a delicate boy, and it is probable that if he 
 had been more tenderly cared for in early youth he 
 would have built up a stronger physical constitution. 
 In after years he wrote of this drudgery as a matter of 
 course, relating that from his sixth to his fifteenth 
 year he had little time either for attending school or 
 for the sports of boyhood. His father was an " old- 
 field" schoolmaster, but it appears that only during 
 
18 ALEXAKDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 brief periods, amounting to about two years out of the 
 nine, could Alexander be spared from the household 
 and the farm. His duties included taking care of his 
 stepmother s children, picking up chips, bringing 
 water, keeping off the calves during the morning and 
 evening milking, driving the cows to and from pasture, 
 " minding gaps" when hauling was done, running 
 errands, " dropping corn," u handing" the threads 
 for all the cloth that was put on the loom, digging in 
 the vegetable garden, and every other variety of work 
 that on the plantations in those days was usually as 
 signed to the younger negroes. At ten he was so 
 quick and skilful in " dropping corn " that he could 
 perform this task "as fast as any ploughman could 
 < lay off. " l It is painful to think of a future states 
 man, ever an invalid, hauling manure and ploughing 
 as a fragile boy of eleven. We are told that at the age 
 of twelve he was l one of the regular ploughers dur 
 ing the whole crop," and that about this time or 
 earlier he l i frequently dropped ten acres of corn a day 
 in hills spaced four feet by four." / 
 
 It is the habit of small minds to seek to disown a 
 past of poverty and toil and to cultivate the point of 
 view of the prosperous snob. The uses of adversity 
 are not always sweet, the experience too often leaving 
 a galled and hardened spirit in lieu of the possible 
 residuum of good which finds expression, in part, in a 
 developed human sympathy. In the case of Alexander 
 H. Stephens, excepting the probable injury to his 
 physical constitution, it may be said that his hard/ 
 early life was beneficial in its effects. With no disposi 
 tion to boast of his humble beginning, he referred to it 
 Johnston and Browne, Life of Stephens,^. 31. 
 
BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 19 
 
 without shame and with a philosopher s calm, clearly 
 recognizing its uses in the development of his charac 
 ter. Its results appear in his habits of industry, his 
 tenacity of purpose, and in his sympathy for the poor, 
 the weak, and the unfortunate, which was of such 
 generous proportions as at times to become a fault* 
 
 Of his father, who overworked him and neglected 
 his education, he wrote in after years with respect and 
 admiration, describing him in a letter, dated Novem 
 ber, 1863, as " somewhat peculiar, considering the 
 customs J J of his time. He i i abhorred ardent spirits, 
 * "detested indecent jesting," and no one " dared" to 
 indulge in either in his presence. l He never made 
 or received visits on Sunday. When he did not go 
 to church, he made his children stay at home, and read 
 the Bible. If any of his neighbors called to see him on 
 Sunday, he would soon give the conversation such a 
 turn as would make a reference to books opportune, by 
 way of illustration or confirmation of his views. He 
 would then take down a volume of sermons and read 
 from them some passages bearing on the point. This 
 usually resulted in the departure of the unseasonable 
 visitor." After this one learns with some surprise 
 that the " exceedingly exemplary, moral and upright" 
 Andrew B. Stephens was not a member of any church. 
 
 Apparently his son did not attend his school long 
 enough at any one time to acquire a distaste for his 
 methods. These are all praised. "He never scolded ; 
 never reprimanded a scholar in a loud voice ; never 
 thumped the head, pulled the ears, or used a ferule." 
 Possibly this partly explains why he, so far as his son 
 knew, was " the only old-field teacher in those days on 
 whom the boys never played the prank of l turning out. J 
 
20 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 One of his schoolroom exercises, which "the 
 scholars called learning manners, " evidently made 
 a deep impression on little Alexander, and was no 
 less admirable than quaint. It is related that, " about 
 once a month, on a Friday evening [afternoon], after 
 the spelling classes had got through their tasks," the 
 boys and girls were directed to take seats in rows fac 
 ing each other. Then the boy at the head of his row 
 would rise and walk toward the centre of the room and 
 the girl at the head of her row would do likewise. 
 1 As they approached, the boy would bow and the girl 
 drop a courtesy the established female salutation of 
 those days and they would pass on. At other times 
 they were taught to stop and exchange verbal salu 
 tations, and the usual formulas of polite inquiry, after 
 which they retired and were followed by the next pair. 
 These exercises were varied by meetings in an imagi 
 nary parlor, the entrance, introduction, and reception 
 of visitors, with practice in * commonplace chat 
 suited to the occasion. Then came the ceremony of 
 introductions. The parties in this case would walk 
 from opposite sides of the room in pairs, and upon 
 meeting, after salutations of the two agreed upon, 
 would commence making known to each other the 
 friends accompanying them, the boy saying, Allow 
 me, Miss Mary, to present to you my friend, Mr. 
 Smith. Mr. Smith, Miss Jones. After Miss Mary 
 had spoken to Mr. Smith, she would in turn introduce 
 her friends. These exercises, trivial as the description 
 may seem," the Vice-President of the Confederacy 
 pointedly concludes, i i were of great use to raw coun 
 try boys and girls, removing their awkwardness and 
 consequent shyness, and the painful sense of being 
 
BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 21 
 
 at a disadvantage, or the dread of appearing ri 
 diculous. 
 
 His father was not the boy s only instructor in those 
 early days. He refers in his letters to another whose 
 school he attended a few months, and whose fondness 
 for the flowing bowl, to employ a curious euphemism 
 of the neighborhood, too often led to his becoming 
 " disguised. 7 This interesting specimen, in the pres 
 ence of little Alexander, was once thrown to the floor 
 and sat upon by the older boys until he agreed to dis 
 miss school and send for a gallon of whiskey with 
 which to i i treat his triumphant conquerors, who 
 doubtless craftily took advantage of an hour when he 
 was none too steady on his legs. l i Most of the big 
 boys," we read, " stayed until the spirits came and en 
 joyed the old man s treat heartily with him. Finally 
 they broke up in great good humor. The master, 
 they said, did get a little disguised, and took home with 
 him the jug and what was left in it after the carousal." 
 We gather that rough handling of a teacher occasion 
 ally was not uncommon and was not condemned by 
 the parents. As a rule, the sternest discipline was 
 desired and prevailed in the " old-field " schools, but at 
 the approach of holiday seasons, public sentiment per 
 mitted the boys to " turn out " their hard taskmaster 
 if they could, and even duck him in the pond. 
 
 What the " turning out" prank really was is not 
 made quite clear in the letters, but a vivid description 
 of it as witnessed in the adjoining county of Columbia 
 in the first decade of the nineteenth century may be 
 found in Georgia Scenes. This book, written by Judge 
 Longstreet about the year 1830, has a certain historical 
 value, its pictures of rural American life almost a hun- 
 
22 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 dred years ago being regarded by a former generation 
 as photographic in their accuracy. The author tells of 
 the incidental events at county courts, of horse swap- 
 pings, races, and wild fox hunts ; of dances that began 
 at nine o clock in the morning and furnished remark 
 able exhibitions of the " double-shuffle," the " double 
 cross hop," and the " good old republican six reel " ; 
 of turbulent debating society meetings, where native 
 eloquence was sometimes enforced by the argumentum 
 baculinum ; of " gander pullings," whereat the rival 
 ing efforts of galloping horsemen to carry away the head 
 of a live, high-hanging goose with a greased neck 
 afforded highly satisfying entertainment ; of " fist-and- 
 skull " fights, in a ring under the eyes of admiring 
 friends, between two of the l i best men, or those who 
 could knock out anybody in the countryside a rude 
 native sport from which the modern prize-fight may be 
 recognized as a lineal offspring; and of the " turn 
 out," or forcible ejection of the schoolmaster from the 
 temple of learning by his own pupils. The tem 
 ple, in this instance, was a log cabin in which "a 
 large three- inch plank, wrought from the half of a 
 tree s trunk entirely with the axe," served the whole 
 school as a writing desk, a long smooth log being em 
 ployed as a bench. The teacher was sitting on this 
 "desk," with his feet on the bench, when suddenly 
 two of the larger boys " seized each a leg and marched 
 off with it in quick time." The immediate result was 
 that the luckless pedagogue s head "first took the 
 desk, then the seat, and finally the ground (for the 
 house was not floored), with three sonorous thumps of 
 most doleful portent. " In a twinkling he was com 
 pletely buried with boys," but managed to draw up 
 
LIFE 23 
 
 his right leg and kick violently, thus "laying out 
 about six boys in various directions upon the floor." 
 These loudly complained of their hurts until an on 
 looker exclaimed : " Hut ! Young Washingtons mind 
 these trifles ! At him again ! " We are assured that 
 the mention of Washington promptly cured their 
 wounds and they returned roaring to the battle. 
 " The left leg treated six more boys as unceremoniously 
 as the right," but "the talismanic name had fallen 
 upon their ears before the kick, so they were invulner 
 able." The struggle waxed fiercer still, and the 
 youthful contestants were knocked about in all direc 
 tions, some of them receiving " thumps which would 
 have placed the ruffle- shirted little darlings of the pres 
 ent day [about 1830] under the discipline of paregoric 
 and opodeldoc for a week, but these hardy sons of the 
 forest seemed not to feel them." Finally the ex 
 hausted schoolmaster surrendered and offered a day s 
 holiday. The boys demanded a week, but in the end 
 agreed to accept three days as the reward of victory. 
 Set free, the teacher " rose in a good humor " and all 
 quitted the backwoods temple of learning in high 
 spirits. 1 
 
 Life was rude in rural Georgia in the first decades 
 of the last century. It was pretty rude even at a later 
 period and nearer the populous centres of the more 
 thickly-settled States, if we can judge from what 
 De Tocqueville, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Trollope, 
 and other critical observers have recorded. 
 
 Poor Georgia boys of a former generation must often 
 have been reminded in Sunday-school thai/Alexander 
 H. Stephens s knowledge of the Bible caused him to be 
 1 Georgia Scenes, "The Turn-Out, " p. 73. 
 
24 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 sent to college. In the summer of 1824, when he was 
 twelve years old, his father took him to the Sunday- 
 school at Powder Creek meeting-house. Previously 
 he had studied only the spelling-book and read a little 
 in the New Testament. He was now put into a class 
 that began with Genesis, and soon became deeply in 
 terested in the narrative, devoting himself to it Sun 
 day mornings and evenings and at night during the 
 week, reading by the light of a wood -fire long after 
 the other members of the household were asleep. He 
 did not stop with the lessons assigned, but advanced 
 far ahead of his class, going through Exodus and the 
 other Mosaic books, and finally reading the whole 
 of the Old Testament before the class with which he 
 started had finished the first book. In his account of 
 this work, he states that its result was no decided 
 religious impress, so far as he was aware, but it gave 
 him "a taste for reading, for history, for chronology, 7 
 and it brought him reputation which afterward bore 
 fruit. 
 
 In 1826, when he was fourteen years old, his father and 
 stepmother died within one week of each other and the 
 helpless orphans were separated. The children of the 
 second marriage found homes with their mother s rela 
 tions, while Alexander and his brother Aaron were taken 
 to the house of their uncle in the adjoining county of 
 Warren. Here the former was kept at school irregu 
 larly during two brief summer terms and wrestled 
 manfully with the problems in "the old Federal 
 Calculator." Being now nearly sixteen, he was ex 
 pected to seek permanent employment, and he was 
 disposed to become a merchant s clerk ; but his fame 
 as a Bible student in the local Sunday-school where, 
 
BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 25 
 
 young as he was, lie often taught a class, brought him 
 to the threshold of a wider career. The superintendent 
 offered to send him to the i i academy at Washington 
 in Wilkes County. After consultation with his uncle, 
 he accepted, and soon began enthusiastic work on the 
 Latin grammar and the Historice Sacrce. He boarded 
 with Eeverend Alexander Hamilton Webster, one of 
 the instructors, and became so strongly attached to 
 this kindly man, that he adopted the latter s middle 
 name and ever after signed himself as Alexander 
 Hamilton Stephens. / 
 
 The boy student did not know that he was being 
 closely observed by a number of persons, ministers, 
 Sunday-school superintendents and pious ladies con 
 nected with the Georgia Educational Society, the ob 
 ject of which organization was to afford means of 
 education to studious and serious-minded boys suited 
 for the ministerial career./ A formal proposition was 
 duly made to Alexander, and after a year at the 
 Washington school, where he advanced rapidly in 
 Latin and Greek, he was sent to Franklin College at 
 Athens, later the State university, and entered the 
 freshman class.*** He, however, expressed doubts as to 
 his fitness for the profession proposed, and was assured 
 that he would be left entirely free in his choice at the 
 proper time. Deciding later that he could not meet 
 the wishes of the society in this matter, he assumed 
 the debt and within a reasonable time refunded all the 
 money that had been expended on his education. 
 
 His college career, to which he looked back as the 
 happiest period of his life, began auspiciously and with 
 "a rare piece of good luck." The incident he thus 
 described was connected with his entry examination. 
 
26 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 In preparation, he had reviewed Ccesar and Virgil, but 
 Dr. Waddell saw fit to employ Cicero as a test of the 
 entering students knowledge of Latin, and began with 
 the first oration, of which Alexander had never read a 
 line, having studied only the four orations against 
 Catiline. Almost in despair, he borrowed a Cicero 
 from one of the boys and hurriedly struggled with the 
 contents of the opening pages, realizing at once that if 
 called on, he would not be able to do himself credit. 
 While thus anxiously engaged, the examination pro 
 gressed ; the second oration was read, and then the 
 third. He saw reason to hope that before his turn 
 came, the large class would have reached more familiar 
 ground, and so it was. When finally called on, it fell 
 to his lot to read the only part of the fourth oration 
 against Catiline with which he happened to be well ac 
 quainted " where Cicero refers to the two opinions as 
 to what should be done with the conspirators ; that of 
 Cato, who thought they should be executed ; and that 
 of Caesar, who opposed this sentence, contending that 
 the gods alone should take life." The young student 
 had been deeply interested in these views, because it 
 was the first time he had heard the right of capital 
 punishment called in question. Reassured and self- 
 possessed in a moment, he now read every word in the 
 paragraph correctly and answered satisfactorily all 
 queries relating to grammatical construction, thus 
 riveting every one s attention. Later he was similarly 
 fortunate in being called on to read a portion of the 
 Greek New Testament with which he was familiar, 
 and the impression made on the venerable educator, 
 Dr. Waddell, was an unusually favorable one. 
 jDuring the four years that followed Alexander 
 
BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 27 
 
 constantly won the praises of the professors, and he 
 graduated at the head of his class. He was evidently 
 popular also among the students. He states in his 
 account of his college life that he never had a quarrel, 
 which is remarkable, considering that he was slight 
 and girlish in appearance (weighing only seventy 
 pounds), and must have been known as a "good" 
 boy a reputation apt to result in persecution. Ap 
 parently he was in many respects the sort of boy who 
 is ever in danger of having his life made miserable at 
 a boarding school, yet he declared that his college days 
 were " unclouded, prosperous and happy ." Doubtless 
 his strength of character saved him. What he lacked 
 physically, was offset by his courage and superior 
 mentality. Later incidents abundantly testify to his 
 physical courage. He evidently attracted all classes 
 of students. / u My intimates and associates," he wrote 
 in after years, i i were a strange compound. Boys met 
 there [in his room] who never met nor recognized each 
 other elsewhere ; the most dissipated young men in 
 college would come to my room and there meet the 
 most ascetically pious. I was always liberal in my 
 boyish entertainments. I l treated 7 as much as any 
 other boy in college, and yet my average annual ex 
 penses were only two hundred and five dollars. My 
 entertainments were of an inexpensive kind, but were 
 relished by all. Tobacco was not on my list." 
 Georgia college boys of 1828-32 gathered in the room 
 of the future statesman and seem to have really had a 
 good time without the aid of tobacco, liquor, or cards 
 all of which he then outlawed, although in after 
 years he smoked and drank in moderation, and be 
 came a devotee of whist, often declaring that an 
 
28 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 intimate acquaintance with that game was as necessary 
 to a lawyer as a knowledge of Blackstone. 
 / A few years later, young Stephens, then a rising 
 lawyer and promising member of the State legislature, 
 was paying the expenses of his half-brother Linton at 
 the same college, and almost daily writing him long 
 letters which may properly be regarded as no incon 
 siderable part of the latter s education. He not only 
 pointed out the grammatical lapses in Lin ton s replies, 
 discoursed upon the various branches of college study, 
 sought to inspire enthusiasm for the classics, marveled 
 at " the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that 
 was Borne," but discussed all manner of topics, in 
 cluding religion, history, politics and literature. 
 These letters l are sophomoric and long-winded, but 
 highly intelligent and beautiful in spirit./He sends 
 his brother five times the amount of pocket money the 
 latter had asked to borrow ; urges him to " pin down 
 all interesting thoughts" and not to be too choice for 
 fear of writing none j moralizes on death which is 
 "but to take a journey"; entreats Linton to be 
 always studious, to loathe everything dishonorable, to 
 be ever dispassionate and wise, assuring him that 
 never will he be " in more need of cool thought, sober 
 reflection and good judgment than at present" ; in 
 structs him in the early history of American political 
 parties ; is reluctant to approve his critical objection 
 to the "cold conversational manner" in which the 
 praying minister had said, "Lord, we can hardly 
 generalize our sins, much less specify them" ; and 
 betrays the spirit of a maiden aunt in his excited com 
 ment on the recent "utterly disgraceful" conduct 
 1 Found in Waddell s Life of Linton Stephens. 
 
BOYHOOD AND COLLEGE LIFE 29 
 
 of some of Linton s associates, who, it appears, "got 
 drunk and threw i rocks ? at the venerable preceptor " 
 on the campus at Athens. 
 
 / Boys in and just out of college in those days seem 
 to have been more serious than the college men of 
 the present, and not merely on the religious side. 
 Their records show an interest in the products of the 
 classic age that would now appear to be out of the 
 question/ How many university students would now 
 write glowingly to another, as did Alexander H. 
 Stephens, of the deeds of Caesar, Epaminondas and 
 Xenophon, and of the philosophies of Plato, Socrates 
 and Aristotle? 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 LAWYER AND LEGISLATOR 
 
 / AFTER leaving college, young Stephens taught one 
 country school for four months, and another for a year 
 at a salary of $500, but soon wearied of the " monotony 
 of the repetition," and was sadly discontented..^ A 
 further difficulty was involved in the control of the 
 older pupils by so fragile and boyish-looking a teacher, 
 although courage to make a determined effort was not 
 lacking. It is related that on one occasion he restored 
 order by severely applying the rod to two " fully 
 grown" boys, either of whom was physically capable 
 of forcibly ejecting him from the room. /Broken in 
 health, he gave up teaching and, after three months 
 of recreation, began in 1834 to read law, at Crawford - 
 ville, in the new county of Taliaferro, within two 
 miles of his boyhood s home which formerly had been 
 included in the county of Wilkes. Believing that he 
 had neither time nor money to spare, he determined to 
 try for admission to practice at the next term of the 
 court three months later. He was frail of body but 
 invincible of will, and he drove himself like a draught- 
 horse, reading law night and day. At this period and 
 for years afterward, strangers, supposing him to be a 
 boy, addressed him as " sonny" or " buddy," his 
 slight form, white brow, bloodless cheeks and anxious 
 eye giving him the appearance of a youth of sixteen 
 prematurely aged by disease. The ambition of so 
 young a man to become a lawyer was the subject of 
 
LAWYEE AND LEGISLATOE 31 
 
 jest among those unacquainted with his powers of mind 
 and of will. 
 
 He accomplished his object within the brief period 
 named, for in his diary under date of July 22, 1834, 
 it is stated that he " was this day admitted an attorney- 
 at-law and released from a great burden of anxiety." 
 Although reading law with feverish energy during 
 those three and a half months, his diary and letters 
 show that other mental labor was accomplished, in 
 cluding a discussion of President Jackson s policies 
 and a carefully prepared written speech delivered on 
 the Fourth of July, in which he denied South Carolina s 
 right to nullify and remain in the Union, but vig 
 orously asserted the right of a State to secede if the 
 " compact of union " should be violated. He thought 
 a separation of the States need not be feared, but 
 contended that " whenever the general government 
 adopts the principle that it is the supreme power of 
 the land, that the States are subordinate mere 
 provinces that it can compel and enforce, and 
 commence to dispense its favors with a partial hand, 
 to tax and oppress a few States to the interest and 
 aggrandizement of the many, or otherwise transcend 
 its powers, then will the days of our republic be 
 numbered. For it is false philosophy to suppose that 
 these States can be kept together by force. . . . But 
 let It be the established policy of the government that 
 it has no power over a State withdrawing from the 
 Union when in her deliberate judgment the compact 
 has been broken, and the others will soon cease, or 
 rather never begin to oppress ; for the Union should 
 be an advantage to all but an injury to none." l /* 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 88. 
 
32 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 In these reflections of a young Georgian of twenty- 
 two years, we hear the echoes of the convulsion 
 through which the country had so recently passed, and 
 in which the growing bitterness of the strife over slav 
 ery was no little concerned, although the tariff was the 
 burning issue. The utterance of Stephens but mildly 
 suggests the temper of the time and of his section. 
 South Carolina, whose ordinance of nullification 
 brought the crisis, did not stand alone ; did not alone 
 complain that the protective system was ruining her 
 commerce, depressing her agriculture and making 
 bankrupts of her citizens, while the manufacturing 
 States of the North reaped the benefits. The other 
 Southern States, all agricultural, saw the matter in the 
 same light, and a practically united South awaited the 
 outcome. 1 True, there were unswerving unionists who 
 reminded their excited neighbors that they had not 
 been sparing in their censures when New England 
 threatened resistance to the Embargo. " There was 
 not a man among us," reads a speech of David Williams, 
 1 1 who did not pronounce the Hartford Convention a 
 traitorous association." But the clash of interests in 
 connection with the tariff, and the clash of sentiment in 
 regard to slavery, filled men with bodeful thoughts of 
 the future. The observant visiting foreigner, De 
 Tocqueville, prophesied an inevitable and necessary 
 separation of North and South. 1 Fortunately Clay, the 
 
 1 A " Kemonstrance " of the Georgia legislature, December 19, 
 1828, addressed to the manufacturing States of the North, which 
 "sordidly pursue their own interests " at the expense of the agri 
 cultural section south of them, threatens the "effectual remedy" 
 of nullification if the "unconstitutional measures are persevered 
 in." 
 
 2 De Tocqueville s Democracy in America, Oilman edition, pp. 
 496-511. 
 
LAWYEE AND LEGISLATOE 33 
 
 peacemaker, offered, and Calhoun accepted the propo 
 sition gradually to scale down all duties each two years, 
 so that in 1841 the bottom limit should be reached at 
 a twenty per cent, basis. But for this compromise, all 
 the indications point to a war or a peaceable dissolu 
 tion of the Union in 1832-3. 
 
 As a young lawyer, Stephens appears to have been 
 but little happier than as a school -teacher. "^"Constitu 
 tionally delicate, he was now worn by his excessive 
 labors of preparation for admission to the bar./ "My 
 weight is ninety-four pounds," he records in his diary, 
 " my height sixty-seven inches, my waist twenty inches 
 in circumference, and my whole appearance that of a 
 youth of seventeen. " Then and throughout life he 
 was practically a brain without a body, the physical 
 promptings so manifest in the average man seeming in 
 a sense to have been benumbed. It is recorded that 
 Stephens once or twice was tenderly interested for / 
 a temporary period in attractive members of the op 
 posite sex, and that he once stated that he did not marry 
 because he feared to become a helpless invalid. He* 
 had abundant cause for such fear, but the full story of 
 his life suggests the probability that an equally power- ? 
 ful reason was that his nature the product of an over- 
 developed brain in a frail and sickly body did not 
 often cry out for and imperiously demand any other 
 than platonic love. 
 
 To this may perhaps in part be traced the incurable 
 melancholy which evidently afflicted him through-/ 
 out life. Long after the period of youthful affecta 
 tions and deceptive ardors had passed, he wrote 
 to his half-brother, Linton, always his closest in 
 timate : "Life to me is desolate. For what object 
 
34 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 should I wish to live ? Weak and sickly, I was sent 
 into the world with a constitution barely able to sus 
 tain the vital functions. Health I have never known 
 and do not expect to know." In 1857, at the mature 
 age of forty -five, he wrote : " Few that see me and as 
 sociate with me daily have a conception of what tor 
 ture and misery I endure. No mortal has ever had 
 more reason to despair to curse his fate and die than 
 I have had." He appears to have said more than this 
 in a letter to his half-brother in 1858. " You may be 
 right," replied Linton Stephens, "in your opinion that 
 you have succeeded in keeping to yourself the secret 
 of a misery that has preyed upon you, and yet preys 
 upon you. . . . Your letter produced strange feel 
 ings in me. I can t define them very well, but they 
 are not pleasant feelings. I have burned the letter. 
 It has been rather a rare thing with me to burn one of 
 your letters. I have piles of them on hand ; one in a 
 similar strain with the last, but none like it or ap 
 proaching it in its energy, its despair, and yet its un 
 wavering resolution to bear on and despair on. You 
 must allude to something I don t understand. I don t 
 feel anything that might be called curiosity about it, 
 but I do feel a deep interest in it. I had thought that 
 no human heart had ever felt a woe or an agony with 
 out yearning to tell it to some sympathizing ear." * 
 Whether the full confidence thus invited was ever 
 given, the records do not show. 
 
 The unexplained miseries of Dean Swift are suggested. 
 
 Certainly Stephens s diary and his letters would indicate 
 
 that his soul was not less tortured. Physical weakness 
 
 and pain, apparently, were but the half of his bitter 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, pp. 340, 341. 
 
LAWYEE AND LEGISLATOR 35 
 
 cup. The more wonderful are the achievements of one 
 thus preyed upon in body and harrowed in mind. By 
 the power of an invincible will he rose above his mis 
 ery, found distraction in incessant labor, in the duties 
 of life, the companionship of friends, in the rewards of 
 honorable ambition, and in helping others to reach the 
 happiness which as it would appear he could not se 
 cure for himself. His works of charity and philan 
 thropy were constant and countless. He was lavish of 
 hospitality and gave to all who asked, even the unde 
 serving. His pity and sympathy for the unfortunate 
 were such as only a tried and travailing spirit could 
 feel. He provided a college education for more than_ 
 fifty young men and women. During his life he made 
 much money out of his law practice, and $75,000 
 from his historical writings alone but he spent it all, 
 chiefly for the benefit of others, and when he died his 
 body servant was reported to be richer than he. 
 f During his first year as a struggling young lawyer, 
 Stephens " lived on six dollars a month, made his own 
 fires, and blacked his own boots." 1 His fees for the 
 year amounted to four hundred dollars, but were notL +* | 
 promptly and perhaps never entirely paid. His first / 
 appearance as a member of the bar on the circuit wasV ^ 
 made at Washington in Wilkes County./Being with- j 
 out the means to take the journey thither in a desirable 
 manner, he walked ten miles in the cool of a July night, 
 carrying saddle-bags with a change of clothing. Ar 
 riving at his uncle s farm, he stopped there till dawn, 
 borrowed a horse and rode the remaining ten miles. 
 When he neared Washington, he dismounted, donned 
 fresh clothes, a suit of white cotton, and so was enabled 
 1 Cleveland s Letter* and Speeches of Stephens, p. 44. 
 
36 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 to present a fairly creditable appearance in the court 
 room. 
 
 One would expect so poor a young lawyer to have 
 an eye single to the patronage of the wealthy, but from 
 the outset he showed an eagerness to defend the desti 
 tute and helpless, who could pay him little or nothing 
 at all. Writing to Linton Stephens, June 2, 1842, he 
 says : "I was absent yesterday and the day before at 
 Warrenton attending the trial of a negro, charged 
 with the offense of assault and battery, with intent to 
 murder, on a white man. I defended him and he was 
 acquitted. 7 /It is stated that on several occasions 
 " where parties were likely to become victims of pop 
 ular prejudice," he volunteered his services and saved 
 the accused. /A slave woman in his own county was 
 about to be convicted of an attempt to murder by 
 poisoning, the evidence being very strong, though all 
 circumstantial. Becoming convinced of her inno 
 cence, Stephens volunteered in her defense, and, after 
 listening to his argument, the jury promptly rendered 
 a verdict of acquittal. 2 The authority just referred to, 
 who wrote in 1866, declares that those who heard it 
 will never forget a speech made by Stephens in Green 
 County in behalf of a woman, " poor, desolate and un 
 able to employ counsel." The offense is not men 
 tioned, but the judge is quoted as saying after her ac 
 quittal : "This was the only case tried before me 
 whilst on the bench of the Supreme Court in which my 
 admonitions were unheeded. 7 / Stephens s power over 
 ^^"a jury was not merely a matter of eloquence, but was 
 \ probably in part the result of the fact that early in hjs 
 
 1 Waddell s Life of Linton Stephens, p. 37. 
 
 2 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 235. 
 
 
LAWYER AND LEGISLATOR 37 
 
 career he became the idol of the common people. 
 Eobert Toombs was wont to say, according to report, 
 that Stephens had an advantage over all the lawyers in 
 Georgia in the fact that the jury would overlook sworn 
 testimony in order to give him his verdict. It was 
 said by some observers that Toombs " commanded " 
 while Stephens always " persuaded" the twelve men 
 whose votes were to decide the issue. 
 
 " This day," he wrote in his diary, September 10, 
 1834, " I was employed by Mr. Hilsman with the con 
 ditional fee of twenty dollars." This was one of Ste 
 phens s first cases, and it made his reputation, locally, 
 while he was still less than twenty-three years of age. 
 The case referred to the proper custody of a child whose 
 grandfather had virtually kidnapped it, on the ground 
 that its widowed mother had now married a man of 
 intemperate habits and that it was thus in unsafe 
 hands. Stephens defended the mother s rights with a 
 i i passionate eloquence which none of those present 
 could withstand." l After judgment was duly pro 
 nounced in her favor, a cousin of the defeated grand 
 father was reported as saying : " When that little fel 
 low began to argue that even among the beasts of the 
 forest the mother was, by the great law of nature, the 
 keeper of her offspring and would fight even to 
 death for their custody, and everybody [in the court 
 room] fell to crying, I knew that Isaac would have to 
 give up Martha Ann." 
 
 Stephens s entry in his diary, July 24, 1834, stating 
 
 that on that day he had been engaged for the first time 
 
 in his profession, is followed by a fervent prayer that 
 
 " a superintendent Providence may look propitiously " 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 97. 
 
38 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 upon him at the beginning of his career. The poverty- 
 ridden yet devout young man prayed "that He may, 
 though unseen, direct me in the right path in all 
 things, and in all my intercourse with mankind ; that 
 He may inspire me with a sound mind and quick ap 
 prehension, and that He may so overrule all my acts 
 and all my thoughts and my whole course, that a use 
 ful success may attend all my efforts ; that I may not 
 be a useless blank in creation and an injury to men ; 
 but that I may be of benefit yet to my fellow beings. " 
 Surely this prayer was in part answered within the 
 year. Alexander H. Stephens, stay of the weak and 
 helpless and friend of all the world, was once asked, 
 late in life, what he considered the highest compli 
 ment he had ever received, and gravely replied by 
 telling how a white-haired old negro at Crawfordville, 
 being asked by a visitor if he knew the master of 
 "Liberty Hall," said: "Yassuh, I knows Mars 
 Aleck I knows him mighty well ; he s kinder to 
 dawgs 7 n other mens is to people." 
 
 A former law student under Stephens, Mr. Z. I. 
 Fitzpatrick, of Godfrey, Ga., from whom the fore 
 going anecdote was received, has also furnished the 
 following story, giving as his authority reputable wit 
 nesses of the events recounted : Early in the fifties a 
 Georgia college boy named Willet killed a classmate 
 named James with a pocket knife. The provocation 
 is not mentioned, but the fact that James belonged 
 to a rich and powerful family and Willet was poor 
 and friendless, taken in connection with the part 
 played by Stephens at the trial, indicates pretty clearly 
 that the tragedy resulted from the contemptuous treat 
 ment of alleged "poor white trash" by an overbear- 
 
LAWYER AND LEGISLATOR 39 
 
 ing young aristocrat. The wealthy father and uncles 
 of James " vowed to have Willet hung 77 and employed 
 the most powerful lawyers of the State, including 
 T. R. R. Cobb, Judge Cone and the famed Robert 
 Toombs. Stephens was sought also, but he refused to 
 be engaged for the prosecution. The Willets, who 
 had no money to pay lawyers, great or small, then 
 timidly asked him to defend their boy, and he prom 
 ised to do so. " When Cone spoke, 7 our informant 
 writes, " all said : * It is very bad for Willet. 7 When 
 Cobb spoke, all said : * Willet will be hung. And 
 when the awful lion, Toombs, roared and thundered 
 against poor Willet, all said : i We see the rope 
 around his neck ! " Stephens spoke four hours " and 
 had jurors, witnesses and spectators now shouting 
 with joy and now weeping with pity and sympathy." 
 He pointed to the powerful James family, their wealth 
 and influence, their great lawyers and great lawyers 
 fees, on the one hand ; and on the other to the poor 
 Willets, helpless, unable to employ counsel in defense 
 of their son who in his hot, reckless youth had struck 
 out madly against individual persecution and class 
 wrong. The orator told the Bible story of the slayer 
 fleeing to the City of Refuge with blood-hunting 
 avengers howling at his heels, and " then, with a burst 
 of eloquence said : i Gentlemen of the jury, you are 
 poor Willet 7 s City of Refuge. Here he comes in his 
 poverty and helplessness, running, fleeing for his very 
 life, pursued by relentless enemies in the form of 
 wealthy prosecutors and powerful lawyers. We ask 
 you to receive him and protect him. " The jury 
 went out, wiping their eyes, and returned in ten min 
 utes with a verdict of not guilty. 
 
40 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 By this time Stephens s powers had been displayed 
 in a wider field, and even those who had heard the 
 greatest orators of the time, including Clay, Calhoun 
 and Webster, rendered him their tribute. On 
 February 2, 1848, when Lincoln and Stephens were 
 in Congress together, both representing the Whig 
 party, and were aged thirty-nine and thirty-six years 
 respectively, the former wrote to his law partner in 
 Springfield, 111. : " I take up my pen to tell you 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." 
 
 ^ Among the reasons for Stephens s immediate and 
 great success at the bar, according to one authority, 2 
 writing in 1866, was the fixed rule he adopted of never 
 taking a case until it was thoroughly examined and 
 he was satisfied that the suitor applying for redress 
 was entitled to it under the law. In the matter of 
 capital offenses, his usual course was not to appear 
 against the accused, and in no case did he ever consent 
 to do so unless fully convinced not only of guilt 
 but of the absence of any extenuating circum 
 stances. 
 
 It was inevitable in those days that every young 
 lawyer of marked ability should seek or be induced 
 to accept political office. Stephens was no exception. 
 In 1836 he was nominated for the lower branch of the 
 General Assembly of Georgia on a State rights ticket. 
 He was violently opposed because of his criticism of 
 
 1 Nicolay s Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 77. 
 9 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 234. 
 
LAWYEE AND LEGISLATOK 41 
 
 the doctrine of nullification, which was almost uni 
 versally approved in Taliaferro County, and because 
 of his vigorous objection to the formation of a vigilance 
 committee to punish persons found circulating in 
 cendiary documents among the slaves with a view of 
 stirring them up to discontent and revolt. l 
 
 As to nullification, he explained that** a State had 
 every right to withdraw from the Union if she be 
 lieved the Federal compact had been violated, but 
 had no right to remain in the Union and refuse to 
 obey the Federal statutes." As regards the obnoxious 
 agents of the Northern Abolitionists, he appealed to 
 the people from the stump to take legal steps only 
 against them ; as the people valued liberty, let them 
 uphold the supremacy of the law. He supported both 
 positions so well and was so persuasive that he was 
 elected by " a vote more than double that of his 
 highest competitor. 77 Though an invalid during the 
 greater part of the session, he acquitted himself with 
 much credit and was returned without opposition in 
 1837. So poor was his physical condition in the 
 following year that he was compelled to resign all 
 business and take a sea voyage to Boston, returning 
 southward by way of New York City, Saratoga and 
 Green Briar White Sulphur Springs. In spite of con 
 tinuing ill health, he was sent back to the legislature 
 in 1838, 1839, and 1840. In 1841 he declined a 
 nomination, devoting himself entirely to his lucrative 
 law practice until he was elected to the State Senate 
 in 1842. During his long absence on the Northern 
 trip referred to, his business was looked after by Eobert 
 Toombs, of Washington, Ga. 
 
 1 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 50. 
 
42 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 The friendship of the invalid and the robust, 
 u leonine 7 fellow lawyer was from the outset remark 
 able for fidelity and generosity on both sides. Stephens 
 even refused to become a candidate for the United 
 States Senate in opposition to his friend and neighbor 
 Toombs. In 1851 when the two men were struggling 
 shoulder to shoulder to stem the tide of disunion in 
 Georgia, Toombs publicly declared that Stephens 
 " carried more brains and more soul for the least flesh 
 than any man God Almighty ever made." It has 
 been suggested, and seems not unlikely, that the 
 intellect of Stephens dominated that of Toombs until 
 the crisis of secession, when for the first time they 
 parted company and pursued opposite policies. 
 
 As has been noted, t ; Stephens began his public 
 career in 1836 as candidate for the legislature on the 
 State rights ticket, and this was his leading political 
 principle throughout life. Although he acted with the 
 Whigs for years, he was always nearer to the Demo 
 crats in this particular. He did not, however, join 
 the latter until the disintegration of the Whig party, 
 the intensity of the sectional struggle over slavery 
 virtually forcing the great majority of Southern men 
 into one organization. His early political tendencies 
 are clearly shown in the comment of later years on the 
 Presidential campaign of 1840. "I was opposed," 
 he said, "to the administration of Van Buren and 
 also to the support of Harrison. I wanted the State 
 rights party of Georgia to stand by the nomination 
 of George M. Troup 1 which I had considerably^ con- 
 
 1 As governor of Georgia, 1823-27, Troup had vigorously as 
 serted State sovereignty and defied John Quincy Adams s ad 
 ministration. 
 
! 
 
 LAWYER AND LEGISLATOR 43 
 
 tributed in getting the men of that party in the /* 
 legislature of 1839 to make. But in the summer of 
 1840 a convention of that party was held at Milledge- 
 ville, and withdrew the nomination of Troup and 
 declared for Harrison. I was not in the convention. 
 I acquiesced, though I thought it bad policy. There 
 were but two candidates in the field, Harrison and 
 Van Buren. I preferred Harrison as a choice of evils. 
 Indeed, the greatest objection I had to Harrison s 
 nomination was the political alliances it would bring 
 about. Him I considered sound enough on all 
 political and constitutional questions ; but his sup 
 porters generally at the North were the old Centralists 
 and Consolidationists, known in 1800 as Federalists." 
 Nevertheless, Stephens seems to have had no love 
 for the representatives of the party of Thomas Jeffer 
 son. As late as 1855, in a letter from Washington, he 
 speaks of the Democrats from the South as i i generally 
 a good-for-nothing set," 1 and not until 1848 does he 
 appear to have begun to appreciate Calhoun s powers 
 at their true value. His attitude was not altogether un 
 like that of his Whig colleague, Toombs, who once re 
 marked to Bishop Pierce that they were engaged in 
 pretty much the same business one was fighting the 
 devil and the other the Democrats. 2 Stephens was 
 independent enough to change parties when he thought 
 it desirable, but during his earlier career he was a fairly 
 good partisan. In a letter written in 1843 he speaks 
 of meeting in Dade County some of the " cleverest 
 people" in Georgia, " though they are Democrats." 
 In like manner Miss Yarina Howell, of Mississippi, 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 291. 
 
 2 Pleasant A. Stovall, Life of Robert Toomla, p. 10. 
 
44 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 writing in 1844 of Jefferson Davis, whom she married 
 within a year, is quoted : " Would you believe it, he 
 is refined and cultivated, and yet he is a Democrat ! " 
 Those were the days when haughty Whigs of very 
 tender years hurled at the equally contemptuous sons 
 of Georgia Democrats this crushing gBarge : 
 
 " Whigs 
 Eat figs. 
 Democrats 
 Eat dead rats ! 
 
 And even adult Whigs were wont to describe the 
 Democrats as the "wool hat boys," or, as it would 
 now be expressed, "the unwashed." It does not ap 
 pear, however, that in the South except in certain 
 localities respectability and social position were un 
 equally divided between the two parties. 
 
 Stephens was stumping Dade County as a candidate 
 for Congress when he wrote the letter referred to 
 above, in which he also said : " Last year our [Whig] 
 ticket got but one vote in the county this year I 
 think I shall get at least fbjrty."; In this year, 1843, a 
 vacancy had occurred in the Congressional representa 
 tion, and to fill it James H. Starke was nominated by 
 the Democrats and Alexander H. Stephens by the 
 Whigs. The Democratic party was the stronger and 
 Stephens found it necessary to overcome a majority of 
 about three thousand, which he olid after an exciting 
 and exhausting campaign full of amusing features. 
 The frail boyish-looking candidate rode or drove long 
 distances in all weathers and delivered speech after 
 speech, facing older and more experienced orators 
 with a pluck for which there is scarcely a parallel. 
 
LAWYEE AND LEGISLATOR 45 
 
 After he had vanquished all his minor opponents, 
 Judge Walter T. Colquitt, then regarded as the ablest 
 stump speaker in the State, was pitted against him. 
 Colquitt was discomfited in the midst of his attack 
 by Stephens s production of records showing that the 
 former had once held precisely the position for which 
 he was now censuring the latter that it was unneces 
 sary for Georgia to pension her disabled veterans of 
 the Indian wars inasmuch as the central government 
 was itself performing this duty.* It was related by 
 Georgians of the past generation that in the beginning 
 of this joint debate Judge Colquitt contemptuously re 
 ferred to the undersize and insignificant appearance of 
 a youthful upstart who dared to face his betters. " I 
 could swallow him whole and never know the differ 
 ence," he said. "Yes," quickly retorted Stephens, 
 " and if you did there would be more brains in your 
 belly than there ever will be in your head ! " getting 
 the laugh on his antagonist and gaining an immediate 
 advantage, for such lively, if questionable, passages at 
 arms were highly relished by the sovereign voter of 
 that period, j Stephens s quickness of wit is not ren 
 dered any less marked by the fact that his favorite 
 Scott had long before caused the dwarf in Kenil- 
 worth to make virtually the same retort to a gibing 
 persecutor. He had probably read the novel several 
 years previous to this time, as his early letters contain 
 admiring references to Sir Walter s works. 
 
 The free and easy customs on the Georgia hustings in 
 those days may be further illustrated by an anecdote re 
 lated of one of Stephens s arduous campaigns after he 
 became a Democrat. More than once he felt compelled 
 to stimulate his feeble and exhausted frame with 
 
46 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 whiskey while on the stump, drinking from a small 
 bottle in the presence of his approving audience with 
 the smiling remark: " This is pure Democracy- 
 pure Jeffersonian Democracy. 77 Once while speaking 
 to serenaders from his front door after his election he 
 said : l Gentlemen, I am charged with being a Bour 
 bon. If you will come with me to my dining-room I 
 will introduce you to the only Bourbon I know any 
 thing about. 7 Needless to say, this was greeted with 
 applause and laughter, followed by a rush for the din 
 ing-room. 
 
 Stephens took life and his own work very seriously 
 on the wJiolo, but he was not without a saving sense of 
 humor which sometimes prompted him to tell stories 
 at his own expense/ In his letters of the war period 
 he now and again noted with amusement the surprise 
 and disappointment involuntarily expressed by per 
 sons on seeing the Yice-President of the Confederacy 
 for the first time. After one of his speeches in the 
 Congressional campaign of 1843, according to his own 
 account, an old man bluntly remarked to him : * l Well, 
 if I had been put in this road to shoot a smart man, 
 you would have passed safe, sure." Another old man, 
 after a bystander had pointed Stephens out to him, 
 lifted his hands in astonishment, exclaiming, "Good 
 Lord ! " A strange lady addressed him as " buddy " 
 and urged him to go to hear the speech of that 
 "smart man," Stephens. The landlady of a way 
 side inn, entering the public room where he rested 
 exhausted in the one easy chair, while another man 
 stood, said to him reprovingly : " My son, give the 
 gentleman this seat." To be mistaken for a boy was 
 almost a daily occurrence, but before the campaign 
 
LAWYEB AM) LEGISLATOE 47 
 
 was over the "boy" of thirty -one was known as the 
 best-informed man in the Georgia Whig party on the 
 issues of the day, as well as on the history and theory 
 of the government of his country, and he at once be 
 came one of that party s acknowledged leaders. 
 The Georgia Journal, of October 24, 1843, re 
 joicing over the victory, acknowledges in behalf of 
 the Whigs of the State a debt of gratitude to Stephens 
 "for the arduous and able service he rendered to the 
 cause, of which he is so noble an advocate." 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 STEPHENS IN CONGRESS 
 
 STEPHENS s first speech in the House of Represent 
 atives was remarkable in that it was virtually an ar 
 gument against the constitutionality of his own elec 
 tion. The Georgia legislature had refused to comply 
 with the requirement of Congress that the State be di 
 vided into Congressional districts on the ground that 
 such a requirement violated that clause in the Constitu 
 tion which reserved to the States the right to decide 
 upon " the times, places and manner of holding elec 
 tions for senators and representatives. 7 Stephens and 
 the other representatives from Georgia were, therefore, 
 elected not by the district system but on the " general 
 ticket." He preferred the district system, thought the 
 majority of Georgians did also, and wished to bring 
 the question up. While emphatically expressing his 
 opposition to any invasion by the Federal government 
 of the rights of the States, he contended that Congress 
 possessed the power under the Constitution of regulat 
 ing such elections and that the repudiated law was a 
 proper exercise of that power. The House voted, 
 however, that the " general ticket " election was legal 
 and the Georgia members were seated, as Stephens ex 
 pected. But his object was attained when in the fol 
 lowing year Georgia voluntarily changed to the dis 
 trict system, the Whigs being careful to see to it that 
 the adjoining counties of Taliaferro and Wilkes were 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGEESS 49 
 
 incorporated in different districts, so that both Alex 
 ander Stephens and Robert Toombs could represent 
 the State in Congress. 
 
 The great questions before the/ country at this 
 period were " the tariff and Texas, /as Stephens noted 
 in a letter written in April, 1844, although there was 
 scarcely a year between the Missouri Compromise of 
 1820 and the election of Lincoln in 1860 when the 
 interminable and strife-breeding question of slavery 
 dropped entirely out of sight. By the terms of Henry 
 Clay s Compromise of 1833, which checked the prob 
 able armed resistance of nullifying South Carolina, 
 all the duties in excess of twenty per cent., were 
 through a gradual scaling down, to be abolished in 
 ten years. But in 1842, the protectionists having 
 gained strength, a bill was passed openly violating 
 this agreement, and was vetoed by President Tyler. 
 A second bill of a similar character was also vetoed, 
 but a third, the Whig tariff of 1842, which was less 
 objectionable, received the President s signature. The 
 protectionists thus regained a part of their lost ground, 
 but the tariff of 1846, looked at from our present view 
 point, was so moderate as to provide for approximately 
 free trade conditions. Under this " free trade tariff," 
 as James G. Blaine has described it, the country 
 became very prosperous and there was no disposition 
 to interfere with it even when the Democrats after 
 1852 came into almost undisputed control of the 
 government. " The principle embraced in the tariff 
 of 1846," notes Blaine, 1 " seemed for the time so en 
 tirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it 
 ceased, not only among the people, but among the 
 1 James G. Elaine s Twenty Year of Congress, p. 196. 
 
50 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 protection economists and even among the manu 
 facturers to a very large extent. So general was the 
 acquiescence that in 1856 a protective tariff was not 
 even suggested or reform hinted by any one of the 
 three parties which presented Presidential candidates. 
 Under the circumstances the South Carolinians must 
 have looked back upon their nullification measure of 
 1832 with great satisfaction, inasmuch as that violent 
 protest led to the changed conditions which they so 
 much desired and which were now generally ap 
 proved. 
 
 ./ The annexation of Texas, although in itself a 
 temporary issue compared with the tariff, was 
 associated with the slavery question, and therefore 
 caused a more profound disturbance^* On the 13th of 
 January, 1845, Milton Brown, a Whig representative 
 from Tennessee, after consulting with Alexander H. 
 Stephens 1 and forming a definite policy, introduced 
 a series of joint resolutions in the House for the ad 
 mission of Texas. Several propositions had been 
 offered in the committee of the whole and rejected, 
 but Stephens and seven other Whigs voted for the 
 Brown proposal and it was carried. In a statement 
 to his constituents on February 11, 1845, Stephens 
 said that if he and the seven other Whigs had voted 
 differently in the committee this latter would likewise 
 have been rejected. " It was not until the party so 
 largely in the majority found that they could do noth 
 ing with their favorite scheme that they consented, or 
 rather were reluctantly forced, to take the Whig 
 measure or none." This measure, satisfactory to and 
 proposed by Southern Whigs, provided for the ad- 
 1 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 71. 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGEESS 51 
 
 /mission of Texas as a State without the assumption of 
 - her debt and with a settlement of the slavery question 
 in accordance with the Missouri Compromise line. 
 Not more than four new States were to be formed out 
 of the great Texas domain at any future time, and in 
 those to the south of 36 30 slavery was to be optional 
 with the people, while in such as should lie north of 
 that line it should be prohibited. 
 
 In the agreement of 1820 the pro-slavery South had 
 compromised for the sake of peace and the anti- 
 slavery North had therefore won a victory. The latter 
 section, at least, would naturally be expected to up 
 hold the agreement firmly, and at a later period many 
 seemed to regard the Missouri Compromise as virtually 
 a part of the Constitution and inviolable. Stephen A. 
 Douglas, for example, said it had been " canonized in 
 the hearts of the American people " and described it 
 as " a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever 
 be reckless enough to disturb. 77 1 But it is evident 
 from the records that neither section showed a willing 
 ness to abide by it except when policy dictated that 
 course. Thus we find that the plan for the annexation 
 of Texas, offered by the Whig South and strictly in 
 agreement with the " canonized 7 Missouri Com 
 promise, aroused violent opposition in the anti-slavery 
 section. 
 
 In Massachusetts the opposition took the form of a 
 series of threatening resolutions passed by the legisla 
 ture and approved by the governor. On March 16, 
 1843, the Democratic legislature of that State resolved 
 "that under no circumstances whatever can the people 
 of Massachusetts regard the proposition to admit Texas 
 1 Nicolay and Hay, Life of Lincoln, Vol. I, p. 351. 
 
52 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 into the Union in any other light than as dangerous 
 to its continuance in peace, in prosperity, and in the 
 enjoyment of those blessings which it is the object of 
 a free government to secure." l Again on March 15, 
 1844, the legislature, then with a Whig majority, re 
 solved : 
 
 . . . "That the project of the annexation of 
 Texas, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to 
 drive these States [of New England] into a dissolution 
 of the Union." 8 
 
 The following is an extract from further resolutions, 
 passed on February 22, 1845, which the governor of 
 the State approved : 
 
 "Resolved, . . . And as the powers of legisla 
 tion, granted in the Constitution of the United States 
 to Congress, do not embrace a case of the admission of 
 a foreign State or foreign territory, by legislation into 
 the Union, such an act of admission would have no 
 binding force whatever on the people of Massachu 
 setts." 3 
 
 In further resolutions of the same series it was de 
 clared that the people of Massachusetts were " de 
 termined to submit to undelegated powers in no 
 body of men on earth," and would u never con 
 sent to the use of the powers reserved to themselves 
 to admit Texas, or any other State or territory now 
 without the Union, on any basis than the perfect 
 equality of freemen" ; also that "while slavery or 
 slave representation forms any part of the claims or 
 
 1 Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts, Ch. 20, p. 68. 
 z lbid., Ch. 87, pp. 319-320. 
 3 Ibid., Ch, 39, pp. 558-599. 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGBESS 53 
 
 conditions of admission, Texas, with their consent, 
 can never be admitted. " Even after the Federal 
 government had deliberately acted and the argument 
 was closed, there were further resolutions on March, 
 26, 1845, approved by the governor, which read in 
 part as follows : 
 
 "Resolved, That Massachusetts hereby refuses to 
 acknowledge the act of the government of the United 
 States, authorizing the admission of Texas, as a legal 
 act, in any way binding her from using her utmost 
 exertions in cooperation with other States, by every 
 lawful and constitutional measure [!], to annul its 
 conditions and defeat its accomplishment." * 
 
 Massachusetts wisely concluded, however, that even 
 to remain in a Federal republic containing a Texas 
 largely surrendered to slavery was better than to incur 
 the hazards of "a dissolution of the Union" and in 
 1848 gave her vote for President Zachary Taylor 
 who was a slave-holder as well as a military hero. 
 
 Writing of these interesting resolutions in 1866, 
 George Lunt, 2 who had formerly been United States 
 District Attorney for Massachusetts, receiving ap 
 pointment through Daniel Webster, remarks that " the 
 idea of the dissolution of the Union, 7 as a consequence 
 of the annexation of Texas, i i was contemplated by the 
 legislative assembly of Massachusetts, and was held 
 out by it as a menace to the general government to 
 prevent the consummation of the project." He says 
 further that "it affords perhaps one of the most em 
 phatic examples possible of the assertion of State 
 rights. > The principle proclaimed was unquestionably 
 
 1 Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts, Ch. 131, pp. 651-653. 
 3 The Origin of the Late War, pp. 147-150. 
 
54 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 the same as that on which the Southern States based 
 their action in 1860-1, fifteen years later. "It is 
 quite evident, " admits Lunt, " that they [the Massa 
 chusetts resolutions referred to] enunciated the assertion 
 of the right of nullification and secession j and that, 
 if followed out to their legitimate results, they could 
 have received their practical application only on the 
 peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must doctrine 
 of a former representative of the State in Congress." 1 
 
 Of the long struggle over the slavery question, it 
 may be justly said that the Nortlywas morally right as 
 to the general principle upheld, while the South was 
 legally and constitutionally rightV- persuading itself, 
 moreover, that it was morally riglit as well, and find 
 ing at last abundant cause for accusing the North of 
 broken faith. The Abolitionists who openly repudi 
 ated the Constitution of their country and scorned 
 compromise were more consistent and more honest 
 than those Northern politicians who secretly aimed at 
 the same results while still professing allegiance to a 
 slavery -protecting Constitution. 
 
 In the earlier times the South itself even more 
 than the North of the same period, apparently was 
 troubled with misgivings as to the desirability and 
 morality of the slavery institution. Hinton Eowan 
 Helper, of North Carolina, Cassius M. Clay, of Ken 
 tucky, and Moncure D. Conway, of Virginia, were not 
 the first Southern men who earnestly desired the abo- 
 
 1 The reference is to Josiah Quincy s declaration in Congress 
 in 1811 that the admission of Louisiana as a State would be 
 tantamount to " a dissolution of the Union," freeing the States 
 from their obligations ; and that in such an event, " as it will be 
 the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to pre 
 pare for separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must." 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGBESS 55 
 
 lition of slavery. There was strong protest from the 
 outset, not only from individuals but from State au 
 thorities. Oglethorpe regarded slavery as " a horrid 
 crime," and the institution was prohibited in Georgia 
 from 1735 until 1749. In 1760 South Carolina passed 
 an act prohibiting the further importation of negro 
 slaves, but it was rejected by the British crown, the gov 
 ernor of the colony was reprimanded, and the governors 
 of all the colonies were warned not to countenance 
 such legislation. In 1770 the British king refused to 
 take notice of the petition of the Virginia Assembly 
 which earnestly objected to the importation of slaves 
 as "a trade of great inhumanity and dangerous to the 
 very existence of His Majesty s American dominions." 
 In 1713 a question arose in the English Council as to 
 what was the true legal character of the negroes 
 which British slave traders were transporting to Amer 
 ican shores with so much profit, and this question was 
 submitted by the Crown Council to the twelve judges 
 of England whose answer was: "We do humbly 
 certify our opinion that negroes are merchandise." 
 It was useless for any American colony or individual 
 to attempt to stop or check a trade that was not only 
 immensely profitable but legal. After the independ 
 ence of the colonies was achieved and the Union was 
 formed, the choice was left with the Americans them 
 selves, but now slave labor was depended on in the 
 
 1 In his speech in the United States Senate on March 11, 1858, 
 Judah P. Benjamin cited this interesting fact in order to show that 
 negro slavery was the common law of the thirteen Colonies at the 
 time they became independent and before the Constitution recog 
 nized the institution, and was not, therefore, the mere " creature of 
 the statute law of the several States where it is established [in 
 1858]," as had been recklessly asserted. 
 
56 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 South and New England ship owners were still making 
 fortunes out of the traffic in negroes. As late as 1770 
 Ehode Island alone had 150 vessels in the trade. 1 
 "The evils of slavery," pointedly observed Governor 
 Wilson, of South Carolina, in his message of Decem 
 ber 1, 1824, " have been visited upon us by the 
 cupidity of those who are now the champions of uni 
 versal emancipation." 2 Even if general agreement 
 had been possible the problem of the disposal of the 
 vast number of liberated slaves would still have called 
 for solution. 
 
 The outlook was not encouraging, yet abolition seems 
 to have been desired by nearly all the leading Southern 
 statesmen. Washington, although a slaveholder until 
 his death, wrote to Eobert Morris, in 1786, that 
 "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely 
 than I do to see some plan adopted for the abolition of 
 slavery." Henry Laurens said he "abhorred" the 
 system. George Mason described it as "an infernal 
 traffic" which had originated "in the avarice of 
 British merchants." Patrick Henry said it was as 
 "repugnant to humanity" as it was "inconsistent 
 with the Bible and destructive of liberty," and he de 
 plored its i fatal effects. ? Madison noted that i i where 
 slavery exists the Eepublican theory becomes still 
 more fallacious." 3 Monroe declared that the "evil" 
 of slavery had been "prejudicial to all the States in 
 which it has existed. John Eandolph, of Eoanoke, in 
 his will gave his slaves i i their freedom to which my 
 conscience tells me they are justly entitled." * Gov- 
 
 1 John R. Spears, The American Slave Trade, p. 19. 
 Niles s Register, XXVII, pp. 263, 264. 
 
 3 The Federalist, No. 39. 
 
 4 Hinton R. Helper, The Impending Crisis, p. 97. 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGRESS 57 
 
 ernor Thomas M. Randolph, Peyton Randolph and Ed 
 mund Randolph, all spoke against the institution. 
 The Virginia Society for the Abolition of Slavery, or 
 ganized in 1791, declared the system to be an " outra 
 geous violation of one of the most essential rights of 
 human nature and utterly repugnant to the precepts of 
 the Gospel. " In 1832 Governor McDowell, of Vir 
 ginia, described slavery as " a curse as great upon 
 him who inflicts it as upon him who suffers it." In 
 the same year the Richmond Enquirer solemnly de 
 clared : "God only knows what is the part of wise 
 men to do on this appalling subject. The disease 
 is deep-seated ; it is at the heart s core ; it is consum 
 ing our vitals. What is to be done I O God ! we do 
 not know; but something must be done." This was 
 during the profound agitation which resulted in a bill 
 for the gradual emancipation of all the slaves in Vir 
 ginia. The members of the legislature "tied" on 
 this measure, and the chairman, though he favored it, 
 cast his deciding vote against it solely on the ground 
 that a bill of such great importance should not pass 
 unless supported by a clear majority. Benjamin 
 Lundy s Genius of Universal Emancipation, published 
 in Baltimore at the time, is cited as authority for the 
 statement that in 1827 there were one hundred and six 
 anti-slavery societies in the Southern and twenty-four 
 in the Northern States, and Birney s Life of Birney&s 
 authority for the statement that two thousand slaves 
 were set free in North Carolina in 1824-6. But all the 
 Southern anti-slavery societies had disappeared by 1839 
 as a result of the sectional alignment on the question, 
 the aggressive activities of the Northern Abolitionists 
 and such related events as the Nat Turner slave in- 
 
58 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 surrection of 1832 with its massacre of sixty-one 
 innocent women and children at Southampton, Va. 
 Writing in 1836, the visiting English authoress, Harriet 
 Martineau, said : i Among the many hundreds of 
 persons in the slave States, with whom I conversed on 
 the subject of slavery, I met with only one who defended 
 the institution altogether. All the rest who vindicated 
 its existence, did so on the ground of the impossibility 
 of doing it away." 
 
 And what of Thomas Jefferson, who had announced 
 the theory, so inconsistent with the institution of 
 slavery, that all men are endowed from birth with the 
 inalienable right of individual liberty f As far back 
 as 1774 he said before the Virginia convention of that 
 year : "The abolition of slavery is the greatest object 
 of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily 
 introduced in their infant state) 7 The South of 
 Calhoun, Davis, Toombs, and Stephens could not ap 
 peal in behalf of the justice of slavery to the early 
 patriots of Virginia, the Carolinas or Georgia. At a 
 later time Jefferson urged the adoption of some scheme 
 of deportation, as did Henry Clay, but could see no 
 immediate solution of the problem, although with 
 clear vision and gloomy forebodings he apprehended 
 the coming of the disastrous sectional division on the 
 subject. " There is not a man on earth, " he declared, 
 " who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us 
 from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. 
 The cession of that kind of property, for so it is mis 
 named, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a 
 second thought, if in that way a general emancipation 
 and expatriation could be effected ; and gradually and 
 with due sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGRESS 59 
 
 we have the wolf by the ears and can neither hold him 
 nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale and 
 self-preservation in the other." l Yet he took the 
 State rights position that Congress had no authority to 
 limit the area of slavery, this being " the exclusive 
 right of every State." 
 
 By 1820 the dreaded sectional alignment had come. 
 The great State of New York had abolished slavery in 
 1817, although the act was not made operative until 
 1827. The North had let the " wolf" go, but it was 
 then only a little wolf 2 and excited no fear ; the South, 
 with the bulk of the blacks within its borders, had 
 the great wolf by the ears, and, believing with 
 Jefferson that it could not " safely let him go," took 
 measures to hold him fast. The development of a 
 great and profitable industry by means of slave labor 
 and the cotton gin also exerted an inevitable influence 
 on the public mind in the States producing that staple. 
 
 1 Jefferson s Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 159. 
 
 2 The size of the " wolf " in the North appears to have been con 
 siderable forty years earlier, at the time the Constitution was 
 framed and made to provide representation in Congress based on 
 three-fifths of the slave population an arrangement proposed by 
 James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, voted for by all the States except 
 New Jersey and Delaware (Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, pp. 168-169), 
 and approved by Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 54, where he 
 says, The Federal Constitution decides with great propriety on the 
 case of our slaves when it views them in the mixed character of 
 persons and property, persons to be protected in life and limb and 
 property to be bought and sold. "This," he adds, "is, in fact, 
 their true character." That the "wolf " was much greater in the 
 North of 1787 appears from the mention in Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, 
 p. 194, of an estimate submitted by General Bloomfield giving New 
 Hampshire 102,000 slaves, New Jersey 145,000, and Virginia 300,000. 
 A later estimate published in Niles s Register in 1811 (Vol. I, pp. 
 264-5), gives New Hampshire in 1790 only 158 slaves, New Jersey 
 11,423, New York 21,324, and Georgia 29,264. Apparently a single 
 generation witnessed the transfer of the bulk of the Northern slaves 
 to Southern soil whereon they could be more profitably employed. 
 
60 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 While Northern opinion, now finally set free, con 
 tinually advanced toward opposition to slavery on 
 American soil, dominant Southern opinion moved 
 steadily away from the abolition sentiment of Jefferson, 
 Madison, Monroe, the Eandolphs, and the early 
 Southern anti-slavery societies. Southern statesmen 
 became apologists and then advocates. Bishops and 
 churchmen discovered that slavery was an institution 
 of Divine origin, pointing out that the people of Israel 
 had received laws for its regulation through Moses, 
 apparently not observing that polygamy was similarly 
 sanctioned by the ancient customs of the same people. 
 Legislation naturally followed in some of the States, 
 providing for a stronger hold on the wolf that could 
 not be safely let go. He might be trained in all the 
 mechanic arts and be taught the Christian religion, 
 but he must not learn to read lest he know too much 
 and tend to develop a restive and alarming discontent. 
 Yet the negro s situation, all things considered, was 
 on the whole less hard than this would seem to imply ; 
 for the mechanic arts, the Christian religion, and as 
 sociation with the Anglo-Saxon race, had been slowly 
 transforming savages into civilized men. He was 
 better off than his grandfather had been in Africa, for 
 in most cases the latter had been the victim of a system 
 of hereditary slavery reaching back to remote an 
 tiquity. Mungo Park, who in 1795-7 journeyed a 
 thousand miles inland from the western coast, 
 testified that " throughout Africa" the " slaves are 
 nearly in the proportion of three to one to the free 
 men" ; that the negroes " purchased by Europeans 
 on the coast are chiefly of this [enslaved] description " ; 
 that there were slaves of two kinds, those born of slave 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGBESS 61 
 
 mothers and those captured in war, and that the former 
 were "by far the most numerous, " for even the 
 captives taken in war "are generally" slaves ; and, 
 finally, that " the slatees who purchase slaves in the 
 interior countries and carry them down to the coast 
 for sale constantly prefer such as have been in that 
 condition of life from their infancy, well knowing 
 that these have been accustomed to hunger and fa 
 tigue, and are better able to sustain hardships than 
 freemen ; neither are they so apt to attempt making 
 their escape. 7 Sir Samuel Baker, also, in his narra 
 tive of an expedition to Central Africa, says: "In 
 every African tribe that I have visited I found slavery 
 a natural institution of the country." 3 
 
 Testimony of reputable witnesses, showing that the 
 new form of slavery endured by the negroes in the 
 Southern States was on the whole as humane as is 
 possible under such a system anywhere, might also 
 be adduced, but is unnecessary. It is worth while, 
 however, to suggest that Southern negro slaves of the 
 second quarter of the nineteenth century were in 
 some respects less to be pitied than Northern negro 
 freemen of the same period. In our own times it has 
 been remarked that the general attitude toward the 
 individual negro s shortcomings is more tolerant and 
 patient in the South than in the North, and this has 
 been reasonably attributed to the results of long associa 
 tion. A similar difference of attitude in the slave 
 and the free States was noted early in the last century. 
 De Tocqueville, writing in 1835 from the unbiased 
 
 1 Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, Vol. I, p. 27 ; Vol. 
 II, Chap. 22, pp. 98-102 (CasselPs National Library edition). 
 
 2 Sir Samuel W. Baker, Ismailia, p. 340. 
 
62 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 standpoint of a foreigner, says: " Whoever has in 
 habited the United States must have perceived that 
 in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are 
 no longer slaves they have in nowise drawn nearer the 
 whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of race ap 
 pears to be stronger in the States which have abolished 
 slavery than in those where it still exists ; and no 
 where is it so intolerant as in those States where 
 servitude has never been known. 7 The astute French 
 observer notes that, though intermarriage was lawful 
 in the free States, "public opinion would stigmatize 
 as infamous " the white person who espoused a black ; 
 that, though the electoral franchise had been con 
 ferred on the negroes in almost all the free States, 
 "if they come forward to vote their lives are in 
 danger " ; that, though negroes might serve as jurors, 
 11 prejudice repels them from that office" j that there 
 were separate schools, separate hospital wards, 
 separate galleries in theatres ; and that thus the free 
 negro of the North l can share neither the rights, nor 
 the pleasures, nor the labor ... of him 
 whose equal he has been declared to be." In the 
 South of 1835, on the other hand, "the negroes are 
 less carefully kept apart" ; and "although legislation 
 treats them more harshly, the habits of the people 
 are more tolerant and compassionate." Seeking to 
 explain why "the prejudice which repels the negroes 
 seems to increase in proportion as they are eman 
 cipated," and why "inequality is sanctioned by the 
 manners whilst it is effaced from the laws," De 
 Tocqueville reaches the conclusion that slavery was 
 
 1 Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Bowen trans 
 lation) Vol. I, pp. 460-62. 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGBESS 63 
 
 abolished in the States of the North " not for the good 
 of the negroes but for that of the whites." That this 
 was true on the commercial side the South has always 
 charged. De Tocqueville s conclusion was doubtless 
 sufficiently just in the year 1835, the growth of moral 
 conviction and outspoken aversion to traffic in human 
 creatures being more evident at a later period. 
 /When Stephens began his career in Congress the 
 sectional alignment on the slavery question was com 
 plete ; North and South, free labor and slave labor, 
 were avowedly and unalterably opposed. It was 
 inevitable that the prevailing Southern view should 
 be Stephens s view, as it was that of virtually every 
 other Southern Whig of prominence. Yet his in 
 stinctive impulses were democratic in the fullest 
 sense, and had he lived within another environment, 
 he would have been found on the side of free labor. 
 He reveals this instinctive impulse in his speech on 
 the annexation of Texas, even while he justifies the 
 institution of slavery as it existed in the Southern 
 States." After frankly acknowledging that the admis 
 sion of Texas would * give additional power to the 
 southwestern section in the national councils," and 
 that he desired it for that reason not because of the 
 " extension of the i area of slavery/ " as alleged he 
 continued : "I am no defender of slavery in the ab- / 
 stract. Liberty always had charms for me, and I 
 would rejoice to see all the sons of Adam s family, in 
 every land and clime, in the enjoyment of those rights * 
 which are set forth in our Declaration of Independence 
 as i natural and inalienable, if a stern necessity, 
 bearing the marks and impress of the Creator Him 
 self, did not, in some cases, interpose and prevent. 
 
64 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Such is the case in the States where slavery now 
 exists. But I have no wish to see it extended to 
 other countries ; and if the annexation of Texas were 
 for the sole purpose of extending slavery where it does 
 not now and would not otherwise exist, I should op 
 pose it. This is not its object, nor will it be its effect. 
 Slavery already exists in Texas and will continue to 
 exist there. 77 1 The real Stephens spoke here the 
 man who was always moved with sympathy for the 
 weak and compassion for the unfortunate. The 
 Stephens who in 1861 described slavery as the " corner 
 stone 77 of Southern civilization and the negro 7 s 
 " natural and normal condition, 772 spoke from a 
 persuasive faith, from a compelling environment, 
 and from the excitement and partisanship* of a con 
 flict which had at last demanded the arbitrament of 
 the sword. 
 
 Not a field for the extension of slavery, which al 
 ready existed in Texas, but additional power for the 
 South in Congress, was Stephens 7 s chief object in 
 urging the annexation of the "lone star 77 republic. 
 This he regarded as an offset to the material disad 
 vantage to his section which he apprehende^/ "The 
 accession will be to the [material] interests exclusively 
 of the North and West, 77 he declared. " The North 
 will have an enlarged market for her manufactures 
 and will have a new competitor in the field against the 
 South, in the growth of the raw material which she 
 now has to buy. . . . The South will have noth 
 ing to sell the people of T.exas, but will feel sorely her 
 formidable competition in the production of cotton 
 
 1 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 301. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 721. 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGBESS 65 
 
 and sugar. " Among the reasons in favor of annex 
 ation, other than the one noted, were these, that Texas 
 would provide an outlet for the accumulating popu 
 lation of the United States, and that the Texans were 
 of the " Americo- Anglo-Saxon " race. " They are 
 from us and of us, bone of our bone and flesh of our 
 flesh. Our sympathies are with them ; they have an 
 attachment for our institutions and form of govern 
 ment, and in their struggles for the establishment of 
 the same it is but natural that we should be disposed 
 to extend them a helping hand, though our interests 
 may not be thereby advanced." 
 
 / To the modern student this speech is more interest 
 ing in its incidentals than in its main argument. For 
 example, Stephens speaks of the United States as a 
 "confederacy " and exhibits a devotion to the prin 
 ciple of State sovereignty no less uncompromising than 
 that so emphatically expressed in the Massachusetts 
 resolutions to which reference has been made. He 
 asserts that slavery " is a. matter that exclusively con 
 cerns the States in which it exists," and " with which 
 the general government has no right to interfere. He 
 declares that the main object of the Constitution was 
 " to form a union of States, a species of confederacy ; 
 conferring upon the joint government of the confedera 
 tion, or union, the exercise of such sovereign powers 
 as were necessary for all foreign national purposes, and 
 retaining all others in the States, or the people of the 
 States, respectively." This Constitution, by its own 
 provision, was not established until formally ratified 
 by as many as nine States. Eleven ratified it, and thus 
 it became alive and active, while North Carolina and 
 Ehode Island long refused to do so, and thus remained 
 
66 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 foreign territory (the latter until 1790) in their rela 
 tions to the newly -created Union. Stephens referred 
 to this in order to show that the objection that the 
 Union could not receive an accession of such foreign 
 territory as Texas was absurd, the practice having 
 been inaugurated almost from the outset by the ad 
 mission of the foreign territory of North Carolina, 
 Khode Island, and Vermont within a few years after 
 the Union s formation. He might have added that 
 North Carolina and Ehode Island, provided there was 
 no resort to armed coercion, could have remained inde 
 pendent to this day. But he finds the case of Vermont 
 still more to the point : 
 
 "She [Vermont] was a separate and independent 
 community with a government of her own. She was 
 not even one of the original revolting thirteen colonies. 
 She had never been united in the old Confedera 
 tion. . . . She was a distinct, independent govern 
 ment within herself. She had her own constitution, 
 her own legislature, her own executive, judiciary and 
 military establishment, and exercised all the faculties 
 of a sovereign and independent state. She had her 
 own post-office department and revenue laws and regu 
 lations of trade. The United States did not attempt 
 to exercise any jurisdiction over her. . . . The 
 gentleman from Vermont says New York claimed 
 jurisdiction over her and finally gave consent for the 
 admission of Vermont as a State. This is true. But 
 Vermont did not recognize the jurisdiction of New 
 York ; she bade defiance to it. And after years had 
 rolled on in this situation, she treated with New York, 
 as one sovereign treats with another, and paid thirty 
 thousand dollars for a relinquishment of that jurisdic 
 tion which she would not allow to be exercised, and was 
 then admitted into the Union as one of the States." l 
 
 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 295. 
 
STEPHENS IN CONGKESS 67 
 
 On the day this speech was delivered the resolutions 
 for the admission of Texas were carried in the House 
 by a vote of one hundred and twenty to ninety -eight, 
 and as soon as the Senate and the President had acted 
 the empire recently lost by Mexico, with its 207,504 
 square miles of territory, became a State of the 
 American Union. Stephens and seven other Southern 
 Whigs contributed by their votes to this important 
 result, and for this act they were bitterly denounced as 
 traitors to their party. 
 
 /f Stephens was also sharply criticized in the South, 
 7 with much bitterness in some instances, for declaring 
 in his annexation speech that he was l no defender 
 of slavery in the abstract," which shows how sensitive 
 the Southern public had already become. His future 
 as a Southern statesman was not jeopardized, however, 
 his popularity being already too general and his 
 abilities too widely recognized. The faithful Georgia 
 Journal (Whig) declared that the manner in which 
 the Democratic newspapers of that State assailed 
 Stephens was " amusing to witness," being labor in 
 vain. The same newspaper proudly announced that 
 its favorite had received the unanimous nomination 
 of the convention of the seventh district. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR 
 
 THE newspapers of the forties and fifties contained 
 much interesting comment on Stephens s appearance 
 as a man, his powers as an orator and his abilities 
 as a statesman, frequently comparing him with that 
 other unusual product, John Eandolph of Eoanoke. 
 After his speech before the Clay Club of Eichmond 
 in June, 1844, a local newspaper, The Compiler, re 
 gretted l i that Providence, which bestowed upon him 
 such liberal intellectual powers, had not armed him 
 with physical energies more in keeping with the ener 
 gies of his mind," and added : "His voice is very 
 much of the same order as Eandolph 7 s, and he re 
 sembles him much in the disparity between the 
 strength of his mental and physical constitution. " 
 According to the Eichmond Republican, u in brilliant 
 and cutting invective" Stephens had "few equals 
 among the public men of the day," and in this partic 
 ular " he frequently reminds his hearers of John 
 Eandolph." 
 
 The Macon Journal and Messenger of December 19, 
 1849, quotes as follows from the Philadelphia In 
 quirer : 1 
 
 "Physically one of the most feeble, Alexander H. 
 Stephens, of Georgia, is yet intellectually one of the 
 ablest members *of the House of Eepresentatives. 
 Short and slender in stature with the face and head of 
 
 1 Daguerreotype Sketches of Members of Congress, by E. M. J. 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR 69 
 
 a young girl [he was then nearly thirty-eight years 
 old], his appearance at once arrests attention, from its 
 contrast with the more masculine figures around him. 
 His voice, thin and sharp and shrill as the l ear-pierc 
 ing pipe/ cleaves the dense atmosphere of the sombre 
 chamber, startling the House and galleries by its 
 clear, penetrating tones. .-Every eye is instantly 
 turned upon the speaker, /for he is one o the few 
 members who always command attention^] * if he is in 
 troducing a bill, he presents a lucid, analogically ar 
 ranged statement of its character and object which 
 reaches the dullest comprehension. Having thus laid 
 it before the House, he calmly awaits the assaults of 
 its adversaries. Should any misstateinent of his re 
 marks be made, he promptly corrects it on the spot. 
 As the debate approaches to a close, he again takes 
 the floor, and passing in review all the weightier argu 
 ments of his opponents, and mingling the most bitter 
 sarcasm with the strongest invective that parlia 
 mentary decorum admits of, he tears asunder with the 
 keen scimitar of his logic the finest webs of sophistry 
 and the most ponderous mass of reasoning. Seeking 
 exclusively the success of his measure, he avoids mere 
 declamation, however tempting the occasion, and 
 deals only with the facts that press most heavily 
 against his case. When personally assailed, nothing 
 can exceed the severity of his reply. (When aroused, 
 his tongue becomes a whip of scorpions. Of all the 
 men in the House, he is the last for a new member to 
 break a lance with^* With a better arranged mind 
 than John Eandolph, he is probably more like him 
 than any one who has been in Congress since his 
 time." 
 
 TJie Pennsylvanian 1 of this year comments sneer - 
 
 ingly on a recent speech in the House into which 
 
 Stephens " exploded " and which " breathed sulphur 
 
 in every line ; ? J but the same newspaper in 1854, 
 
 1 Quoted in the Georgia Telegraph of March 6, 1849. 
 
70 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 though criticising his politics, is forced to praise the 
 man. "And yet," it says, "this ungainly -looking 
 individual is considered by many the ablest member 
 of the House, and of a House, too, that can boast 
 some of the best minds of the country. . . . You 
 look in vain for some outward manifestation of that 
 towering, commanding intellect which has held the 
 congregated talent of the whole country spellbound 
 for hours. It is not in the eye, for it is dull and 
 heavy. [Having just left a bed of severe illness, 
 Stephens appeared at this time to be more emaciated 
 than usual.] It is not in the face, for it is meaning 
 less. It is not in the voice, for it is shrill and sharp ; 
 
 still you feel convinced that the feeble, tottering 
 being before you is all brain brain in the head, 
 brain in the arms, brain in the legs, brain in the body 
 that the whole man is charged and surcharged with 
 electricity of intellect that a touch would bring forth 
 
 divine spark ! " 
 Another estimate of unusual interest is quoted in 
 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches from Eev. W. H. Mil- 
 burn, the half-blind chaplain of Congress, who de 
 clared that in spite of all the odds against a " victim of 
 life-long disease, 7 Stephens was the "most powerful 
 orator" in Washington at that period. f "How nearly 
 disease and genius may be associated, is a question 
 which I leave for psychologists to settle. But I feel 
 sure that sleepless nights and days of pain have much 
 to do with the brilliant intellect of this remarkable 
 man." Comparing Stephens with John Eandolph, he 
 says : " Both have been the victims of disease whose 
 origin dates far back in life, and each has consequently 
 been the owner of a body, which, however exquisitely 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR 71 
 
 it may have been strung, has been perilously sensitive. 
 Both have exercised almost unequal sway on the 
 floor of Congress ; and both have been noted as mas 
 ters in the art of offensive parliamentary warfare. 
 Both have been admitted to be unimpeachably honest 
 and fearless statesmen. But Mr. Eandolph had 
 scarcely a friend. Mr. Stephens has hardly an enemy. 
 Bodily infirmity, if it did not master Mr. Bandolph s 
 will, soured his temper and gave to his perfect diction 
 the poison of wormwood, and to his spirit the bitter 
 ness that verged upon misanthropy. Mr. Stephens 
 has conquered suffering and made himself strong and 
 noble by entering heartily into the sweet charities of 
 life. The Virginian is described as " an intolerant aris 
 tocrat ; the Georgian as l simple and genial in his 
 manners as a child. . . . Whether Mr. Stephens 
 continues in the House, which I presume he would 
 prefer as the great popular body, or be removed to the 
 Senate, I think that the country will one day adjudge 
 him the finest orator and ablest statesman in either. 7 
 On reading the speeches of our earlier statesmen, 
 the modern student is apt to wonder a little at the 
 profound effect they produced and the enthusiastic 
 praise they evoked. This feeling of slight disap 
 pointment is doubtless due to the imperfect reporting 
 as well as to the absence of the magnetic personality 
 of the speaker. In a letter written in 1846 Stephens 
 expresses great dissatisfaction with one of his speeches 
 as printed and states that " the reporter s notes" pre 
 served the order of his utterances, but neither his lan 
 guage nor the structure of his sentences. Probably a 
 similar complaint could have been made with equal 
 justice against the reporting of most public speeches 
 
72 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 during the first half century of the American republic. 
 For this reason as well as others such contemporary 
 comment as has been reproduced above is of value in 
 forming true estimates of the public men of former 
 generations. Stephens s great abilities as a debater 
 and powers as an orator have been widely attested. 
 Only a speaker of extraordinary attainments could 
 have so moved his hearers and produce^ the effect de 
 sired in spite of physical handicaps. -The orator who 
 is a small, sickly, emaciated man, with a shrill voice, 
 must triumph over far greater difficulties than were 
 faced by the physically powerful, handsome, magnetic 
 and " leonine" Toombs, for example. The latter s 
 oratory was " an engulfing stream of impetuous force, " 
 while Stephens s was intellectual, philosophical, log 
 ical, and convincing to the sober and reflecting mind. 
 " There is nothing about him but lungs and brains ! " 
 exclaimed one of his hearers during his campaign 
 against the Know-Nothing party. " Brains 7 was in 
 deed his chief asset as an orator and political cam 
 paigner, but a brave spirit and an unconquerable will 
 were powerful factors in his success. 
 
 There is indirect evidence in his letters that 
 Stephens was personally popular at Washington early 
 in his Congressional career, and that he numbered such 
 veterans as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Judge 
 Story among his friends, as well as the coming men of 
 his own age. He was naturally more closely asso 
 ciated with the prominent Whigs than with the lead 
 ing Democrats of the day. " Judge Story says, 7 
 reads one of his letters to Linton Stephens in 1844, 
 "that the Eepublican party to which he was attached 
 1 StovalPs Life of Toombs, p. 184. 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAE 73 
 
 iu 1806 and 1809 is extinct now. To tell the truth, I 
 had always thought he was a Federalist, but it is not 
 so. He was opposed to Adams, was a Kepublican, 
 was a Jeffersonian, and was appointed Judge under 
 Madison or Monroe [Madison]. He used to be in 
 Congress the only Eepublican from Massachusetts ; 
 and he further says that most of the old Federalists 
 now are with the Democratic party that is, those of 
 them who are alive. But he says the Eepublican 
 party is extinct ; that he has ceased to be surprised at 
 anything ; and he laughs and talks as gaily as a boy." 
 Perhaps Judge Story thought the old Eepublican party 
 was " extinct" because its Democratic offspring was 
 now the party of slavery an inevitable result of the 
 conditions. An unbiased observer would probably 
 have said that, in spite of its accidental pro-slavery 
 attitude, the Democratic party was in other respects 
 true to its traditions, particularly the old Jeffersonian 
 theory that the country is governed best that is gov 
 erned least, consistently resisting every effort to cen 
 tralize more power at Washington than was provided 
 for in the Constitution. Stephens s early dislike of 
 the Federalists and his evident pleasure in finding that 
 his elderly friend had been a Eepublican may be taken 
 as further evidence that he was always at bottom a 
 " Jeffersonian," although he did not join the Demo 
 crats until the virtual collapse of the Whig party. 
 
 Another of his letters to Linton Stephens in the 
 same year describes with interesting detail a "diplo 
 matic dinner" at Washington given by Senator 
 Berrien, of Georgia, at which were present the foreign 
 ministers and many prominent Americans. The 
 account suggests to the modern reader a somewhat 
 
74 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 overdone attempt at elaborate state and elegance, with 
 which Stephens, or his correspondent, was apparently 
 not then familiar. We learn that Mrs. Berrien, the only 
 lady present, " sat in the middle of the table with the 
 French minister on her right and the British minister 
 on her left." And further : " The table was decorated 
 with flowers, etc., and filled with glass, but nothing 
 eatable was to be seen except some jellies and straw 
 berries. Everything was handed round by servants. 
 First soup, then fish, then beef, then something else, 
 I know not what ; then sweetbreads, then chicken, 
 then birds, then beans and asparagus, then strawberries, 
 then Charlotte de Russe, with jellies, then ice cream, 
 then cherries and apples. A change of plates took 
 place at each of these courses. Six wine glasses were 
 placed near each plate, and in them we first had 
 sherry, immediately after soup, then Madeira, claret, 
 champagne, brandy, etc., with hock and just what 
 each wanted at all times. I forgot to mention Hender 
 son, the late Texas plenipotentiary, as one of the 
 company ; and I forgot to say also that the last course 
 was a snuff-box handed all round. The candles were 
 lighted as dark came on [the dinner was on June 11, 
 1844, and the hour was half-past six], and we left 
 the table at half-past ten, and repaired to the drawing 
 room, where coffee was served in the handing 
 order. The whole passed off very well and nobody 
 got drunk" a fact presumably due to a chivalrous 
 regard for the feelings of the only lady present ! i i The 
 whole company was jovial and the conversation 
 spirited. The servants who handed meats, etc. , were 
 called waiters, those who served wine were called 
 butlers. They were all colored but one, a French cook, 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR 75 
 
 who figured largely, and all wore silk gloves and had 
 on aprons." After describing the personal appear 
 ance of the more distinguished guests, he concludes : 
 " But I can say no more ; and this I have said to you 
 only in order to write a few moments before going to 
 bed. ... I don t write such stuff as this for any 
 body but yourself. 7 * 
 
 Stephens s correspondence of the early months of 
 1846 contains interesting references to the Oregon and 
 Mexican questions. In regard to the former he took 
 a conservative attitude in opposition to the more 
 radical policy which clearly could not be maintained 
 without a war witty England, for which the country 
 was not prepared. / He lamented on February 8th that 
 u Mr. Polk does not intend to permit England to 
 question our right to the whole country up to 54 40 " 
 [reaching the southern boundary of Alaska], and that 
 u there is to be no compromise in the matter," adding : 
 1 This I look upon as a position involving the direct 
 issue of war ; and if Congress will back him up in that 
 particular, war is inevitable. I think that correspond 
 ence [between our State Department and the British 
 Foreign Office] will do more to humble the pride of 
 our country and tarnish our glory than anything that 
 has occurred since the organization of the government. 
 For we shall never sustain it. England has rights 
 in Oregon and we shall have to admit them, and the 
 position of our Chief Magistrate will have to be 
 abandoned." 
 
 The event justified this prediction. Four months 
 later, on June llth, he writes : " The Oregon question 
 is, I think, about to be settled. It is said that Mr. 
 
 1 Waddell s Life of Linton Stephens, pp. 53-5. 
 
76 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Pakenham has sent in to Mr. Polk Her Majesty s 
 ultimatum, which is a settlement of boundary on the 
 basis of 49, with the whole of Vancouver Island to 
 England ; the free navigation of the Strait of San Juan 
 de Fuca, and the free navigation of the Columbia for 
 ten years. It is also said that Mr. Polk will not make 
 a treaty upon these terms without first taking the ad 
 vice of the Senate. Pity that he was not always as 
 cautious and conservative. If he had been we might 
 not now be at war with Mexico. 7 
 
 That the war with Mexico was precipitated without 
 just cause Stephens saw clearly from the beginning. 
 In his correspondence of May 10, 1846, he declares that 
 General Taylor had no authority to cross the Nueces 
 River, and recalls that in the resolutions admitting 
 Texas it was expressly provided that questions of 
 boundary should be left for adjustment between this 
 country and Mexico ; that the territory extending from, 
 the Nueces to the Rio Grande del Norte was disputed 
 between Mexico and Texas, the latter never asserting 
 her jurisdiction over it ; and that, therefore, as a simple 
 matter of justice we should have left it unoccupied 
 until the right to it was settled by negotiation. The 
 war undoubtedly resulted from this unnecessary and un 
 justifiable advance of United States troops. It is no 
 less clear that the precipitation of the conflict in this 
 way was welcomed by President Polk and the sup 
 porters of his administration, they being influenced 
 partly by the desire for territorial aggrandizement and 
 partly by the need of distracting attention from the 
 humiliating issue of the Oregon boundary dispute. 
 Their responsibility for a groundless war against a weak 
 republic is not lessened by the fact that the issue of 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR 77 
 
 the Oregon question need not have been humiliating in 
 itself, had not their reckless demand for 54 40 been 
 made in a threatening manner and then abandoned 
 rather than provoke war ; for the line of 49 insisted 
 on by England was the same that was originally pro 
 posed by Calhoun as Secretary of State under the Tyler 
 administration. ^v 
 
 ,f Stephens s speech in the House on June 16, 1846, was \ 
 remarkably bold, the armed conflict with Mexico hav- / 
 ing actually begun a month before! Cautious Whigs ^ 
 listened to it with alarm, well knowing that a war in 
 which an early victory is sure, and with promising 
 possibilities in the way of gain, has never in any 
 country failed to be popular with a majority of the 
 people. Stephens charged that not only could armed 
 strife have been avoided with honor, but that Polk s 
 order sending Taylor s army into the disputed terri 
 tory while negotiations for the delimitation of the 
 boundary still pended was a " masked design" 1 to 
 bring on the struggle. 
 
 The proofs he presented are conclusive, but they can 
 not be produced here, a history of the war with Mexico 
 having no part in this volume. It need only be said 
 that after the annexation of Texas General Taylor with 
 a large force was ordered to the new State, although 
 the possibility of a hostile attitude on the part of 
 Mexico was extremely remote in view of the impover 
 ished and distracted condition of that republic, and the 
 inconceivable madness of attacking the whole United 
 States after failing to subdue the single revolting 
 province of Texas. During six months after his ar 
 rival General Taylor reported no signs of any disquiet- 
 1 Speech on the Mexican War, Cleveland, p. 310. 
 
78 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 ing preparations or movements beyond the Eio Grande, 
 yet on January 13, 1846, he was directed from Wash 
 ington to advance his army to Matamoras across 150 
 miles of disputed territory. General Pedro D Am- 
 pudia, hastening toward the same point with 200 
 cavalry, sent General Taylor a dispatch ordering him 
 to retire from the soil of the Department of Tamaulipas, 
 the message, which was expressed with great dignity 
 and breathed a sense of outrage, ending with the ex 
 clamation : "God and liberty!" Taylor held his 
 ground and war followed. The treaty of Guadaloupe, 
 February 2, 1848, fixed the Eio Grande as the boundary 
 line, and in addition gave the United States the vast 
 territory included in California, New Mexico, Arizona, 
 Nevada, Utah and the western part of Colorado. 
 These rich fruits of conquest were not even thinly 
 disguised by the payment of the trivial sum of 
 $15,000,000 by the Washington government. At 
 the time few Americans could realize the great wrong 
 done Mexico, but to-day the impartial historian is 
 forced to take virtually the same position which 
 Stephens boldly assumed in 1846 in the face of popular 
 clamor and in the midst of war. 
 
 He not only showed the injustice of the war itself, 
 but attacked President Polk in person for precipitating 
 it u without authority from Congress." He spoke as 
 a genuine, an alarmed and a bold democrat when he 
 said : "I hope never to see the day when the Executive 
 of this country shall be considered identical with the 
 country itself in its foreign relations, or when any man, 
 for scanning his acts, however severely when justly, 
 shall on that account be charged with opposition to his 
 country. Such is the case only where allegiance is due 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAE 79 
 
 to a crown, where the people s rulers are their mas- 
 ters ; but, thank God, in this country we can yet hold 
 our rulers to account. How long we shall be per 
 mitted or disposed to do so I know not ; but whenever 
 we cease to do it we shall become unfit to be free." 
 
 In answer to the charge that he and his party were 
 opposed not only to continuing the war but to voting 
 supplies, Stephens declared that he was not opposed 
 to its active prosecution to a speedy and honorable 
 end, merely to the way it was brought about and 
 what he feared was its real object. He demanded to 
 know if it was for conquest. "If so, 77 he said, "I 
 protest against that part of it. I would shed no un 
 necessary blood ; commit no unnecessary violence j 
 allow no outrage upon the religion of Mexico j have 
 no desecration of temples, or i reveling in the halls of 
 the Montezumas ; but be ready to meet the first offers 
 of peace. I regret that General Taylor did not have 
 the authority to accept the proffered armistice. In a 
 word, I am for a restoration of peace at the earliest 
 day it can be honorably effected. 77 And further : 
 
 "I am no enemy to the extension of our domain, or , 
 the enlargement of the boundaries of the republic. I 
 trust the day is coming, and not far distant, when the 
 whole continent will be ours ; when our institutions 
 shall be diffused and cherished, and republican gov 
 ernment enjoyed, throughout the length and breadth 
 of this land from the far south to the extreme north, 
 from ocean to ocean. That this is our ultimate destiny, 
 if wise counsels prevail,- 1 Confidently believe. But it 
 is not to be accomplished by the sword. Mr. Chairman, f 
 republics never spread by arms. We can properly 
 enlarge only by voluntary accessions, and should at 
 tempt to act on our neighbors only by setting them a 
 
80 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 good example. This has been the history of our silent 
 but rapid progress thus far. In this way Louisiana, 
 with its immense domain was acquired. In this way 
 the Mori das were obtained. In this way we got 
 Oregon, connecting us with the Pacific. In this way 
 Texas up to the Eio Grande might have been added ; 
 and in this way the Californias and Mexico herself may 
 in due time be merged in one great republic. 
 
 " There is much said in this country of the party of 
 progress. I profess to be of that party ; but I am far 
 from advocating that kind of progress which many of 
 those who seem anxious to appropriate the term ex 
 clusively to themselves are using their utmost exertions 
 to push forward. Theirs, in my opinion, is a down 
 ward progress. It is a progress of party, of excite 
 ment, of lust of power ; a spirit of war, aggression, 
 violence and licentiousness. It is a progress which, if 
 indulged in, would soon sweep over all law, all order, 
 and the Constitution itself. ... It is to progress 
 in these essential attributes of national greatness that I 
 would look : the improvement of mind, the * increase 
 and diffusion of knowledge among men, ? the erection of 
 schools, colleges and temples of learning ; the progress of 
 intellect over matter ; the triumph of mind over the ani 
 mal propensities ; the advancement of kind feeling and 
 good will among the nations of the earth ; the cultiva 
 tion of virtue and the pursuits of industry ; the bring 
 ing into subjection and subservience to the use of man 
 of all the elements of nature around us ; in a word, the 
 progress of civilization and everything that elevates 
 and ennobles man. This, Mr. Chairman, is not to be 
 done by wars, whether foreign or domestic. Fields of 
 blood and carnage may make men brave and heroic, 
 but seldom tend to make nations either virtuous or 
 great. 7 
 
 J~" 
 [n his speech on the Mexican Appropriation Bill, 
 ivered in the House on February 12, 1847, Stephens 
 returned more boldly than ever to the attack upon the 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAE 81 
 
 Polk administration and its war of conquest, which he \ 
 described as an u unnecessary and expensive 7 one, 
 into which the country had been plunged " by the sole 
 and unauthorized act of the President." He declared 
 that "to suppress inquiry, and silence all opposition 
 to conduct so monstrous, an Executive ukase has been 
 sent forth, strongly intimating if not clearly threaten 
 ing the charge of treason against all who may dare to 
 call in question the wisdom or propriety of his meas 
 ures." Not only was Congress, which " possesses ex 
 clusively " the war-making power, " never consulted ^ 
 until after hostilities were commenced," but "the 
 right is even now denied that body to make any legis 
 lative expression of the national will" as to the object 
 in view in such a war. l i The strange and new doctrine 
 is now put forth that Congress has nothing to do with 
 the conduct of the war ; that the President is entitled 
 to its uncontrolled management ; that we can do noth 
 ing but vote men and money to whatever amount and 
 extent his folly and caprice may dictate. . . . 
 This is nothing less than the assumption that patri 
 otism consists in pliant subserviency to Executive will 
 that the President is supreme, and * the King can do 
 no wrong. ^r 
 
 Stephens avowed his readiness to vote the necessary 
 funds, as the American forces could not now be with 
 drawn, but he refused to be silent. i The President 
 may repeat as often as he pleases, that ^the war was 
 * unavoidably forced on us, but such repetition caji 
 never change the facts. It is a war of his own making, \ 
 and in violation of the Constitution of the country. ) 
 And so history, I doubt not, will make up the record/ 
 if truth be fairly and faithfully registered in her 
 
82 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 chronicles." Stephens then presented evidence indi 
 cating that vast acquisitions of territory were intended 
 from the outset, pointing to Mr. Folk s orders to 
 American naval officers in the Pacific as far back as 
 1845, and citing a letter of Secretary of War Marcy, 
 dated June 26, 1846, which stated the President s in 
 tention to send a regiment around Cape Horn to attack 
 California, and gave instructions that the said regi 
 ment, which Colonel John D. Stevenson was to or 
 ganize, should be composed of persons " likely to re 
 main, at the end of the war, either in Oregon, or in 
 any other territory which may then be a part of the 
 United States." In the same month, June, 1846, as 
 later appeared, General Kearny with 1,600 men was 
 sent across the country from Fort Leavenworth with 
 orders to plant the American standard in California. 
 
 It was a war "with a view to conquest," undoubt 
 edly, and the dismemberment of the United States of 
 Mexico had already begun. But would the American 
 people endorse such a war and such results, after sober 
 second thought ? Stephens seemed to believe that they 
 would not, for he exclaimed : "Do they suppose that 
 the people of this country hold in such slight remem 
 brance the principles upon which their government is 
 founded, as to be prepared to sustain a war waged for 
 an object no higher than that which springs from an 
 unholy lust of dominion and the spread of empire ? 
 Do they suppose that this country, which has not yet 
 arrived at the full vigor of manhood, has so soon for 
 gotten the lessons of its early instruction, as to be 
 ready to enter upon that wild career of military 
 prowess which has been the bane of so many nations 
 before us, and has been the destruction of all former 
 
HE OPPOSES THE MEXICAN WAR 83 
 
 republics ? . . . I beg to protest, not only for my 
 self, but for the country also. 7 l 
 
 This shows that Stephens understood the principles 
 on which our government was founded better than he 
 understood the American people. The latter clearly 
 wanted the war for the sake of its fruits. Certain, 
 writers seek to put the responsibility for the deliberate! 
 aggression upon the " slave power, " but the " slave 1 
 power" was never so strong as this view would imply. 
 Granting that many Southern leaders did wish to ex 
 tend "the area of slavery," it remains to be said that 
 the war with Mexico could not have been forced and 
 carried to its conclusion without the enthusiastic sup 
 port of the great majority of the people throughout the 
 country. The question of slavery was a subordinate \ 
 one. (The simple fact is that the people of the United 
 States wished to extend their dominions and possess 
 the Pacific slope.) In 1846-8 they were fascinated by 
 the vision of conquest, just as their sons were when the 
 Philippines were wrested from Spain fifty years after 
 ward. The love of conquest is bred in the bone of the 
 ADglo-Saxon race, and the Americans themselves have 
 ever been a conquering people. They were engaged 
 for more than two centuries in driving the Indians out 
 of the land j they fought for and won their freedom 
 from British interference; they would have fought 
 France and Spain, as soon as they were able, for the 
 possession of Louisiana and Florida, had not those 
 two countries been wise enough to sell in good time ; 
 they would have carried the Oregon boundary to 
 Alaska by force and with shouts of enthusiasm had 
 not the cost in blood and treasure been too great ; a 
 1 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, pp. 320-334. 
 
84 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 few Americans wrested Texas from the feeble mother 
 country and the American people as a whole con 
 quered an empire from Mexico ; in the war of 1861-5, 
 one-third of the Union, which rashly aspired to an 
 independent existence, was subjugated by the other 
 two-thirds and held in the position of conquered terri 
 tory for years ; and before the end of the same event 
 ful century the conquering arms of the great imperial 
 republic of North America were carried into the thou 
 sand islands of the Philippines on the other side of 
 the world. 
 
 The Democrats of 1846-48 failed to coin the phrase, 
 * manifest destiny, ? which was so effectively employed 
 by the Eepublicans of 1898-1900, but the impulse if 
 not the argument was essentially the same in both 
 cases. The chief difference between the work of 
 " destiny " and the Democrats in the forties and that 
 of * l destiny ? and the Republicans in 1898 was that the 
 latter acquisition was less distinctly foreseen and less 
 u inevitable " than the priceless territory wrested from 
 Mexico. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A LEADER OF THE WHIG PARTY 
 
 IT was inevitable that Stephens 7 s bold and searching 
 criticism of the war upon Mexico should be bitterly 
 denounced by the Democrats. His discussion with 
 William Lowndes Yancey, of Alabama, became so 
 heated that a duel was with difficulty averted through 
 the mediation of Eobert Toombs, and so severe were 
 the reproaches of Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia, in 
 an article in the Federal Union, that Stephens de 
 manded a retraction from his old friend and challenged 
 him. The affair ended with the latter s dignified re 
 fusal, but the two remained estranged until Johnson 
 was elected Governor of Georgia in 1855, when a rec 
 onciliation was brought about through the efforts of 
 friends. 
 
 This was not the only occasion on which Stephens 
 sought that " satisfaction " which the Southern gen 
 tleman of the period was expected to demand, by in 
 viting an offending political opponent to accept the 
 issue of mortal combat. In 1856, after he had aban 
 doned his own disintegrating political organization 
 and had been driven by the slavery controversy into 
 the Democratic fold, he was recklessly charged by 
 Benjamin H. Hill with having " betrayed the Whig 
 party and having acted worse toward it than Judas 
 Iscariot." Stephens promptly challenged Hill to fight 
 a duel and the latter declined, publicly as well as pri- 
 
86 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 vately, in language that is worthy of record. "If the 
 invitation to mortal combat, 7 he wrote, " is intended 
 as a mere formal occasion, to exchange a few harmless 
 shots, I can only say that I never engage in farces. 
 . . . It might be some satisfaction to you to shoot 
 at me, though I should entertain no great fear of being 
 hit ... [but] I might possibly kill you, and 
 though you may not consider your life valuable, to 
 take it would be a great annoyance to me afterward. 
 The ceaseless accusations of my conscience that I was 
 a murderer would be the bane of all my future happi 
 ness. ... I regard dueling as no evidence of 
 courage, no vindication of truth, and no test of the 
 character of a true gentleman. I shall be a i braggart, 
 liar and poltroon enough, now and forever, to declare 
 that what the laws of God and my native State unite in 
 denouncing as murder, could give me no satisfaction 
 to do, to attempt or to desire. This determination is 
 but strengthened when the contrary course involves 
 the violation of my conscience and the hazard of my 
 family, as against a man who has neither conscience 
 nor family." 
 
 Angered by an unjust charge in the first place, and 
 smarting the more under Hill s forcible reply to the 
 challenge, Stephens expressed himself, in a card pub 
 lished in the Augusta Constitutionalist of December 12, 
 1856, as follows : " When a mendacious gasconader 
 sets up wantonly to asperse private character and 
 malign individual reputation, and then refuses that re 
 dress which a gentleman knows how to ask, as well as 
 how to grant, no course is left for the most courteous 
 and decorous, the most upright and honorable, but to 
 put the brand of infamy upon him there to remain 
 
A LEADER OF THE WHIG PAETY 87 
 
 until a radical change in his character, and especially 
 in his conduct, either in giving personal insults or in 
 making proper amends for them, shall remove it." In 
 the same card he described Hill as " not only an impu 
 dent braggart but a despicable poltroon besides." 
 
 The indications are that the sympathy of the better 
 element of the public was with Hill in his dignified 
 refusal to fight a duel, at least, that action being com 
 mended by a number of newspapers in Georgia and 
 neighboring States and no doubt by many persons in 
 private. Not only did Hill s effective thrust at 
 Stephens currently condensed to "I have a soul to 
 save and a family to support, and you have neither " 
 cause wide-spread amusement, but such an attitude 
 on the part of a man of his eminence induced sober re 
 flection and did much to discourage dueling in the 
 State. There is just this much to be said in excuse 
 of the practice, that it placed a physical weakling such 
 as Stephens on a level with a strong man such as 
 Hill in the case of intolerable insult for which the law 
 could give no redress. 
 
 Stephens had been made to appreciate this by pain 
 ful experience when brutally assaulted by Judge Cone 
 in 1848. A duel in lieu of that disgraceful affair would 
 have been more just to him, as well as more manly in 
 Cone. The latter was reported to have denounced 
 Stephens as a "traitor" to his country because of 
 some difference of political opinion, but when Stephens 
 inquired if he had done so he denied it, whereupon the 
 former expressed gratification, confessing that when 
 irritated by the report he had said in the presence of 
 others that if the Judge acknowledged the utterance 
 attributed to him he, Stephens, would slap his face. 
 
88 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 Afterward the affair was much talked of in the State and 
 Cone, fearing it was thought he had shown cowardice, 
 wrote Stephens demanding a retraction of his threat. 
 Stephens replied that as the threat was contingent 
 upon Cone s avowal of a report which he afterward 
 pronounced false, there was now no occasion for of 
 fense and no reason for retraction. Before the receipt 
 of this letter the two men met in a hotel in Atlanta and 
 a retraction was again angrily demanded. Stephens 
 replied that he had already sent his answer in 
 writing and could say no more. Thereupon Cone 
 called Stephens a traitor and Stephens struck him 
 with his walking cane. Although he was a large 
 muscular man and his frail antagonist was unarmed, 
 Cone drew "a dirk-knife" and rushed upon Stephens, 
 stabbing him repeatedly. Stephens fell, and though 
 he was wounded already "in eighteen places on the 
 body and arms," Cone held the knife above his 
 prostrate enemy, crying : " Eetract, or I will cut 
 your throat ! " " Never ! " said Stephens, and caught 
 the descending blade in his right hand, which was 
 very seriously cut as Cone attempted to wrench away 
 the weapon. At this point Cone was dragged from 
 his victim by the gathering spectators. At first it was 
 thought that Stephens could not survive, one knife 
 thrust having almost touched the heart and an inter 
 costal artery having been severed. As a result of his 
 injuries all of his activities were interrupted for a con 
 siderable time. He refused to appear as prosecutor, 
 but Cone was indicted and fined a thousand dollars. 
 
 Stephens s criticism of the war policy of the Polk 
 administration was the source of anxiety in the Whig 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 233. 
 
A LEADEE OF THE WHIG PAETY 89 
 
 as well as of anger in the Democratic party. It was 
 easier to denounce the war than to convince the people 
 of its injustice, while they were rejoicing over the tri 
 umphs of American arms. The opponents of a success 
 ful war are always in an awkward position. Having 
 already lost ground under the administration of Tyler, 
 the Whigs could now ill afford to proclaim from the 
 house-tops such convictions as had been expressed by 
 Stephens. In a letter of after years describing the 
 situation he himself said : "The Whigs as a party, 
 while opposed to the policy of the war, were afraid to 
 do or say anything that would bring upon them what 
 they thought to be the odium of an anti-war party. 
 The fate of those who had opposed the War of 1812 
 stood as a ghost in their path." 
 
 Such was the situation when, in 1847, Stephens 
 introduced his resolutions on the subject. "I con 
 sulted with all the leading Whigs in the House, 
 Northern and Southern, upon introducing them," he 
 relates. Every one of them dissuaded me from it, but 
 I resolved upon doing it anyhow. I knew that I was 
 right." These adroit and well-timed resolutions, 
 which put the Democrats on the defensive, if not un 
 masking their aim of conquest, read as follows : 
 
 " Whereas, It is no less desirable that the interests and 
 honor of our country should be cordially sustained and 
 defended so long as the present war with Mexico con 
 tinues to exist, than that the conflict should not be 
 unnecessarily prolonged, but should be terminated as 
 soon as an honorable peace can be obtained ; and 
 whereas, it is believed that a diversity of opinion pre 
 vails to a considerable extent as to the ultimate aims 
 and objects for which the war should be prosecuted, 
 and it being proper that this matter should be settled 
 
90 ALEXAKDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 by the clear expression of the legislative will solemnly 
 proclaimed to the world : 
 
 u Be it therefore Resolved by the Senate and House of 
 Representatives of the United States of America in Con 
 gress assembled. That the present war with Mexico is 
 not waged with a view to conquest, or the dismember 
 ment of that republic by the acquisition of any portion 
 of her territory. 
 
 11 Be it further Resolved by the authority aforesaid, That 
 it is the desire of the United States that hostilities 
 should be terminated upon terms honorable to both 
 parties ; embracing a liberal settlement on our part of 
 the questions growing out of the proper and rightful 
 boundary of Texas, and a full recognition and proper 
 provision on her part to be made for all the just claims 
 of our citizens against that country ; the whole to be 
 adjusted by negotiation, to be instituted and effected 
 according to the constitutional forms of each govern 
 ment respectively." 
 
 Commenting on the inevitable fate of these resolu 
 tions at the hands of the majority, Stephens remarks : 
 
 " Thus Congress refused to say that the war was i not 
 waged with a view to conquest, or the dismemberment 
 of Mexico by the acquisition of any of her territory/ 
 or that it was the desire of the United States that 
 hostilities should be terminated upon terms honorable 
 to both parties. ? This refusal to avow what were the 
 objects of the war and to express the desire for an hon 
 orable peace, gave a blow to the administration from 
 the effects of which it could never recover." 
 
 The majority of the people eagerly consented to the 
 acquisition of an empire at the expense of Mexico, but 
 reverence for the principles on which the American 
 republic had been founded made them equally ready 
 to rebuke the Democratic leaders for their part in the 
 
A LEADEE OF THE WHIG PAETY 91 
 
 \ 
 
 transaction. The deed was welcome, but in deference 
 to their principles they punished the doers thereof in 
 the following elections. The Whig opponents of the 
 war exhibited a similar inconsistency when in 1848 
 they craftily selected a warrior as the standard bearer 
 of their party. Stephens s accusing resolutions were 
 kept before the people at the suggestion of Henry Clay 
 himself, and became, North and South, the Whig plat 
 form on the war. Being asked what course the party 
 should take, Clay replied : "Pass the resolutions of 
 Stephens of Georgia. 
 
 Stephens was no less strongly in favor of the nomi 
 nation of General Zachary Taylor than other leading 
 spirits in the Whig councils. He urged this course 
 with great earnestness from first to last, believing that 
 Clay could not be elected and that his party should 
 take advantage of the wide-spread military enthusiasm. 
 Though not a delegate to the Whig convention at 
 Philadelphia, his influence was active in the choice of 
 Taylor whose election brought the party again to 
 power. The second of the two "Allison" letters 
 which formed its platform was written at his sugges 
 tion by Crittenden after the two, in company with 
 Toombs, had discussed its proposed contents. The 
 document was forwarded to General Taylor at Baton 
 Eouge, but as " Old Eough and Eeady " had already 
 expressed certain views in a letter addressed to Cap 
 tain Allison, which promptly found its way into print, 
 the Stephens-Crittenden-Toombs production was also 
 addressed to Allison and put forward as a supplement 
 prepared after more mature deliberation. It was 
 much stronger and more persuasive than the an- 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 225. 
 
92 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 nouncement in the interest of General Cass, the Dem 
 ocratic candidate, and was skilfully employed through 
 out the successful campaign. 
 
 In the coming vast acquisition of territory Stephens 
 saw not only aggression and wrong at the expense of a 
 weak republic, but a source of future danger to the 
 Union itself. Already on August 8, 1846, David Wil- 
 mot, of Pennsylvania, had introduced his "Proviso," 
 which excluded slavery from the conquered territory, 
 and, although it openly violated the covenant of the 
 Missouri Compromise, it passed the House and was 
 with difficulty arrested in the Senate, largely through 
 the efforts of Calhoun. Thus was the whole agitating 
 discussion of the area of slavery reopened, although 
 supposed to be settled finally by the "canonized" 
 compromise. Well might Stephens ask, in his speech 
 in the House on February 12, 1847 : " Who can sit 
 here and listen to the debates daily on this question 
 and look unmoved upon the prospect before us?" 
 Well might he add: "This Wilmot Proviso and 
 the resolutions from the legislatures of the States of 
 New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio, all of the same 
 character and import, speak a language that cannot 
 be mistaken a language of warning upon this subject, 
 and which the country would do well to heed in time. 
 They show a fixed determination on the part of the 
 North, which is now in a majority in this House and 
 ever will be hereafter, that, if territory is acquired, the 
 institutions of the South shall be forever excluded 
 from its limits.) What is to be the result of this mat 
 ter ? Will the South submit to this restriction f Will 
 the North ultimately yield ! When the elements of 
 discord are aroused, who will direct the storm ? Who 
 
A LEADEE OF THE WHIG PARTY 93 
 
 does not know how this country has been shaken to its 
 very centre by the Missouri agitation?" It is worth 
 while to quote entire this solemn, prophetic conclu 
 sion of a far-seeing mind : 
 
 " As a political institution I shall never argue the 
 question of slavery here. I plead to the jurisdiction. 
 The subject belongs exclusively to the States. There 
 the Constitution wisely left it ; and there Congress, if 
 it acts wisely, will let it remain. Whether the South 
 will submit to the threatened proscription, it is not my 
 province to say. The language of defiance should 
 always be the last alternative. But as I value this 
 Union, and all the blessings which its security and 
 permanency promise, not only to the present but com 
 ing generations, I invoke gentlemen not to put this 
 principle to the test. (I have great confidence in the 
 strength of the Union, so long as sectional feelings and 
 prejudices are kept quiet and undisturbe<i so long as 
 harmony is preserved amongst the States.) But I have 
 no disposition to test its strength by running against 
 that rock upon which Mr. Jefferson predicted we 
 should be finally wrecked. And the signs of the 
 times, unless I greatly mistake them, are not of a 
 character to be left unheeded. With virtue, intelli 
 gence and patriotism on the part of the people ; and 
 integrity, prudence, wisdom, and a due regard to all 
 the great interests of the country on the part of our 
 rulers, a bright and glorious destiny awaits us. But 
 if bad counsels prevail ; if all the solemn admonitions 
 of the present and the past are disregarded; if the 
 policy of the administration is to be carried out ; if 
 Mexico, the * forbidden fruit/ is to be seized at every 
 hazard, I very much fear that those who control public 
 affairs, in their eager pursuit of the unenviable distinc 
 tion of despoiling a neighboring republic, will have 
 the still less enviable glory of looking back upon the 
 shattered and broken fragments of their own con 
 federacy. And instead of gloating over the ruins of 
 
94 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 the ancient cities of the Aztecs, they may be compelled 
 to turn and behold in their rear another and a wider 
 prospect of desolation, carnage and blood." 
 
 Probably it was such utterances as this that caused 
 the Georgia Journal and Messenger of August 30, 1848, 
 to declare that the Whigs of the seventh district had 
 t i done themselves infinite honor " by placing Stephens, 
 "the bold, daring, chivalrous defender of Southern 
 rights," again before the people for reelection. In a 
 private letter written just before the quoted speech 
 was delivered Stephens suggests that " perhaps Polk 
 in starting one war may find half a dozen on his 
 hands," and adds, referring to the " dark and gloomy 
 prospect" as regards any adjustment of the sectional 
 difference connected with the slavery question: "I 
 hope for the best while I fear the worst." Curiously 
 enough, he writes later of curing his melancholy of 
 this period by reading Burton s Anatomy of that dis 
 temper, jocosely referring to his absorption of the 
 mental pabulum provided by the pedantic sixteenth 
 century writer as a resort to " homoeopathic practice." 
 
 After the election of 1848 trouble began for the 
 Southern Whigs who found it increasingly difficult to 
 agree with the Northern representatives of their party. 
 The sympathy of the latter for the Abolition move 
 ment became more and more manifest. The final 
 absorption of the Northern Whigs into the growing Free 
 Soil or Republican party was already indicated by the 
 events of the hour. This party in 1844 had polled for 
 its first candidate less than 65,000 votes, but in 1848 
 Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams re 
 ceived nearly 300,000 votes. Its platform repudiated 
 
A LEADER OF THE WHIG PAETY 95 
 
 the Missouri Compromise line and declared that 
 slavery should be prohibited in all territory of the 
 United States where it was not already established. 
 So far as the vexing question was concerned, Southern 
 Whigs were Democrats and Northern Whigs were 
 Free-Soilers. Disintegration was inevitable, although 
 for several years delayed. "Last night in caucus, " , 
 wrote Stephens from Washington on December 2, 
 1849, u we wanted the Northern Whigs to agree not to 
 press the Wilmot Proviso, and not to favor or vote for 
 the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 This they would not do. I believe they are bent on 
 mischief. " He adds that he quitted the meeting as 
 did Toombs and other Southern Whigs. " I told them 
 distinctly," he says, " that I should hold no connection 
 with a party that did not disconnect itself with these 
 aggressive abolition movements." The next day, after 
 extended discussions with some of the Northern Whigs, 
 he reports that they i seem disposed to yield noth 
 ing" and " intend to carry abolition anywhere they 
 can by the Constitution." Even the Northern Demo 
 crats were being converted to the free-soil movement, 
 and sectionalism was becoming intensified. " I find," 
 writes Stephens on December 5th, "that the feeling 
 among the Southern members for a dissolution of the 
 Union if the anti- slavery measures should be pressed 
 to extremity is becoming much more general than at 
 first. Men are now beginning to talk of it seriously 
 who, twelve months ago, hardly permitted themselves 
 to think of it." As for himself, he would not yet 
 "despair of the Republic," but what he saw and heard 
 caused him already to be u prepared for the worst." 
 On January 21, 1850, he writes from Washington : 
 
96 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 " When I look at the causes of the present discontent I 
 am persuaded there will never again be harmony be 
 tween the two great sections of the Union. When Cali 
 fornia and New Mexico and Oregon and Nebraska are 
 admitted as States, then the majority in the Senate 
 will be against us. The power will be with them to 
 harass, annoy and oppress." He feels that there can 
 be no real adjustment of the sectional difference, no 
 matter what nominal compromises may be adopted, 
 and with clear vision perceives that the North will in 
 .the end fully respond to the Abolition impulse, when 
 slavery even in the Southern States will be doomed. 
 "It is a great mistake," he writes in the first month 
 of this eventful mid-century year, " to suppose that 
 the South can stave off this question. We have ulti 
 mately to submit or fight." And so, much against his 
 will, he now speaks of secession as a probability to 
 be reckoned with. "Could the South maintain a 
 separate political organization?" he asks, and goes on 
 to tell his correspondent that he has given much con 
 sideration to this question. i The result of my reflec 
 tion is that she could, if her people be united." Yet 
 when the proposition came up in his own State a few 
 months later, he fought it not less energetically than 
 he did early in 1861 hoping, still hoping to heal the 
 breachr and keep the Union intact. 
 
 Although Stephens displayed strong attachment for 
 the Union in both crises, that of 1850 and 1861, his let 
 ters indicate a greater willingness to yield to the 
 clamor for secession in the former than in the latter 
 year. This was doubtless because in the first instance 
 the prospect of a peaceable separation was more favor 
 able. In 1850 Clay and Calhoun were still active, the 
 
A LEADER OF THE WHIG PAETY 97 
 
 South still dominated to a very considerable extent at 
 Washington, and the growing sentiment of nationalism 
 had by no means assumed the proportions witnessed 
 eleven years later. Only five years before Massachu 
 setts had asserted State sovereignty and virtually 
 claimed the right both of nullification and secession. 1 
 Moreover, the extreme Abolitionists themselves were 
 demanding that the free States should cut loose from 
 the slave States, and bitterly denounced the Constitu 
 tion as being on the side of the latter. It is also true 
 that the desire of the North to maintain the Union 
 for commercial reasons was stronger in 1861 than in 
 1850. But when it was proposed that Georgia should 
 secede in 1861 Stephens was convinced that war would 
 result, and openly said so at a time when few of his 
 friends agreed with him. An inquiry into the condi 
 tions during the two periods forces the conclusion that 
 if the secessionists had been more observant, they 
 would have preferred to make the attempt in 1850. 
 Their movement at that date would not have been 
 challenged with the same determination, and their 
 chances of success in all respects would have been 
 superior. Secession in 1850 was impossible, however, 
 because a sufficient unanimity of sentiment could not 
 be brought about, owing to the vigorous opposition in 
 all the Southern States of such determined Unionists as 
 Stephens and Toombs, of Georgia. 
 
 In a letter, dated February 10, 1850, Stephens refers 
 to the Nashville Convention of November, 1850. "I 
 see no prospects of the continuance of this Union 
 long, he says. l The Nashville Convention will be 
 held. It will be the nucleus of another sectional as- 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 51-54. 
 
98 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 semblage. A fixed alienation of feeling will be the 
 result. The anti-slavery feeling and feeling of dis 
 memberment [secession] may be abated but will return 
 with increased force." 
 
 This Nashville Convention, which is described by the 
 Georgia Journal and Messenger, of August 27, 1851, as 
 "a second Hartford Convention," (being in many re 
 spects similar to that body), and which was attended 
 by delegates from all of the Southern States, not only 
 protested against the admission of California with 
 an anti-slavery constitution and charged the North 
 with an unfair and unwarrantable determination to 
 exclude the South from a share in the territories, 
 but also threateningly asserted the right of sov 
 ereign States to resume an independent and separate 
 existence at will. " If, " continues Stephens, greatly 
 / depressed by the outlook, " we had virtue and patriot- 
 / isin among our people and not demagogism, I should 
 Lliope much from a Southern Confederacy." Twenty 
 days earlier he had spoken hopefully of the South s 
 capacity to maintain a separate political existence, but 
 the actions and characteristics of some of the clamorers 
 for secession apparently had caused him to take a dif 
 ferent view. "We have the ability," he goes on, 
 "the natural position and the resources for a great 
 and prosperous people. All the elements of power and 
 progress are still within reach. But I fear we should 
 I soon degenerate into factions headed by bad leaders 
 /wh would look only to their own distinction." 
 """ these utterances of February, 1850, are of great in 
 terest when viewed in connection with the divided 
 counsels, the factions and the jealousies which did in 
 calculable injury to the cause of the Confederacy of 
 
A LEADEK OF THE WHIG PAETY 99 
 
 1861-5 Stephens himself contributing no little to the 
 confusion and being distinctly an element of weakness 
 on account of his honest but indiscreet and too openly 
 expressed criticisms of his colleagues, particularly of 
 the sentiments and methods of the Confederacy s chief. 
 He now turns for a moment from these perplexities 
 and forebodings, arising chiefly from the hopeless 
 quarrel over slavery, in order to contribute to the 
 happiness of a faithful slave. On March 14, 1850, he 
 wrote to Linton Stephens from Washington as follows : 
 
 " In my letter written at the House to-day I forgot to 
 reply to the request of Googer s Harry to take Eliza 
 for his wife. Say to him that I have no objection. 
 And tell Eliza to go to Solomon & Henry s and get her 
 a wedding dress, including a pair of fine shoes, etc. , 
 and to have a decent wedding of it. Let them cook a 
 supper and have such of their friends as they wish. 
 Tell them to get some l parson man and be married 
 like Christian folks. Let the wedding come off some 
 time when you are at home, so that you may keep or 
 der amongst them. Buy a pig and let them have a 
 good supper. Let Eliza bake some pound cake and 
 set a good wedding supper. 
 
 Shortly after this marriage Stephens purchased the 
 dusky bridegroom as a kindness to the bride, and un 
 til his death thirty years later " Harry Stephens " 
 acted as his master s faithful and much-esteemed body 
 servant half of that time as a slave and the other half 
 as a free man. When the writer of this biography vis 
 ited Stephens s old home, " Liberty Hall," in 1904, the 
 widowed Eliza was still living and occupied a com 
 fortable two- story house and lot which Stephens had 
 
 1 James D. Waddell, Life of Linton Stephens, p. 96. 
 
100 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 assigned to his body servant and cook after they were 
 emancipated, telling them that they might pay him 
 whatever they felt they could afford. It appears that 
 this was really a gift and was accepted as such, although 
 Harry and Eliza, for a few years after the war, rela 
 tively speaking, were richer than their former master. 
 They had saved considerable money during many years 
 from tips given them by guests. Eliza stated, for 
 example, that the princely Eobert Toombs, a constant 
 visitor, never failed to give her two dollars when he 
 took his leave. It is related that the faithful Harry 
 offered to lend his master money when the latter was 
 arrested and, without time for preparation, was carried 
 off to Fort Warren as a political prisoner in 1865. 
 
 As the kindly relationship between master and serv 
 ant was as real as any other phase of the slavery regime, 
 the evidence volunteered by Eliza Stephens, a typical, 
 coal-black " mammy " of the old South, is not without 
 historical interest. She spoke of her former master no 
 less affectionately than reverently and declared that he 
 was the " best" man in the world. "Ef he ain t in 
 heaven," she said, " tain t no use for anybody else to 
 try to git dere." She declared there was never a time 
 when she was not ready to " work her fingers off, 7 in 
 order to win his praise of her industry. She stated 
 that she had belonged to him ever since she was six 
 years old, and during all the long period he had < l never 
 said a cross word." She delighted to talk of the " big 
 dinners" at u Liberty Hall " in former times, which 
 were of three kinds : those that the master allowed the 
 servants to give their friends at intervals, without 
 restriction as to cost 5 those of the barbecue variety for 
 the white people of the countryside, for whom a whole 
 
A LEADER OF THE WHIG PAETY 101 
 
 beef, lambs, pigs and chickens were slaughtered ; and 
 those of a more private and social character in honor 
 of General Toornbs, Governor Johnson and other dis 
 tinguished persons, with delicate as well as sumptuous 
 dishes, and a half-dozen wine glasses at the plate of 
 each guest. The narrator was particular to state that 
 her hero had never been known to " say a cuss word," 
 or even to make an ill-natured remark, whatever the 
 provocation. Heard in a period when the two races 
 are continually drifting farther apart in sympathy, the 
 fond reminiscences of this faithful old servitor were of 
 the nature of echoes from an almost forgotten past. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 
 
 IN 1850 there were in the North, including Oregon 
 and California, 13,269,149 whites, 196,262 free blacks, 
 and 262 slaves 26 of the latter being in Utah and 
 236 in New Jersey. In the South, including the Dis 
 trict of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and 
 Missouri, there were 6,283,965 whites, 238,187 free 
 blacks, and 3,204,057 slaves. These figures show how 
 important to the South, and how relatively unimpor 
 tant to the North, on the material side, it was to secure 
 the maintenance of the institution of slavery, not only 
 in the States where it already existed, but in new terri 
 tory where it might exist. . For if the area of slavery 
 did not grow as the country grew, it would soon be 
 confined to a comparatively small section, its repre 
 sentatives would be outvoted at every point, and the 
 institution itself would eventually be doomed, although 
 from the outset recognized by the Constitution and 
 fortified by law. This explains the long and bitter 
 contest over the question of the extension of slavery 
 into the territories, and accounts for the growing con 
 viction that the Southern States must ultimately sur 
 render the institution or retire from the Union. 
 
 Neither North nor South was now satisfied with the 
 Missouri Compromise making 36 30 the dividing line 
 westward between free labor and slave labor. Nor 
 was either section satisfied to leave the question to the 
 
SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 103 
 
 States and territories themselves, although this was the 
 original Southern position, and was often reasserted. 
 On the one hand the Wilmot Proviso sought to give 
 Congress the right to prohibit slavery in all the terri 
 tories and to deny the right of the people thereof to 
 choose in favor of slavery. On the other hand, Cal- 
 houn in 1847 introduced in the Senate resolutions con 
 taining a provision against the enactment of any law 
 which should directly or indirectly " deprive the citi 
 zens of any of the States from emigrating with their 
 I propp.rty into any of the territories of the United 
 ^States." Such was the apparently irreconcilable sec 
 tional difference when, in 1849, California asked for 
 admission under an anti-slavery constitution, and 
 when, in 1850, Clay offered his compromise measures. 
 How ably and determinedly the South fought against 
 any further inequality in numbers between the free and 
 slave States appears from the fact that the admission 
 of California was debated by Congress for ten months. 
 Stephens described the Compromise of 1850 as " an 
 agreement on the part of the slaveholding States to 
 continue in the Union, in consideration of these re 
 newed pledges on the part of the non-slaveholding 
 States, through their members and senators, to abide 
 by the Constitution." These " renewed pledges" 
 were involved in the acceptance of Clay s proposal to 
 admit California, and to establish territorial govern 
 ments in New Mexico and the rest of the area acquired 
 from Mexico without any provision for or against 
 slavery; to declare that it was " inexpedient " to 
 abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but " ex 
 pedient to place restrictions on the selling of slaves 
 there j to pass a new and more effective fugitive slave 
 
104 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 law, and formally to deny that Congress had any 
 power to obstruct the slave trade between the States. 
 
 We must take note in passing of an utterance of 
 Calhoun and one of Webster, in the debate on the 
 Compromise of 1850, because of their bearing on what 
 followed. The former brushed aside the tissue of 
 evasions offered by temporizing politicians and laid 
 bare the real conditions in the more powerful Northern 
 section which already threatened the doom of slavery 
 in the weaker. "In a short time," he said, " after 
 the commencement of their [the Abolitionists ] first 
 movement they had acquired sufficient influence to 
 induce the legislatures of most of the Northern States 
 to pass acts which, in effect, abrogated the clause in 
 the Constitution providing for the delivery up of fugi 
 tive slaves." He charged that the great body of both 
 parties in the North, "although disavowing the 
 Abolitionists, have cooperated with them in almost all 
 their measures. 7 He said the issue was in the hands 
 of the more powerful section ; would the North do 
 that justice which was imperative if the Southern 
 States were to remain in the Union i with safety and 
 | honor" ? He prophesied a dissolution of the Union, 
 unless Congress refused altogether to take jurisdiction 
 in the matter of slavery, and he solemnly concluded : 
 1 The South has no compromise to offer but the Consti 
 tution. 7 
 
 In his Constitutional View of the War 1 Stephens 
 quotes from a pamphlet copy of a speech delivered by 
 Daniel Webster at Capon Springs, Va., June 28, 1851, 
 as follows: "If the Northern States refuse wilfully 
 and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the 
 1 Vol. I, p. 405. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 ; JT { 
 SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 105 
 
 Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive 
 slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South 
 would no longer be bound to observe the compact [of 
 Union]. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and 
 still bind the other side. 7 In his speech in the Senate 
 on March 7, 1850, three days after Calhoun had spoken, 
 Webster did not go as far as this, but he frankly ad 
 mitted that the Southern States had just cause for com 
 plaint. He said : 
 
 " There has been found among individuals and leg 
 islatures a disinclination to perform fully their Consti 
 tutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound 
 to service who have escaped into the free States. In 
 that respect, the South, in my judgment, is right, and 
 the North is wrong. Every member of every Northern 
 legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in 
 the country, to support the Constitution of the United 
 States ; and the article of the Constitution which says 
 to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from 
 service is as binding in honor and conscience as any 
 other article. ... I desire to call the attention 
 of all sober-minded men at the North, of all conscien 
 tious men, of all men who are not carried away by 
 some fanatical idea or some false impression, to their 
 Constitutional obligations. I put it to all the sober 
 and sound minds at the North as a question of morals 
 and a question of conscience. What right have they 
 in their legislative capacity, or in any other capacity, 
 to endeavor to get round this Constitution, or to em 
 barrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the 
 Constitution to the persons whose slaves escape from 
 them? None at all, none at all. ... I repeat, 
 therefore, sir, that here is a well grounded complaint 
 against the North, which ought to be removed." 
 
 A similar appeal was made by President Buchanan 
 in his message of December, 1860, referring to the 
 
106 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Constitution-nullifying " personal liberty" enact 
 ments of the New England and other Northern States 
 intended to make the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 of 
 no effect. Had Daniel Webster known on March 
 7, 1850, all that James Buchanan knew in December, 
 1860, his language would no doubt have been even 
 more emphatic. Webster s speech was plainly in 
 tended to check the violence of the anti-slavery move 
 ment and thus to save the Union, and certainly it was 
 largely due to him that Clay s compromise measure 
 was accepted and temporarily sustained in the North. 
 How real was the danger of secession in 1850, and 
 how much the thought of it was in men s minds, may 
 be seen from the testimony of the single fact that 
 President Taylor, in his message of December, 1849, 
 urged the fostering of " attachment to the Union of 
 States," declaring that "its dissolution would be the 
 greatest of calamities, and to avert which should be 
 the study of every American." 
 
 The Georgia Journal and Messenger, of August, 1850, 
 referring to a speech by Stephens at Warrenton, 
 credits him with saying that he had no sympathy with 
 those demanding a dissolution of the Union at that 
 time, although there might be a time to come when 
 the encroachment of the general government on the 
 rights of the States would compel aggrieved States to 
 withdraw. But the threatened dangers had now been 
 warded off, and he was not without hope that they 
 might continue to be. l i He thought our present gov 
 ernment, if properly administered, was the best in the 
 world" and he was "not in favor of dissolution for 
 any existing evils." 
 T? The strength of the Union sentiment in Georgia at 
 
SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 107 
 
 (this time will surprise the inquirer accustomed to the 
 supposition that a disunion attitude was more or less 
 common in the South for many years prior to 1861. 
 This is shown in the Georgia Resolutions of 1850, al 
 though these distinctly threaten secession as a last re 
 sort. It is also manifested in the State election of 1851, 
 and in the utterances of the newspapers in both years. 
 The Macon Journal and Messenger, of September 11, 
 1850, commented bitterly on a report that "the form 
 of government for a Southern Confederacy has already 
 been fixed upon by certain disunionists," and on 
 September 18th the same newspaper said : 1 l Since the 
 mask has been drawn from the disunion project in 
 Georgia it is astonishing how bold and denunciatory its 
 advocates have become. Some of the presses seem to 
 be edited by infuriated madmen and the public speakers 
 deport themselves like men partially demented. 
 They have no spirit of toleration, but fiercely denounce 
 as cowards and traitors all who do not rally under the 
 bloody flag of disunion." 
 
 The Athens Banner of September 19, 1850, pro 
 claimed "unceasing hostility" toward the disunion- 
 ists " until they shall ground the arms of their rebel 
 lion against a government fraught with more blessings 
 not only to its citizens, but to the whole human race, 
 than any in the records of history." "We take our 
 stand boldly for the Union as it is and call upon all 
 lovers of rational liberty to rally to its banner in this 
 its hour of peril. . . . We know no party but that 
 of * the Union upon the basis of the late Congressional 
 adjustment of the territorial and slavery questions/ 
 Such is the faith by which we shall live or die." 
 
 The Macon Journal and Messenger, of February 19, 
 
108 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 1851, is pleased to quote a legislative member on "the 
 absurdity of secession" as follows : " Louisiana was 
 purchased of France and paid for by the United States, 
 but by the right of secession the State of Louisiana 
 could go out of the Union the next day after she had 
 been purchased for the express benefit of the Union. 
 She could establish an independent government and 
 tax all the produce of the United States passing down 
 the Mississippi Eiver." The secessionists of the new 
 States found it more difficult to meet this argument 
 than those of the States included among the original 
 thirteen. A month earlier the same newspaper gladly 
 announced that the North Carolina " House of Delegates 
 has by a vote of thirty-one to sixteen rejected a res 
 olution affirming the right of a State to secede." 
 Such was their enthusiasm for the Union that the Mari 
 etta Helicon and the American Whiff, both of Georgia, 
 changed their names to the Constitutional Union, and 
 the American Union, respectively. 
 
 The Georgia Journal and Messenger, of May 21, 1851, 
 astutely observed : "They [the secessionists and Abo 
 litionists] agree in all points except one ; and upon that 
 they are aiming at the same end for opposite reasons. 
 fThe Abolitionists declare that disunion will destroy 
 \ slavery the secessionists contend that it will perpet- 
 luateit!" And after quoting from the resolution of 
 the Southern Eights Convention of South Carolina, 
 holding "the right of secession to be essential to the 
 sovereignty and freedom of the States of this Confeder 
 acy," the Journal and Messenger cites the following 
 from the resolutions of the Abolition convention at 
 Syracuse, N. Y. : "Eesolved, That odious as has 
 been the government principle of South Carolina for 
 
SECESSION AGITATION OP 1850-1 109 
 
 the last twenty years, we cannot withhold from her 
 the praise justly due to her consistent maintenance of 
 the great cardinal doctrine of the right of secession by 
 the single State a_dojctHti^i^aHirribertxan4 the only 
 safeguard of the several sovereignties from the 
 tyranny of a grasping centralization." 1 The Journal 
 and Messenger of August 27, 1851, refers to a descrip 
 tion in the Eichmond Enquirer, date of December 10, 
 1808, of a gathering of the electors of Virginia (as 
 sembled to cast their vote for Jefferson) at Swan 
 Tavern in Eichmond, the Madison corresponding com 
 mittee and the governor of the State being their guests. 
 At this historic meeting, it appears, bumpers were 
 enthusiastically emptied in honor of this toast : " The 
 Union of States ; the majority must govern ; it is treason to 
 secede. 71 Commenting, the Journal and Messenger, of 
 the date given, says that i i this toast was aimed at the 
 New England secessionists, afterward known as the 
 black cockade Federalists, and the Hartford conven 
 tionists," and sarcastically observes : "All must ad 
 mit the case being altered alters the case, 7 and the 
 theory of secession by a New England State in 1808 is 
 quite a different thing from secession by a Southern 
 State in 1851. . . . The doctrine of secession, 
 therefore, is the doctrine of the old New England 
 Federalists the Hartford conventionists of the black 
 cockade Federalists. It is now the doctrine of the 
 Nashville conventionists, the Syracuse Abolition con 
 ventionists, of the disunionists of South Carolina, and 
 of the McDonald men of Georgia." 
 The Macon Union Banner, of September 6, 1851, 
 
 1 See report of the Syracuse Convention of May 7-10, 1851, in the 
 National Anti-Slavery Standard, of May 15 and 22, 1851. 
 
110 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 argues that l i the Union of States is perfect and perpet 
 ual," and the Savannah Republican a few days later 
 earnestly calls on all lovers of the Union to support 
 Howell Cobb for governor and to make every effort to 
 return a majority of Union men to the legislature. In 
 the presence of the peril of secession " nothing re 
 mains to be done but for the people to rise in their 
 might and with a torrent of indignation signally to re 
 buke at the ballot box the fell spirit of insubordina 
 tion now rife among the fire-eaters, which threatens 
 the overthrow of the government and the total destruc 
 tion of all that freemen hold dear. We verily believe 
 that the issues involved in this canvass are peace, 
 safety and prosperity on the one hand, and on the 
 other secession, revolution and war." 
 
 The utterances of the secession newspapers are 
 equally interesting. The language on both sides was 
 scarcely less bitter than that employed in the North 
 and in the South eleven years later. Georgians who 
 wanted to go out of the Union were guilty of i trea 
 son," while those other Georgians who wanted to stay 
 in were i i traitors to their own people. The Southern 
 Eights party supporting McDonald insisted that the 
 South was degraded by the Compromise Measures. 
 Their platform, based on the Virginia and Kentucky 
 Eesolutions of 1798, asserted the right of secession, op 
 posed the compromise doctrine of non-intervention, 
 and demanded interference by Congress in favor of 
 admitting slavery into the territories. i i We have all 
 ^long contended," said the Columbus Sentinel, of Sep 
 tember 12, 1850, "that the admission of California 
 : would fill to overflowing the poisoned cup of degrada 
 tion which the North has for years been preparing for 
 
SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 111 
 
 the South. . . . We now abandon the Union as 
 an engine of infamous oppression. We are for seces 
 sion, open, unqualified secession. Henceforth we are 
 for war upon the government ; it has existed but for 
 our ruin, and to the extent of our ability to destroy 
 \ it, it shall exist no longer. " 
 
 A communication in the Savannah Georgian, August 
 22, 1851, read as follows : "It is the highest duty of 
 patriotism to wage an undying hostility to this Union. 
 It has failed, most signally failed, to accomplish the 
 instead of being a blessing to 
 
 us, it is a curse ; instead of being a sheet anchor of our 
 liberties, it is a machine of oppression. The Union 
 is even now virtually dissolved. Nearly all the cords 
 that bound the States together are broken, and the 
 few that remain are wearing smaller and weaker every 
 day." 
 
 Stephens was spoken of contemptuously as " one of 
 the orbs of Union Whiggery," his influence and in 
 cessant activity, as well as that of Toombs, being em 
 ployed to bring about the election of the Union candi 
 date for governor, Howell Cobb, and a Union legis 
 lature. The Georgia Journal and Messenger, of Sep 
 tember 24, 1851, refers to his " masterly vindication of 
 the Compromise Measures and of the Georgia plat 
 form " in a recent speech, wherein he also "paid a 
 glowing tribute to the Union" as "the freest, the best 
 and most glorious government on earth." The result 
 of the election in the fall of 1851 was a majority of 
 18,000 for the Unionists over the Southern Eights 
 party in Georgia, such being the absorbing interest in 
 the single issue that the Democratic and Whig parties 
 temporarily ceased to exist. So complete was the vie- 
 
112 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 tory that the Georgia Journal and Messenger, December 
 3, 1851, felt at liberty to scoff at the defeated secession 
 ists as the "Bull Frog Kegency," the " Coffin Begi- 
 ment, 77 etc. It is to be remembered, however, that 
 the secessionists in Georgia and the other Southern 
 States were largely disarmed by the promise of the 
 Compromise Measures to redress the more serious of 
 the grievances complained of by the South. More 
 over, it is necessary to look in the report and resolu 
 tions of the Georgia convention of 1850, rather than in 
 the newspaper utterances of either side, to find the 
 genuine and sober convictions of the people of the 
 State as a whole. 
 
 Henry Clay and the other leaders had signed and 
 published a paper drawn up by Stephens declaring 
 their intention of supporting no candidate for office 
 who would not espouse the principles established by 
 the Compromise, 1 and an earnest and successful effort 
 was made to have these principles affirmed by the 
 Georgia State convention, called in December, 1850, 
 for the purpose of deliberating on the admission of 
 California. Delegates from the entire State were 
 present at this gathering, Stephens and Toombs repre 
 senting the counties of Taliaferro and Wilkes, re 
 spectively. The report of this convention declared 
 that the only escape from the peril now threatening 
 the Union of States was in that " spirit of mutual con 
 cession which gave birth to the Constitution, and 
 which in times past had adjusted more than one con 
 troversy threatening dissolution. 77 a After an inquiry 
 as to whether Georgia, u consistent with her honor, " 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 258. 
 
 2 Pamphlet copy of Report of Georgia State Convention of 1850. 
 
SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 113 
 
 could accept the general scheme of pacification, the 
 advantages of which were discussed, the report reads : 
 u Georgia, then, will abide by the recent action of 
 Congress, in hopeful reliance that the people of the 
 non-slaveholding States will yield acquiescence in and 
 faithful adherence to, that entire action. To this 
 course she is impelled by an earnest desire to per 
 petuate the American Union, and to restore that peace 
 and harmony upon which its value to herself, to her 
 Confederates, and to mankind, essentially depends. " 
 The report expressed the fear, however, that the pros 
 pects of permanent peace were not bright, owing to the 
 " aggressive spirit " of the people of the non-slave- 
 holding States, to whom was addressed this dignified 
 and solemn appeal : 
 
 "We deem this an appropriate occasion for the 
 sovereign people of Georgia to commune with the sov 
 ereign people of those States. We would address to 
 them the language of calm and frank remonstrance, 
 rather than of defiance and menace. We would re 
 call them to the faithful discharge of their duty, as Con 
 federates, by an appeal to their reason and their moral 
 sense. . . . Let them give heed to the warning 
 voice of one of the Old Thirteen. She would say to 
 them : Be not deceived, the destiny of the Union is 
 in your hands. Awake from your fatal dream of 
 security. In the integrity of your patriotism and the 
 strength of your united action, rise up against this 
 disorganizing heresy. Assemble in the venerated hall 
 wherein your forefathers and our forefathers signed 
 the Constitution, and redeem the City of Brotherly 
 Love from the reproach of nourishing its foe. Go up 
 to Tammany and the Tabernacle and expel from the 
 National Emporium the genius of discord. Convene 
 in the time-honored Faneuil, and in the name of Wash- 
 
114 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 ington exorcise the evil spirit from the Cradle of 
 American liberty. Everywhere, East, North, West, 
 decree its banishment from the high places of power. 
 You owe the country this lustration. As for Georgia, 
 her choice is fraternity and Union with Constitutional 
 rights her alternative, self-preservation by all the 
 
 \ means which a favoring Providence may place at her 
 
 \\disposal." 
 
 The report also cited the grievances of the Southern 
 States, including not only Northern State repudiation 
 of the Constitutional requirement of the surrender of 
 fugitive slaves and hostile legislation by the majority 
 in Congress, but the "mischievous intermeddling" 
 with the negro, who, when not thus tampered with, 
 " is contented and attached to his master." The Con 
 stitution is described as " a bond of political union 
 between separate .sovereignties." Both the Northern 
 and Southern States entered into "this compact" with 
 the understanding that slavery was to be protected, 
 and therefore "Georgia now charges upon the non- 
 si aveholding States infidelity to this stipulation in the 
 compact, instancing t i the existence within her bor 
 ders of organized societies avowedly devoted to the 
 annihilation of an institution inwrought with the 
 framework of her social system." The report also 
 complains of a new school of political ethics l i affecting 
 a morality purer than that of the Apostle Paul who 
 sent back the absconding Onesimus to his master ; a 
 philanthropy more sublimated than that of the angel 
 who, meeting the fugitive Hagar in the wilderness, 
 1 said unto her, Eeturn to thy mistress and submit thy 
 self under her hand. Under the auspices of this school 
 new doctrines have been promulgated, public opinion 
 

 SECESSION AGITATION OF 1850-1 115 
 
 perverted or overawed, the arm of the law paralyzed, 
 and even the records of certain States dishonored by 
 enactments prohibiting that to be done which the Con 
 stitution commands." 
 
 The resolutions adopted in this historic State con 
 vention read as follows : 
 
 " To the end that the position of this State may be 
 clearly apprehended by her Confederates of the South 
 and the North, and that she may be blameless of all 
 future consequences, 
 
 u Beit Resolved by the People of Georgia in Convention 
 assembled, 
 
 i First, That we hold the American Union secondary 
 in importance only to the rights and principles it was 
 designed to perpetuate. That past associations, present 
 fruition, and future prospects will bind us to it so long 
 as it continues to be the safeguard of those rights and 
 principles. 
 
 * i Second, That if the thirteen original parties to the 
 compact, bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while 
 their separate interests were in embryo, their peculiar 
 tendencies scarcely developed, their Bevolutionary 
 trials and triumphs still green in memory, found Union 
 impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of this 
 day may well yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion 
 and policy, to preserve that Union which has extended 
 the sway of republican government over a vast wilder - 
 ness to another ocean, and proportionally advanced 
 r civilization and national greatness. 
 
 " Third, That in this spirit the State of Georgia has 
 maturely considered the action of Congress, embracing 
 a series of measures for the admission of California into 
 the Union, the organization of territorial governments 
 for Utah and New Mexico, the establishment of a 
 boundary between the latter and the State of Texas, 
 the suppression of the slave trade in the District of 
 Columbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves and 
 
116 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 (connected with them) the rejection of propositions to 
 exclude slavery from the Mexican Territories, and to 
 abolish it in the District of Columbia ; and, while she 
 does not wholly approve, will abide by it as a perma 
 nent adjustment of this sectional controversy. 
 
 " Fourth, That the State of Georgia, in the judgment 
 of this Convention, will and ought to resist, even (as a 
 last resort) to the disruption of every tie which binds 
 her to the Union, any future act of Congress abolishing 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, without the con 
 sent and petition of the slaveholders thereof ;. or any 
 act abolishing slavery in places within the slavehold- 
 ing States, purchased by the United States for the 
 erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, navy- 
 yards, and other like purposes ; or any act suppressing 
 the slave trade between slaveholding States j or any 
 refusal to admit as a State any Territory applying, 
 because of the existence of slavery therein ; or any act 
 prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the Terri 
 tories of Utah and New Mexico ; or any act repealing 
 or materially modifying the laws now in force for the 
 recovery of fugitive slaves. 
 
 " Fifth, That it is the deliberate opinion of this Con 
 vention that upon the faithful execution of the 
 Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper authorities depends 
 the preservation of our much -loved Union. " 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 NULLIFICATION AT THE NORTH 
 
 THE Constitutional Union party, which carried 
 Georgia against secession in 1851, represented a very 
 earnest movement to preserve the Union and at the 
 same time to maintain intact the rights guaranteed the 
 slaveholding States under the Constitution. With the 
 Clay Compromise and the Georgia Resolutions as its 
 platform, it now sought to perpetuate itself. Its mem 
 bers, composed largely of Whigs and partly of con 
 servative Democrats, were dissatisfied with both the 
 old parties, and in their convention of April, 1852, 
 they resolved to stand apart and support no candidate 
 for the presidency who did not recognize the Com 
 promise Measures as a final settlement of the questions 
 involved. So decided was the majority against send 
 ing delegates to the Baltimore convention of the Whig 
 party, which nominated Winfield T. Scott, that no 
 proposition to that effect was introduced. Stephens, 
 Toombs and Hill were all unwilling to support Gen 
 eral Scott because, as the first named explained, he 
 avoided endorsing the Compromise Measures and be 
 cause he suffered his name to be held up as a candi 
 date for the presidency in Pennsylvania and Ohio by 
 the open and avowed enemies 7 of those measures. 
 The standard bearers chosen by the Constitutional 
 Union or Independent Whig party were Daniel 
 Webster, of Massachusetts, and Charles J. Jenkins, 
 
118 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 of Georgia, the choice of Webster being no doubt 
 largely the result of his speech in the Senate on 
 March 7, 1850, in favor of the Compromise. 
 
 Reflecting the feeling among Southern Whigs, the 
 Georgia Journal and Messenger, of January 8, 1852, 
 declared that the regular Whig party at the North had 
 "already been subsidized," and that General Scott 
 would be " sustained by the entire Free Soil and 
 Abolition vote." This newspaper, in the same article, 
 went on to say : "We have strangled disunion ; now 
 let us throttle Abolition in its stronghold. i A union 
 of the South for the sake of the Union, J would be a 
 glorious sight a sight upon which the spirit of Wash 
 ington and the fathers of the Union would look down 
 with ineffable delight." After the convention of the 
 Independent Whig party, in the same newspaper, of 
 the date of April 28, 1852, appeared this interesting 
 I editorial statement: "The organization of the Consti- 
 { tutional Union party is the beginning of a great South - 
 ; ern movement on the true basis. Hitherto the basis 
 of such movements has been too narrow. The sec 
 tionalism and ultraism which have hitherto character 
 ized them, have defeated them, and their leaders have 
 become the representatives of sections and factions. 
 They have alarmed that instinct of devotion to the 
 Union common to the people of the South. Such 
 has been the history of the Southern movements from 
 1832 to 1850 ; and the overwhelming defeat of the 
 Southern Rights party is the last and most convincing 
 proof that devotion to the Union is the strongest pas 
 sion of the people of the South, and that no Southern 
 movement can ever succeed which contemplates the 
 I possible dissolution of the Union." 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOETH 119 
 
 We cannot doubt that this would have proved a true 
 prophecy, if the people of the Southern States could 
 have been assured that their Constitutional rights 
 would remain secure. As Lincoln said to a deputation 
 of freedmen in 1862, but for the presence of the negroes 
 in this country and the sectional conflict thereby 
 brought about there could have been no war. 1 Even 
 as it was, had Daniel Webster been a younger man, 
 had he lived, and had he been able to unite the South 
 ern and conservative Northern Whigs in his support 
 on a non-slavery-agitation platform, the course of his 
 tory, for some years at least, might have been changed. 
 But Webster died on October 24, 1852, the independ 
 ent Whigs were embarrassed, and their movement 
 checked. Such was their devotion to the policy pro 
 posed, however, that Stephens and others, after Web 
 ster s death, actually voted the ticket bearing his 
 name. The struggle to maintain this conservative or 
 ganization had ceased by the end of the second year of 
 its inception, and Stephens, Toombs, and other South 
 ern Whigs who stood for slavery and the Compromise 
 as well as for the Union, found themselves without a 
 party. The Northern Whigs were now hearkening to 
 Seward s "higher law" doctrine, and getting ready 
 to go into the new Eepublican party. The national 
 Whig organization was doomed. The Southern Whigs 
 soon found it necessary either to ally themselves with 
 the Democrats on the common ground offered by the 
 slavery question or to join the "Know Nothing" or 
 American party. Disapproving of the latter, Stephens 
 and Toombs finally became Democrats, but the major- , 
 ity of their associates first went into the Know Nothing 
 1 Lincoln s Speeches, Vol. II, p. 222. 
 
120 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 party which opposed the easy naturalization of foreign 
 ers and insisted on the election of native citizens to 
 office. The electoral vote for Pierce, the Democratic 
 candidate for President in 1852, was 254, while that for 
 Scott, the national Whig candidate, was only forty- two, 
 showing how strong was the influence of Clay and Web 
 ster, and how popular the Compromise, which the 
 Democratic platform unequivocally endorsed. 
 
 Nevertheless opposition to the Compromise Measures, 
 and especially to the new Fugitive Slave Law, grew rap 
 idly to ward vast proportions in the North, the movement 
 being greatly stimulated by the appearance and im 
 mense popular success of Uncle Tom s Cabin, which one 
 of its admirers declared would "make two millions of 
 Abolitionists. " The author wrote of conditions in the 
 slave States from hearsay, the local color was facti 
 tious and unreal, the negro characters were idealized 
 white people with black skins ; but as a denunciation 
 of traffic in human beings the book still impresses its 
 readers as one of unusual power, and its influence at 
 the time may be readily understood. Probably no 
 other work of fiction was ever so important a factor in 
 a revolution of public opinion. Already the Abolition 
 ists had grown bolder in their demands and more radical 
 in their speech, and even the utterances from the more 
 moderate element were such as to alarm the South. 
 Seward declared that " there is a higher law than the 
 Constitution," and that "slavery must be abolished." 
 " Bather than tolerate national slavery," said the New 
 York Tribune, "let the Union be dissolved at once, and 
 j then the sin will rest where it belongs." William 
 Lloyd Garrison called for the " overthrow " of a Union 
 which was "a lie" based on " a covenant with death 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOETH 121 
 
 and an agreement with hell." Charles Sumner put 
 the South on notice that " we are bound to disobey" 
 the Fugitive Slave Law. Horace Greeley said i the free 
 and slave States ought to be separated. 7 Joshua E. 
 Giddings looked * l forward to the day when there will 
 be a servile insurrection in the South ; when the black 
 man . . . shall assert his freedom and wage a war 
 of extermination against his master." Wendell Phil 
 lips found the " merit in the Eepublican party " to be : 
 "It is not national ; it is sectional. It is the North 
 arrayed against the South. J J And he exclaimed : * * All 
 hail ! then, disunion." Discussing the cure for slavery, 
 the Independent Democrat, the leading Eepublican 
 newspaper of New Hampshire, said that i i men must 
 foment insurrection among the slaves." Anson P. 
 Burlingame declared that "the times demand and we 
 must have an anti-slavery Constitution, an anti-slavery 
 Bible and an anti-slavery God." 
 
 While the more radical " Liberty Party" of Aboli 
 tionists demanded the suppression of slavery in the 
 South by Congressional decree, the an ti -slavery party 
 of Garrison called upon the Northern States to cut 
 themselves loose from the Southern by seceding from 
 the Union and repudiating that Union s slavery-pro 
 tecting Constitution.-- Afc^k^-sescenteenth annual meet 
 ing of the latter at Syr^duse, N.jY., May 7-10, 1851, 
 with G#^pn presittiagy-it-was "resolved, that as for 
 the Fugitive Slave Law, we execrate it, we spit upon it, 
 we trample it under our feet." Other resolutions were 
 passed declaring not only that there could be no sur 
 render to the ; demon spirit of evasion, procrastina 
 tion or compromise," but that there could be "no<; 
 Union with slaveholders. " H. C. Wright, one of the 
 
122 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 speakers, said that " every moment the Union contin 
 ues as it is, it is an unmitigated curse," and that "the 
 Constitution can never be altered" and "slavery can 
 never be abolished on American soil l i while the Fed 
 eral Union lasts. 7 Garrison himself said : "There is 
 no power under the name of Union that can prevent us 
 from withdrawing to clear our skirts of the guilt of 
 slavery at the South." 1 "The dissolution of the 
 Union [by the anti-slavery forces] is only a question of 
 time," declared H. C. Wright. The proceedings show 
 no opinions differing from those cited. In the strength 
 of this all-pervading passion we see unquestionable in 
 dication that if the South had not separated from the 
 North, the North would eventually either have sepa 
 rated from the South or followed out the still more 
 revolutionary course of repudiating the slavery-pro 
 tecting Constitution and suppressing the institution in 
 the South by the power of the conqueror. Three years 
 later at Framingham, Mass. , on July 4, 1854, the ven 
 erated Constitution, so long regarded as a product of 
 the genius of the fathers of the republic, was burned in 
 the sight of the multitude, and Garrison applied the 
 torch. This act was thus described by Dr. Moncure 
 D. Conway, Garrison s friend and associate, at the one 
 hundredth anniversary of the Abolitionist leader s 
 birth, December 10, 1905 : 
 
 "He held up the Constitution, struck a match and 
 burned it to ashes. Then he said : Let all the people 
 
 *See report of this convention in the National Anti-Slavery 
 Standard, issues of May 15 and 22, 1851. In the issue of July 11, 
 1850, Samuel J. May writes that when we have overthrown the 
 present Constitution of our country we shall labor to establish 
 another government in harmony with the will of God and the equal 
 rights of man." 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOBTH 123 
 
 say * * amen. There were hisses mingled with amens, 
 but there stood Garrison beaming upon us, not excited 
 in face, word or gesture. It was the most picturesque 
 thing I ever saw." 1 
 
 The picturesqueness extended to the language em 
 ployed on that memorable occasion, for according 
 to Dr. Conway, Parker Pillsbury, "an orthodox 
 preacher," described the Democratic party, in his ad 
 dress, as l i the G d est party that ever ex 
 isted "; and "everybody felt like getting up and 
 saying, t Thank you. " Yet Moncure D. Conway was 
 the son of a Virginia slaveholder. At the anniversary 
 meeting in 1905 this Southern Abolitionist, aged 
 eighty-three, quoted Garrison as saying at a banquet 
 in Boston on May 5, 1853, in the presence of a large 
 company including Senators Sumner and Wilson, 
 Auson P. Burlingame, Cassius M. Clay, Horace Mann, 
 and Ealph Waldo Emerson: "Gentlemen, if you 
 have been so fortunate as to find a Union worth pre 
 serving, cling to it. I have not been so fortunate. 
 You will pardon me if I am somewhat lacking in 
 loyalty to the existing Union. " Presumably he 
 wanted a Union based on something better than the 
 Constitution he consigned to the flames a year later. 
 He lived to see a new Union, and a newly interpreted 
 Constitution with amendments thereto adopted in the 
 midst of revolution ; but at the one-hundredth anni 
 versary of his birth, in 1905, the vexing negro question 
 still survived, and there are no present indications 
 , that the problem will be satisfactorily solved even at the 
 | date of a two-hundredth anniversary in the year 2005. 
 
 1 Report of the anniversary meeting in New York Sun, December 
 11, 1905. 
 
124 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 After the death of Clay, Webster and Calhoun, the 
 culmination of the struggle, as witnessed in 1861, was 
 inevitable. The new Northern leaders such as Seward 
 and Simmer were less willing to sustain a slavery-pro 
 tecting Constitution, and the new Southern leaders 
 such as Davis and Toonibs were less determined to 
 preserve a Union wherein the total abolition of slavery 
 was now plainly threatened. To the South it& pro 
 tection and preservation had become not only an im 
 perative necessity but almost a religion. The North 
 on the other hand made opposition to it a matter of 
 conscience, and popular hatred of the new Fugitive 
 Slave Law enacted under the Compromise was no whit 
 modified by the knowledge of the fact that the law was 
 but an elaboration of this clause in the Constitution : 
 
 / 
 
 " No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, 
 under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, 
 in consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be 
 discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be 
 delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such 
 Service or Labour may be due." l 
 
 The spectacular burning of a copy of the Constitu 
 tion and the denunciation of that venerated instrument 
 by radical leaders as "a covenant with hell" alarmed 
 
 1 In this clause " service " was at first written " servitude," and 
 the substitution resulted from objections raised. Cassius M. Clay, 
 the Kentucky Abolitionist, once gave as Madison s explanation 
 that when slavery ceased to exist in this land they did not wish 
 the memory of it to remain on record." If this be an inaccurate 
 quotation from memory, Madison at any rate said, in a letter dis 
 cussing the provision of the Constitution stopping the slave trade 
 after 1808, that " some of the States . . . had scruples against 
 admitting the term slaves into the instrument," and "hence the 
 descriptive phrase, migration or importation of persons. Mad- 
 iavn Papers, Vol. Ill, p. 149 (Lippincott edition, 1865). 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NORTH 125 
 
 the people of the South less than the revolutionary 
 disposition shown by the Northern States as States 
 when they enacted so-called " personal liberty" laws 
 boldly nullifying that clause of the Constitution quoted 
 above as well as the national Fugitive Slave Law. 
 The Constitution decreed that fugitive slaves " shall be 
 delivered up. 7 The Northern States, through legisla 
 tive enactments, virtually responded : t They shall 
 not be delivered up." In 1832 one Southern State 
 nullified the tariff law,fout now a dozen or more North 
 ern States nullified a mandate of the Constitution itself. 
 In Massachusetts the law provided for a trial by jury 
 of alleged fugitive slaves, and that the latter might 
 have the services of any attorney. It forbade the is 
 suing of any process under the Fugitive Slave Law by 
 any legal officer in the State, or the doing of " any 
 official act in furtherance of the execution of the Fugi 
 tive Slave Law of 1793 or that of 1850." It forbade 
 the use of any prison in the State for the same purpose. 
 All public officers were forbidden to assist in the arrest of 
 alleged fugitive slaves, and no officer in the State, acting 
 as a United States commissioner, was allowed to issue 
 any warrant except for the summoning of witnesses, 
 nor allowed to hear or try any cause under the law. 1 
 Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Ehode 
 Island, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other States passed 
 similar laws. New York, New Jersey and Pennsyl 
 vania passed no new laws, their statute books already 
 containing acts (such as those referred to by Calhoun 
 in his speech of March 4, 1850), which they deemed 
 sufficient for the purpose. The other free labor States 
 
 1 B. J Leasing, Cyclopedia of United States History, Vol. II, 
 p. 1084. 
 
126 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 not here named doubtless refrained from new enact 
 ments for the same reason. The declaration of causes 
 accompanying South Carolina s ordinance of secession 
 charged that " the States of Maine, New Hampshire, 
 Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ehode Island, 
 New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, 
 Wisconsin and Iowa have enacted laws which either 
 nullify the acts of Congress or render useless any at 
 tempt to execute them," and that the states of Ohio 
 and Iowa had even refused to surrender fugitive slaves 
 charged with murder. 
 
 It is curiously interesting and significant that the 
 New England States, which received comparatively few 
 fugitive slaves, were more radical than some of the 
 States along the border which received many ; while, 
 on the other hand, the far Southern States which rarely 
 lost slaves were more concerned about a strict law than 
 Kentucky and Maryland which lost many. Not the 
 . recapture of a few slaves but tolerance of slavery was 
 I what the North opposed; not the loss of fugitive 
 slaves, but the uncompromising spirit of interference 
 looking toward the final abolition of slavery on Amer 
 ican soil was what irritated and alarmed the South. 
 But if the legislatures of the border States of the North 
 were less eager to provide Constitution-nullifying en 
 actments than the New England States, their people 
 were as ready to prevent the recapture of escaped slaves. 
 In the old Georgia Journal and Messenger may be found 
 the following dispatch from Baltimore dated Septem 
 ber 12, 1851 : 
 
 " Ed ward Gorsuch and his son Dickinson Gorsuch, 
 two highly respected residents of Baltimore County, 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOKTH 127 
 
 Md., pursued several slaves owned by them to Lancas 
 ter County, Pa., a few days ago. They found the 
 fugitives yesterday in a small house. The marshal 
 accompanied the Messrs. Gorsuch into the house, when 
 the negroes retreated up -stairs armed with muskets. 
 They blew a horn and were soon joined by about two 
 hundred negroes and white persons who fired upon the 
 pursuers, instantly killing Gorsuch and his son and 
 mortally wounding three others. The marshal com 
 manded the white persons who had assembled to assist 
 him to arrest the perpetrators of this outrage. They 
 refused to lend him aid and the fugitives remain un- 
 captured. There is immense excitement throughout 
 the county. It is supposed that the President of the 
 United States must interfere." 1 
 
 Such legal enactments and such occurrences in the 
 Northern States were sufficient to convince every reflect 
 ing mind that the institution of slavery would ere long 
 be imperiled even within the limits of the Southern 
 States themselves. ( The growth of this conviction was 
 accompanied in the South by the growth of the desire to 
 cut loose from a confederation wherein the compact of 
 union was violated. And when the decision to seek 
 separate political existence was determined on, the ob 
 ject was not merely to preserve slavery but to win in 
 dependence and protect all those rights which the orig 
 inal sovereign States had reserved to themselves when 
 they granted limited powers to the central government 
 jointly created by them. This was the prevailing 
 Southern view, even the opponents of secession admit 
 ting the existence of serious grievances. 
 
 The average Southerner saw in the attitude of the 
 
 1 Later advices announced a reward of $1,000 "to convict the 
 guilty parties " offered by the governor of Pennsylvania. 
 
128 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Northern people merely a spirit of outrageous and un 
 warrantable interference. In the North, on the other 
 t lhand, detestation of slavery grew apace, and the orator 
 readily thrilled his audience with expressions of desire 
 and determination to sweep the institution from the 
 North American continent. Outside of the Southern 
 and border States, only in New Jersey and Utah were 
 a few slaves still to be found. A quarter of a century 
 had gone by since the State of New York had abolished 
 the last vestige of slavery and a hundred years had 
 passed since Benjamin Franklin " made many a ven 
 ture in the purchase and sale of negroes," 1 partly pro 
 cured in New England, and announced to the readers 
 of the Pennsylvania Gazette, published at Philadelphia, 
 that by enquiring " of the Printer hereof" they might 
 secure " a Likely Young Negroe Wench," " a Likely 
 Mulatto Girl," a " Likely Young Negroe Fellow," a 
 " Lusty Young Negroe Woman," etc., etc. So the 
 people of the North accepted the exceptional pictures 
 in Uncle Tom as generally typical, shared the horror 
 of the English representative in this country of the 
 London Spectator at the rewards offered in the Balti 
 more newspapers for the capture of yellow as well as 
 black runaways, and could see no better side to an in 
 stitution which, although deplorable in many of its 
 phases, had at least been an industrial training school 
 and had transformed savages into semi-civilized men. 
 They turned a deaf ear and scoffed when Stephens, in 
 his speech on the Missouri Compromise on December 
 4, 1854, declared : " Take them in Africa ; take them 
 anywhere on the face of the habitable globe ; and then 
 take them in the Southern States, and the negro popu- 
 1 Paul Leicester Ford, The Many-Sided Franklin, pp. 319-321. 
 
: 
 
 NULLIFICATION AT THE NOKTH 129 
 
 lation of the South are better off, better fed, better 
 clothed, better provided for, enjoy more happiness and 
 \ a higher civilization than the same race has ever en- 
 ypyed anywhere else in the world. 77 
 
 This was the appearance, if not in every particular 
 the reality ; for the average laughter-loving negro, be 
 fore the days of education, seemed to be contented in 
 almost any situation. Stephens pointed out that from 
 1840 to 1850, while the increase of the free negroes in 
 the North was only a little over ten per cent., the in 
 crease of the slaves in the South was over twenty-eight 
 per cent. He also showed more crime among both 
 races in the North than in the South in proportion to 
 numbers. 1 
 
 Stephens was wise, at such a time, not to go on to 
 suggest the possibility of benefits to the slaveholder 
 other than the financial, as some modern writers have 
 done. " Negro slavery," says Edward Payson Powell, 
 of New York, 2 "had, however, not been without its 
 ameliorating contributions to American history. It 
 had secured a larger range of social sentiments, and 
 prevented the unchallenged dominance of Puritan con 
 ceptions. In Virginia it aided in the development of 
 a class devoted to statesmanship. England and France 
 with their immensely older civilization had no minds 
 to surpass Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison, 
 Calhoun and Livingston. There was a hardness about 
 
 1 Dr. W. H.Wilcox of Cornell University, a government statisti 
 cian, in an address before the American Social Science Association at 
 Saratoga, September 6, 1899, showed that the negroes were nearly 
 three times as criminal in the Northeast and more than three times 
 as criminal in the Northwest, in proportion to nnmbers, as they 
 Xi. were in the South at the time of his estimate. 
 
 5 Nullification and Secession in the United States, p. 370. 
 
 j T/ , r in """" u ~ - - ^ w * |i *" iw *""" 11 " J^UW^IL ifc^^m^"***" 
 
130 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 New England life at the best that was lacking in the 
 South. Hospitality was the first of Southern virtues j 
 economy the first in New England. Channing wrote 
 in 1799 : 1 1 blush for my own people when I compare 
 the selfish prudence of a Yankee with the generous 
 confidence of a Virginian. " It might well have been 
 added that in addition to the development through 
 leisure for culture and through the habit of command, 
 there was an ennobling influence from the sense of 
 responsibility for the welfare of the helpless, as illus 
 trated in the extensive system of missionary work 
 \ among the plantation slaves directed by Bishop Capers, 
 \ofSouth Carolina. 
 
 But no such gains may be considered legitimate when 
 I gathered at the cost of the enslavement of a race, par 
 ticularly when they were more than offset by the injury 
 I done by the institution to the lower class of Southern 
 \whites. Nor could the mention of these gains be 
 expected to do more than excite anger during the stormy 
 decade of 1850-1860. Such was the fierce disapproval 
 among the Northern people at last that they could not 
 listen with patience to the suggestion of manumission 
 with reimbursement to the slave owners, although this 
 was favored by Lincoln to the end, and had been the 
 just plan of Mexico, England, and other governments, 
 when decreeing the emancipation of slaves, and al 
 though the loss to the Southern slaveholders, direct and 
 contingent, was so vast as to be overwhelming. The 
 point was reached where it was desired to punish the 
 people of the Southern States for the existence of an 
 institution for which all sections were originally respon 
 sible, which the South of 1850-60 had inherited and 
 could not be expected to do other than uphold, fearing 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOKTH 131 
 
 that emancipation would mean not merely incalculable 
 pecuniary disaster, but anarchy and possibly a reign 
 of terror. The North was no less unwilling to do jus 
 tice to the South s reasonable apprehensions in the 
 midst of an appalling situation than was the South to 
 admit the strength of the North s moral conviction 
 , against slavery in any form. 
 
 "" The intensity of feeling indicated above, developed 
 jafter the passage, in 1854, of the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
 which reopened the slavery agitation and rendered it 
 more violent than ever before. Part of the area ceded 
 by Louisiana, not covered by the bills providing for 
 Utah and New Mexico, had now been settled and re 
 quired territorial government. Accordingly Stephen 
 A. Douglas introduced a bill to this end agreeable to 
 the spirit of the Compromise Measures of 1850, speci 
 fying that the States which might at any time be formed 
 in the new territory should leave the question of slavery , 
 to be decided by the inhabitants thereof on the adop 
 tion of their constitutions. This was called t i popular 
 sovereignty by the advocates of the bill and i i squat- 
 ter jsoy ereignty J by its opponents the latter term 
 having first been used by CalhounJ.n^ 1848, in de 
 scribing the adventurers who had gone to California as 
 mere t i squatters on the public domain, and contend 
 ing that to recognize their right to set up a government 
 to suit themselves was to assert the doctrine of * l squat 
 ter sovereignty. Those who stood with Calhoun then 
 now took a different view. On the other hand, those 
 who had then contended that California had a right to 
 decide the question of slavery for herself, even in the 
 section below the line of 36 30 she having declared 
 against it now, with Seward and Sumner as their 
 
132 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 leaders, objected to popular sovereignty for Kansas and 
 Nebraska, ignored the Compromise Measures of 1850, 
 and went back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as 
 the "solemn compact" and binding law. 
 
 This would have been consistent if there had been no 
 Wilmot Proviso, no determined effort to go south of 
 the 36 30 line and shut slavery out of all the territory 
 taken from Mexico ; it would have been reasonable if 
 there had been no Compromise of 1850 providing the 
 same thing as popular sovereignty for the Mexican ter 
 ritories. But under the circumstances the complaint 
 that the Kansas-Nebraska bill abrogated the Missouri 
 Compromise was readily answered by the reminder 
 that the old " compact" was already abrogated. It 
 was abrogated, though the fact was not officially stated, 
 when the Compromise Measures of 1850 were adopted 
 through the influence of Clay and Webster, one provis 
 ion securing the admission of California with an anti- 
 slavery Constitution, although part of that State lay 
 south of the 36 30 dividing line. That the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill was in general conformity with the Com 
 promise of 1850, and that the influence of Clay and 
 Webster was still felt, are evident from the fact that this 
 strife-breeding enactment of 1854 was " consummated 
 ; by the cooperation of the North, " was originated by 
 a senator from a free State, 7 was "passed by a 
 Congress containing in each branch a majority of mem 
 bers from the free States, ? and l was sanctioned by 
 the approval of a free State President." Neverthe 
 less it was even more of a victory for the South than 
 was the Compromise of 1850, and the "furious indig- 
 
 1 Baker s Memoir of Wm. H. Seward, pp. 24-27 (Vol. IV of Sew- 
 ard s Works). 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOETH 133 
 
 nation" which "swept the North" may be readily ac 
 counted for. Yet if there was to be any compromise 
 at all between the sections in regard to the introduction 
 of slavery into new territories, there could be no more 
 equitable arrangement and none more in keeping with 
 American institutions than that described by the term 
 " popular sovereignty." 
 
 It will be interesting to note at this point Stephens s 
 dissection of the claim that the North had faithfully 
 abided by the " sacred compact" of the Missouri Com 
 promise for thirty years. In his speech in the House, 
 February 17, 1854, he declared in the first place that 
 the South was " in no sense a party to this Congressional 
 restriction north of 36 30 except as a vanquished 
 party, being outvoted on the direct question ; protest 
 ing against it with all her might and power." A ma 
 jority at the South " always held that clause of the 
 Missouri act to be unconstitutional " ; yet " for the sake 
 of peace and harmony the South did patriotically yield, 
 and was willing for all time to come to abide by it," 
 until the agreement was " shamelessly disregarded by 
 Congress," and it was evident that the North "refused 
 to abide by her own bargain." 
 
 He cited numerous instances in support of this 
 charge. When the admission of Missouri as a State 
 came up in 1821 "the whole South was for letting her 
 be admitted and the entire North nearly was against 
 it," notwithstanding the fact that Missouri s constitu 
 tion was in agreement with the " canonized" Compro 
 mise. In 1836 in the vote for the admission of Ar 
 kansas with a constitution tolerating slavery, i t though 
 she was south of 36 30 , there were fifty-two names 
 under the lead of Mr. Adams in the negative every 
 
134 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 one of them, I believe, from the North. " In the case 
 of Texas, of the 125 Northern votes in the House fifty - 
 one were for the annexation with this line (36 30 ) in it, 
 while there were seventy-four who refused to give it 
 their sanction. Concerning the vote in the case of 
 Oregon in 1847 Stephens said : 
 
 i i From the votes of the House upon what was well 
 known as the Wilmot Proviso, the South had just 
 reasons to apprehend that it was the fixed determina 
 tion of a majority of the North to disregard entirely 
 what is now called the sacred covenant of 1820. 
 When, therefore, the bill to organize a territorial 
 government for Oregon came up in this House on the 
 15th of January, 1847, Mr. Burt, of South Carolina, to 
 take the sense of the North directly upon the question 
 of abiding by this line of 36 30 , moved as an amend 
 ment to that clause in the bill which excluded slavery 
 forever from that territory, these words, inasmuch 
 as the whole of said territory lies north of 36 30 north 
 latitude, known as the line of the Missouri Com 
 promise. The object of this amendment was to put 
 a direct test to the North, whether they intended to rec 
 ognize the principle upon which the controversy on 
 the subject of slavery in the territories was disposed of 
 in 1820 or not. Sir, the North understood the ques 
 tion fully and clearly, and they met it promptly, 
 their response was that they did not. Here is the vote 
 upon this question : there were in this House then eighty- 
 two votes for Mr. Burt s amendment and 113 against it. 
 Of those noes every man was from the North. Every 
 Southern man in the House voted for it." 
 
 In another bill to establish territorial government 
 for Oregon in 1848 the Senate put in an amendment 
 approving the 36 30 line and extending it to the Pa 
 cific Ocean, but in the House there were one hundred 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOKTH 135 
 
 and twenty -one votes against and only eighty- two for 
 this amendment, the yeas being all Southern votes ex 
 cept four. Eeferring to the conflict over the terri 
 tories acquired from Mexico and the determined effort 
 to shut slavery out of the whole, even south of 36 30 , 
 Stephens went on to say : 
 
 "The strife became so embittered and fierce that 
 legislation was paralyzed. The South again repeatedly 
 proposed a settlement upon the Missouri line. The 
 proposition was made in this House, on the part of the 
 South, for the last time on the 13th day of June, 1850. 
 This proposition was rejected in the com 
 mittee of the whole ayes seventy -eight, noes eighty- 
 nine. It was the last time, sir, it was ever offered. 
 When the North had again and again refused to abide 
 by it, the South was thrown back upon her original 
 rights under the Constitution. Her next position was 
 that territorial restriction by Congress should be totally 
 abandoned, not only south of 36 30 but north of that 
 line also. Upon this ground she planted herself on 
 the 15th day of June, 1850. It was on that day I put 
 the question directly to a distinguished gentleman then 
 here from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] whether he would vote 
 for the admission of any slave State into the Union and 
 he refused to say that he would. The determination as 
 manifested by the majority of the North was to apply 
 legislative restriction over the whole of the common 
 territory, in open and shameless disregard of the prin 
 ciples of the so-called Missouri Compromise, notwith 
 standing the gentleman from Vermont says that it has 
 been adhered to and held inviolate for thirty years. 
 . . . It was then that the South planted herself on her 
 original ground. The whole question of slavery was to 
 be left to the determination of the people of the terri 
 tories, whether north or south of 36 30 . The ques 
 tion was to be taken out of Congress where it had been 
 improperly thrust from the beginning, and to be left 
 
136 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 to the people concerned in the matter to be decided 
 for themselves. This, I say, was the position origin 
 ally held by the South when the Missouri restriction 
 was at first proposed. The principle upon which that 
 position rests, lies at the very foundation of all our re 
 publican institutions ; it is that the citizens of every 
 distinct community or State should have the right to 
 govern themselves in their domestic matters as they 
 please, and that they should be free from intermed 
 dling restrictions and arbitrary dictation on such 
 matters." * 
 
 To this was added the very pointed argument, 
 which no doubt helped to pass the bill, that under the 
 popular sovereignty plan for the territories the free 
 States would have an immense advantage over the slave 
 States, owing to the more than double population of the 
 former and consequently their greater emigration to 
 the territories, to say nothing of the foreign immi 
 grants already flooding into the Northwest. Free 
 labor was likely to outnumber slave labor advocates 
 in the territories two to one and their votes could 
 promptly exclude slavery. Why was the North afraid 
 to trust its own people on this question f 
 
 How actively and ably Stephens was engaged in 
 bringing about the passage of the Kansas- Nebraska 
 bill, in addition to his speech in its favor, is suggested 
 by the statement of Baker in his memoir of Seward 
 that on the 22d of May " after a most exciting contest 
 lasting nearly two months, in committee of the whole, 
 Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, by an extra 
 ordinary stratagem in parliamentary tactics, succeeded 
 in closing the debate and bringing the bill to a vote in 
 the House, where it finally passed before adjournment 
 
 1 Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, pp. 394-415. 
 
NULLIFICATION AT THE NOKTH 137 
 
 by a vote of one hundred and thirteen to one hundred. " 
 Eeturned to the Senate on account of amendments, it 
 passed that body again by a vote of thirty-five to 
 thirteen. 
 
 The voting figures for this and the other contests of 
 the period show that the House responded to the 
 popular impulse at the North much more fully than 
 the Senate, the latter, as usual, exhibiting greater con 
 servatism and deference to the requirements of a 
 slavery -protecting Constitution. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 STEPHENS RETIRES FROM CONGRESS 
 
 THE presidential election of 1856 showed that the 
 Whig party was dead. There were voters who still 
 called themselves by that name, but they were few and 
 they did no more than adopt the " Know Nothing" 
 candidates. This party secured only eight electoral 
 votes. The new and rapidly growing Eepublicau 
 party claimed 114, and the Democratic party 174, the 
 latter placing its candidate, James Buchanan, in the 
 Executive Mansion. The important events during the 
 administration of Buchanan were, the continuing 
 struggle in Kansas ; the decision of the Supreme Court 
 in 1857 that as Dred Scott " was a slave when taken 
 into Illinois by his owner, and was there held as such, 
 and brought back in that character, his status as free 
 or slave depended on the laws of Missouri, and not of 
 Illinois," and that he therefore was still a slave ; the 
 Mormon rebellion in Utah, in 1857-59 ; the Lincoln and 
 Douglas debates in Illinois in 1858 on the subject of 
 slavery ; the admission of Oregon in 1859 with a consti 
 tution excluding free negroes from that State ; John 
 Brown s attack in 1859 on the national armory at 
 Harper s Ferry (described in the Senate s report as 
 " an act of lawless ruffians ") with a view to arm the 
 negroes of Virginia and incite them to insurrection ; 
 and finally, the secession of eleven Southern States 
 following the election of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
STEPHENS EETIEES FEOM CONGBESS 139 
 
 It is not within the province of this volume to con 
 sider any of these events in detail, except the last men 
 tioned, the subject calling for attention being the 
 activities of Alexander H. Stephens during this period. 
 One of his speeches in Congress that must be referred 
 to was delivered on January 15, 1855. It was a reply 
 to Mr. Campbell, of Ohio, comparing the prosperity 
 of the latter s State with that of Georgia, and showing 
 the advantage of the slave labor over the free labor 
 State on the material side. This speech caused a sen 
 sation. It is extremely plausible. There is no reason 
 to doubt the accuracy of such statistics as were ob 
 tainable for presentation, and Stephens s honesty is 
 unquestionable ; but, as indicating that the South was 
 more generally prosperous under slave labor than the 
 North was under free labor, it is the reverse of con 
 vincing. In the light of all that is now known, the 
 intelligent Southern reader is more impressed by the 
 showing presented in 1859 by Hinton Eowan Helper 
 in his book, The Impending Crisis, radical and of 
 doubtful accuracy as are some of this Southern Aboli 
 tionist s statements. Son of a slaveholder though he 
 was, Helper saw clearly that Southern material pros 
 perity was one-sided, extending little beyond the limits 
 of the comparatively small class of large planters and 
 slave owners. The latter he estimated at 347,000, and 
 the number in 1860 had not increased beyond 400,000 
 in a population of about 9,000,000, a little over 
 5,000,000 of whom were white. The prosperity of the 
 South under slavery was the prosperity of a dominat 
 ing minority, leaving a white majority that was injured 
 even on the material side by the institution. It was a 
 deceptive prosperity, not wholly unlike that of the 
 
140 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 present in the country as a whole, which is too largely 
 confined to another dominating minority of capitalists. 
 It is unnecessary to give Helper s statistics which 
 proved for the South in general the contrary of what 
 Stephens s statistics proved for Georgia. That a free 
 labor section devoted to manufacturing and intensive 
 farming was richer and more generally prosperous 
 than a slave labor section depending solely on agri 
 culture admits of no argument. It is equally self-evi 
 dent that the Southern white man without the training 
 or ability necessary for the professions, or without the 
 capital wherewith to buy slaves and land, was con 
 fronted, in the matter of slave labor, with a withering 
 competition, which, in the worst circumstances, tended 
 to reduce him to the lowest level ever reached by any 
 representatives of the white race on the American 
 continent. According to Helper, white laborers were 
 paid even less than black when the latter were hired 
 from their owners, and wages in general were a hun 
 dred per cent, lower than in the free States. In 1856 
 he found in North Carolina " sober, energetic white 
 men between twenty and forty years of age engaged in 
 agricultural pursuits at a salary of seven dollars per 
 month including board only," while " negro men slaves 
 who performed little more than half the amount of 
 labor, and who were exceedingly sluggish, awkward 
 and careless in all their movements, were hired out on 
 adjoining farms at an average of about ten dollars a 
 month, including board, clothing and medical attend 
 ance." The same difference was observed in the 
 mechanical trades, and in the case of the women of the 
 two races in domestic service there was an even greater 
 premium placed on the inferior labor of 4 1 negro 
 
STEPHENS EETIEES FEOM CONGEESS 141 
 
 wenches, " however " ungraceful, stupid and filthy " 
 they might be. The explanation given for these extra 
 ordinary conditions was that "the fiat of the [slave] 
 oligarchy has made it fashionable to have negroes 
 around/ and there are many non-slaveholding white 
 sycophants who, in order to retain on their premises a 
 hired slave whom they falsely imagine secures to them 
 not only the appearance of wealth, but also a position 
 of high social standing in the community, keep them 
 selves in perpetual strait." l The proportion of non- 
 slaveholders to slaveholders, according to this au 
 thority, was "six to one" the disparity in the South 
 as a whole was probably not so great yet the domi 
 nating minority controlled all legislation. Helper, who 
 clearly saw, but exaggerated the truth, groaned over 
 the "little the poor white trash, the majority of the 
 Southern people, knew of public measures or the real 
 conditions of the country. 
 
 Stephens would have done well to look into the 
 census reports and ask himself why it was that in 1790 
 Virginia had more than twice the population of New 
 York, while sixty years later New York had more 
 than twice the population of Virginia, and had also 
 forged ahead in all industrial lines. Similar was the 
 story of the two sections as a whole during that period, 
 their population being about equal in 1790 and that of 
 the North being more than double that of the South 
 sixty years later. There is no reasonable explanation 
 other than that the South was cursed by an institution 
 which paralyzed its industries at their birth, holding 
 the entire section to agriculture alone, preventing im 
 migration, and inducing a condition of arrested devel- 
 
 1 Helper s Impending Crisis, pp. 205-6. 
 
142 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 opment. " Commerce," Governor "Wise frankly told 
 the Virginians a year or two before the war of seces 
 sion, " has long since spread her sails and sailed away 
 from you. You have not as yet dug more than coal 
 enough to warm yourselves at your own hearths ; you 
 have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows 
 worthy of gods in your own foundries ; you have not 
 yet spun more than coarse cotton enough in the way 
 of manufacture to clothe your own slaves. You have no 
 commerce, no mining, no manufactures. You have 
 relied alone on the single power of agriculture, and 
 such agriculture ! Your sedge patches outshine the sun. 
 Your inattention to your only source of wealth has 
 seared the very bosom of mother earth. Instead of 
 having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have 
 had to chase the stump -tailed steer through the sedge 
 patches to procure a tough beefsteak." 
 
 The presence of the negro as a slave cursed the South 
 during the first half of the nineteenth century j the 
 presence of the negro as a freeman was scarcely less a 
 curse to the South during the latter half of that cen 
 tury, he being still an effectual bar to immigration. 
 White laboring men from Europe and the populous 
 Northern States have had no mind to face the competi 
 tion which has crushed the Southern i i poor whites J 
 for a century. Eeflecting Southern men of to-day are 
 filled with sadness as they read their grandsires 
 eulogia of an institution which wrought the ruin of 
 the fairest portion of the United States. Opposition 
 to slavery on moral grounds was not the strongest 
 motive that moved the North, whose wiser leaders saw 
 the peril and wished to confine it within bounds, 
 | saving the territories for free labor and white men. 
 
STEPHENS KETIEES FROM CONGRESS 143 
 
 " The white man needs this continent, * said Seward 
 in the Senate on March 3, 1858, and Lincoln, debating 
 with Douglas, declared that the territories should be 
 " reserved for free white people," and become an out 
 let for the surplus population " where white men can 
 find a home a spot where they can better their condi 
 tion." Lincoln spoke for the plain people of the 
 North who were anti-negro rather than anti-slavery in 
 their attitude, and who are anti-negro to this day, 
 resolutely shutting the blacks out of their trade unions. 
 A race, whether Negro or Chinese, whose standard of 
 comfort is pitched on a lower scale and who can there 
 fore labor for lower wages, offers competition which 
 white men will avoid if possible. Lincoln spoke for 
 the same plain people, who wanted no competition with 
 either the slave or the free negro, when, in addressing 
 a deputation of that race in 1862 on the subject of the 
 colonization of the freedmen in some foreign territory, 
 he said : But for your race among us there could 
 not be war, although many men engaged on either side 
 do not care for you one way or the other. . . . It is 
 better for us both therefore to be separated." 1 
 
 We turn with relief from Alexander H. Stephens s 
 deluded utterances on this subject to his other deliver 
 ances at this period that appeal to a reflecting mind. 
 His speech against the Know Nothing movement de 
 livered at Augusta, Ga,, in 1855, was logical, sound 
 and truly American. He showed clearly that the pro 
 posed proscription of foreign immigrants and native 
 Catholics was contrary to every principle established 
 through the revolution of 1776. He had previously 
 decided not to be a candidate for Congress on account 
 
 1 Lincoln s Speeches, Vol. II, p. 154. 
 
144 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 of ill health, but hearing that his decision was attrib 
 uted to the fact that the majority in his district were 
 Know Nothings, accompanied by the insinuation that 
 he feared defeat, he reconsidered and went into the 
 campaign with great energy. It was in this Augusta 
 speech that, after referring to these rumors, he made 
 
 , the by no means idle boast : " I am afraid of nothing 
 on the earth, or above the earth, or under the earth 
 
 \ except to do wrong. The path of duty I shall ever en 
 deavor to travel, fearing no evil and dreading no 
 consequences. I would rather be defeated in a good 
 cause than triumph in a bad one. ... I am again 
 a candidate for Congress from this district. My name 
 is hereby presented not by any convention but by 
 myself. Do with it as each of you may think 
 proper. " 
 
 One of the most exciting campaigns ever known in 
 
 / Georgia followed. In spite of his feeble health, 
 Stephens rode and drove long distances in all weathers 
 to meet his engagements and spoke at many points, 
 denouncing Know-Nothingism in unmeasured terms. 
 Being asked if his denunciations were not too severe, 
 he answered : < i No ; it is a disease, not for plasters, 
 but for the knife." The hold of the new un-American 
 "American" party was strong, but the people ad 
 mired and were readily swayed by Stephens. Even 
 those who were not convinced by him probably agreed 
 with the Georgia Journal and Messenger, which news 
 paper, after criticizing his position, expressed the 
 hope that " no complication of circumstances, or con 
 flict of opinions among us, may deprive us of the benefit 
 of his eminent services in the House of Eepresenta- 
 tives." He was elected by the greatest majority ever 
 
STEPHENS BETIEES FEOM CONGEESS 145 
 
 given him and Know-Nothingism received a stagger 
 ing blow from which it never recovered. 
 
 In his spirited debate with Eepresentative Zollicof- 
 fer in January, 1856, Stephens reasserted the i i popu 
 lar sovereignty" idea, which was originally held by 
 the South and which triumphed in the passage of the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill. " I am," he said, " for main 
 taining the steadfastness of the territorial bills of 1850 
 the principle of leaving the people of the terri 
 tories, without Congressional restriction, to settle this 
 question for themselves, and to come into the Union, 
 when admitted as States, either with or without 
 slavery as they may determine. This principle was 
 recognized and established after the severest sectional 
 struggle this country has ever witnessed, and after the 
 old idea, whether right or wrong in itself, whether 
 just or unjust, whether constitutional or unconstitu 
 tional, of dividing the territories between the sections 
 (by the 36 30 line) was entirely abandoned and repu 
 diated by the party that at first forced it as an alter 
 native upon the other." 
 
 In his speech on June 26, 1856, on the proposal to 
 admit Kansas as a State under the Topeka constitution 
 of the free-staters, who had repudiated the previous 
 pro-slavery legislature and who later were in turn 
 repudiated by the President of the United States and 
 their rival legislature dispersed by national troops, 
 Stephens delivered an interesting defense of slavery, 
 not only on constitutional and legal grounds, but as 
 based on moral and Divine law. He quoted Genesis 
 17 : 13, /" He that is born in thy house and he that is 
 boughtrwith thy money must needs be circumcised," 
 in order to show that Abraham was " not only a slave- 
 
146 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 holder but a slave dealer. " He cited other similar 
 passages from the Old Testament, making much of 
 those declaring that the slaves "forever" of the Is 
 raelites should " be of the heathen that are round 
 about" and providing, on the contrary, that "over 
 your brethren . . . ye shall not rule with rigor " 
 (Leviticus 25 : 44, 45, 46). "Our Southern system," 
 he said, "is in strict conformity with this injunction. 
 Men of our own blood and our own race, wherever 
 born, or from whatever clime they come, are free and 
 equal. We have no castes or classes among white 
 
 TJns statement shows that, like all advocates of the 
 slavery institution as a positive good, he overlooked 
 the injury done the non-slaveholding and laboring 
 class of whites who too often could not rise from the 
 low level to which they had been reduced by the with 
 ering competition of slave labor. He said there were 
 "no castes" in the South, yet there was a wide gulf 
 between the dominating slaveholding minority and the 
 lowest class of " poor white trash," and a caste feeling 
 unlike anything then existing elsewhere in America. 
 
 1 If questioned, however, he would not have defended the South 
 ern trader in slaves. Southern contempt of slave dealers was an 
 unconscious condemnation of the institution so generally defended 
 in the latter part of the slavery regime. Lincoln knew whereof he 
 spoke when in 1854 he said : " You have among you a sneaking 
 individual . . . who watches your necessities and crawls up 
 / to buy your slave at a speculating price. If you cannot help it you 
 sell to him ; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door. 
 You despise him utterly. . . . Your children may rollick with 
 the little negroes but not with the slave dealer s children. It is 
 common to join hands with men you meet; but with him you 
 avoid the ceremony instinctively shrinking from the snaky con 
 tact. Why is this ? You do not so treat the man who deals in 
 corn or cattle or tobacco." 
 
 **s 
 
STEPHENS RETIRES FROM CONGRESS 147 
 
 " Our slaves," he went on to say, " are taken from the 
 heathen tribes the barbarians of Africa. In our 
 households they are brought within the pale of the 
 covenant, under Christian teaching and influence ; and 
 more of them are partakers of the benefits of the Gos 
 pel than ever were rendered so by missionary enter 
 prise. The wisdom of man is foolishness ; the ways of 
 Providence are mysterious. Nor does the negro feel 
 any sense of degradation in his condition. He occu 
 pies the same grade or rank in society that he does in 
 the scale of being ; it is his natural place ; and all 
 things fit when nature s great first law of order is con 
 formed to. 7 Stephens would doubtless have created a 
 stronger impression here if he had said that, as the 
 maj ority of negroes brought to America were slaves in 
 their own country and the sons of slaves, l they were 
 no further degraded but their condition greatly im 
 proved. He quoted the Apostolic fathers as well as 
 the Mosaic laws in favor of slavery. On the whole 
 his extensive deliverance was scarcely as forcible as 
 ,--the single utterance of the Georgia convention of 1850, 
 complaining of a new school of ethics i i affecting a 
 morality purer than that of the Apostle Paul who sent 
 back the absconding Onesimus to his master ; a phi 
 lanthropy more sublimated than that of the angel who, 
 meeting the fugitive Hagar in the wilderness, said 
 unto her, Return to thy mistress and submit thyself 
 under her hand. " 
 
 /-. In his " farewell speech," on his proposed retire- 
 
 - ment from public life, delivered at Augusta, Ga., July 
 
 2, 1859, Stephens rejoiced that the slavery institution 
 
 was apparently more strongly fortified than it ever 
 
 1 Ante, pp. 60-61. 
 
148 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 had been, as a result of the agitations following the 
 Compromise of 1850. " Questions that were doubtful 
 and mooted before these agitations have since been 
 settled," he said " settled by all the departments of 
 the government, the legislative, executive and judi 
 cial," referring to Chief- Justice Taney s decision in 
 the Dred Scott case and the triumph of the " popular 
 sovereignty" plan for the territories. But all this 
 was not enough, he thought, and the advantage gained 
 would be fruitless without "an increase of African 
 slaves from abroad." "It takes people to make 
 States," he said, "and it requires people of the 
 African race to make slave States. You may not ex 
 pect to see many of the territories come into the Union 
 as slave States unless we have an increase of African 
 stock." 2 Having reached the point where he could ad- 
 vocate the reopening of the African slave trade, which 
 had ceased in 1808 by the decree of the Constitution 
 itself, and which had so long been widely condemned 
 even in the South, it was but a step to his glorification of 
 slavery as the l i corner-stone 7 7 of the new government of 
 the Confederate States in 1861. This tentative sugges 
 tion of Stephens in 1859 is the more remarkable in view 
 of the fact that the Constitution of the Confederacy 
 adopted two years later, forbade the reopening of the 
 African slave trade and no proposition to do otherwise 
 was even offered in the preliminary councils. The long 
 conflict, the bitter partisanship, the continued concen 
 tration of attention upon one unhappy subject, had 
 
 1 Cleveland, pp. 646-647. 
 
 2 A few months before the date of this speech the smuggling 
 slaver, Wanderer, sailing under the flag of the New York Yacht 
 Club, had landed 750 negroes from the Congo on the coast of 
 Georgia. 
 
STEPHENS EETIKES FEOM CONGEESS 149 
 
 at last led Stephens though instinctively so generous 
 and humane to a position that would have better be 
 come a statesman of an earlier and less enlightened 
 century. / 
 
 Believing that the Southern position had been grad 
 ually strengthened since 1850, Stephens was the more 
 disappointed at the failure of all efforts to admit Kan 
 sas under the Lecomptou constitution. He blamed 
 Southern representatives for not taking advantage of 
 their opportunities, for their lack of interest and for 
 their neglect of duty. He speaks in a letter of Jan 
 uary 3, 1858, of twenty-two Democrats, thirteen of 
 them from the South, as absent at a critical moment. 
 "Had they been present, " he laments, "we should 
 have saved the question. How shamefully the South 
 is represented ! Some of the Southern members were 
 too drunk to be got into the House." 
 
 The modern reader is inclined to pardon the delin 
 quents for seeking distraction, even in this reprehen 
 sible manner, from an exhausting and interminable 
 sectional controversy. The sectional quarrel, first 
 over the slave and then over the freedman, has lasted 
 for upward of a hundred years. If there had never 
 been a slave or a freedman, and all this wealth of 
 talent and energy had been devoted to the nation s up 
 lift, what might not have been accomplished ! "To 
 mix daily with men who have no patriotism, 7 groans 
 Stephens, " and no object but their own little selfish 
 ends, is disgusting." His sustained enthusiasm and 
 tireless zeal were beyond the reach of the ordinary 
 mortal whom, as usual in impatient moments, he 
 judges too harshly. He declares that he is wearing his 
 life out for nothing and that to seek rest in the quiet of 
 
150 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 his home is imperative. In May of the same year he 
 prophetically declares : c i All things here are tending 
 to bring my mind to the conclusion that the Union 
 cannot last long." 
 
 /It would appear that dissatisfaction with his as 
 sociates, and a sense of the futility of all efforts to 
 prevent the inevitable disruption, as well as his broken 
 health, were concerned in his decision to retire. When 
 he left the capital in March, 1859, he was asked if he 
 did not expect to come back as a senator. " No," he 
 said, " I never expect to see Washington again, unless 
 I am brought here as a prisoner of war." Nor did he 
 see Washington again until October, 1865, when he 
 passed through that city on his way home as a paroled 
 State prisoner after five months of confinement in Fort 
 Warren. On his retirement from Congress, he was 
 tendered a public dinner by the president of the Sen 
 ate, the Speaker of the House and other members of 
 each chamber, without distinction of party, as a 
 testimonial of personal esteem. But he pleaded busi 
 ness engagements and declined the honor. He also 
 had the satisfaction of knowing that he was put for 
 ward in different parts of the country as a candidate 
 for the presidency. His letters show that he cherished 
 no such ambition and that he discouraged the pro 
 posal, forbidding the placing of his name before the 
 Charleston convention. " The Democratic party, " he 
 explained, l i had quite enough men from whom to 
 choose. I did not wish the office. In perfect sincer 
 ity, I should exceedingly dislike to be President. 
 What amazes me in Douglas is his desire to be 
 President. I have sometimes asked him what he 
 desired the office for. It has never yet added to the 
 
STEPHENS EETIEES FROM CONGRESS 151 
 
 fame of a single man. You may look over the list of 
 Presidents : which of them made any reputation after 
 his election ? Four years, or even eight years is too 
 short a time to enable a man to pursue a policy which 
 will be permanent enough to give him reputation." 
 r In a state of physical collapse, disagreeing with his 
 I party associates, and discouraged at the outlook: for 
 Miis section, Stephens was weary of political life.. His 
 letters to his brother Linton show also that me was 
 particularly a prey at this time to that mental torture 
 to which reference has been made. A tour of the 
 Northwest benefited but did not restore his health. 
 Once settled at home, though always a sufferer, he 
 gave continuing attention to his long interrupted law 
 business, until the outbreak of the war, with satis 
 factory pecuniary returns. Unlike many politicians 
 he had made no money at Washington, but the 
 practice of his profession during the two years follow 
 ing his retirement brought him twenty -two thousand 
 dollars. "A rule adopted by him on entering Con 
 gress in 1843," declared his friend R. M. Johnston in 
 1878, "was not to make a dollar in Washington be 
 yond his salary. For all his services rendered to his 
 constituents before the Departments, as well as the 
 Supreme Court, when Congress was in session, receiv 
 ing for them upward of three hundred thousand dol 
 lars, he would never accept a dollar, though com 
 pensation was often urged upon him. He never took 
 a case into one of his State courts while he was in 
 Congress ; though during that period he often ap 
 peared, as an advocate, on trial of causes ; but always 
 refused to engage himself as such advocate, if that 
 duty would conflict with his duties at Washington. 
 
152 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 In this way he made considerable sums, often as much 
 as two thousand dollars at a time ; all of which he 
 devoted to charitable purposes, aiding in building 
 churches and the education of young persons without 
 means." 
 
 Stephens declared in 1859 that he preferred the 
 law to politics, and that he liked " being at home 
 better than either. 7 He fully believed that the polit 
 ical field would know him no more, but destiny ordered 
 otherwise./ 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 HE OPPOSES SECESSION 
 
 OWING to Democratic divisions, there being no less 
 than three tickets in the field against Lincoln, the 
 latter secured 180 electoral votes in the election of 
 1860, while a total of only 123 were received by the 
 three-cornered opposition represented by Bell, Breck- 
 inridge, and Douglas. This result was due to the 
 folly of the Democrats as well as to the vast propor 
 tions to which the anti-slavery movement had now 
 grown. Undoubtedly tens of thousands were at 
 tracted to the Lincoln ticket simply because it was 
 clear that no one of the other three candidates could 
 possibly be elected. If the Eepublicans could have 
 won against an undivided Democracy and a united 
 South, it would have been only by a very .narrow 
 majority. Even as it was, the popular vote for 
 Lincoln was but 1,857,610, while that for the other 
 three candidates was 2,787,780. 
 
 The Democrats split at Charleston on the popular 
 sovereignty question, the policy represented by Doug 
 las. The extremists demanded a plank providing that 
 the choice of slavery or no slavery in the territories 
 should not be left to a majority of the people therein, 
 but that all citizens of the United States should have 
 a right to settle "with their property" in the terri 
 tories " without their rights either of person or prop 
 erty being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or 
 
154 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 territorial legislation." And yet popular sovereignty, 
 or the leaving of the question for settlement to the 
 territories, as to the States, was in agreement with the 
 old Southern position prior to the Missouri Com 
 promise of 1820 ; it was in agreement with Calhoun s 
 demand of non-intervention on the part of Congress ; 
 it was in agreement with the Clay Compromise of 
 1850, and with the policy that prevailed in the 
 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. In 
 fundamental principle it was also in harmony with the 
 home rule and State rights policy so persistently de 
 fended by the Democratic party from the outset. It 
 may be said, therefore, that if the Southern leaders in 
 1860 had been willing to let well enough alone and 
 stand by the South s historic position, instead of as 
 suming a more aggressive and less consistent one, a 
 united Democracy would have supported the policy 
 then represented by Douglas, whether he personally 
 were supported or not./ In speaking out in favor of 
 the Douglas ticket, Stephens was perfectly consistent 
 with his own record and that of the South on this 
 question, f 
 
 Writing on May 9, I860, in answer to a letter from 
 thirteen citizens of Macon, Ga. , asking for his views 
 and his counsel, Stephens said : 
 
 "I assume as an unquestioned and unquestionable 
 fact that non-intervention has for many years been re 
 ceived, recognized and acted upon as the settled 
 doctrine of the South. By non-intervention, I mean 
 the principle that Congress shall pass no law upon the 
 subject of slavery in the Territories, either for or 
 against it in any way that they shall not interfere or 
 act upon it at all, or in the express words of Mr. 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 155 
 
 Calhoun, the great Southern leader, that Congress 
 shall leave the whole subject where the Constitution 
 and the great principles of self-government placed it. 
 This has been eminently a Southern doctrine. It was 
 announced by Mr. Calhoun in his speech in the Senate 
 on the 27th of June, 1848, and after two years of dis 
 cussion was adopted as the basis of the adjustment 
 made in 1850. It was the demand of the South, put 
 forth by the South, and since its establishment finally 
 has been again and again affirmed and reaffirmed as 
 the settled policy of the South by party conventions 
 and State legislatures. ... It was not a new 
 question and, whether rightly or wrongly, it has been 
 decided decided and settled just as the South asked 
 that it should be, not, however, without great effort 
 and a prolonged struggle. The question now is, shall 
 the South abandon her own position in that decision 
 and settlement ? This is the question virtually pre 
 sented by the action of the seceders from the Charleston 
 convention ; or, stated in other words, it amounts to 
 this: whether the Southern States, after all that has 
 taken place, should now reverse their previous course, 
 and demand Congressional intervention for the protec 
 tion of slavery in the Territories as a condition of their 
 remaining longer in the Union ? Shall the South 
 make this demand of Congress, and when made, in 
 case of failure to obtain it, shall she secede from the 
 Union, as /a portion of her delegates (some under in 
 structions and some of their own free will) seceded 
 from the Charleston convention on their failure to get 
 it granted there ! . . . My judgment is against the 
 demand. " 
 
 When interviewed about the same time and asked 
 what he thought of the outlook, in the light of what 
 had occurred at the Charleston convention, Stephens 
 said : " Men will be cutting each other s throats in a 
 little while. In less than twelve months we shall be 
 
156 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 \\ involved in a war, and that the bloodiest in history. 
 Men seem to be utterly blinded to the future." But 
 why, he was asked, would war be inevitable even if 
 the Eepublican candidate should be elected? He 
 answered that there were not enough virtue and pa 
 triotism and good sense left in the country to avoid it. 
 
 " Mark me, when I repeat that in less than twelve 
 months we shall be in the midst of a bloody war. 
 What is to become of us then God only knows. The 
 Union will certainly be disrupted ; and what will 
 make it so disastrous is the way in which it will be 
 done. The Southern people are not unanimous now, 
 and will not be, on the question of secession. The 
 Eepublican nominee will be elected. Then South 
 Carolina will secede. For me, I should be content 
 to let her have her own way and go out alone. But 
 the Gulf States will follow her example. The people 
 are by no means unanimous ; but the majorities will 
 follow her. They are what we will start off with in 
 our new nation the Gulf States following South 
 Carolina. After that the Border States will hesitate, 
 and their hesitation will encourage the North to make- 
 war on us. If the South would unanimously and 
 simultaneously go out of the Union we could make a 
 very strong government. But even then if there were 
 only slave States in the new Confederacy we should 
 be known as the Black Eepublic, and be without the 
 sympathy of the world." 
 
 This was a true prophecy in every particular, even 
 to the last statement. But Stephens 7 s sagacity and 
 clear vision as to this fatal weakness of the South 
 ern Confederacy seemed to have deserted him a 
 year later, when, in a speech delivered at Savannah, as 
 Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 356. 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 157 
 
 and well knowing that what he said would be heard 
 throughout the world, he glorified the slavery institu 
 tion as the " corner-stone " of the new government. 
 
 It is difficult even for the student of the records to 
 understand the intense excitement and alarm caused 
 in the Southern States by the mere election of the first 
 Republican President. The result was brought about 
 by a purely sectional vote, and the country was thus 
 to a greater degree than ever divided into two more 
 or less hostile camps ; but the election was Constitu 
 tional, there was no charge of fraud, and in both 
 houses of Congress the Democrats had secured a ma 
 jority. The slavery -protecting Constitution was still 
 in force and until it was defied at Washington, as it 
 had been defied in the legislatures of the Northern 
 States, there could be no just ground of complaint 
 against President Lincoln and his advisers. Never 
 theless there was a feeling in the South, and the feel 
 ing grew, that his election was the beginning of the 
 end, as it really was. Already many Northern States 
 had nullified the fugitive slave clause of the Constitu 
 tion through their enactment of a personal liberty" 
 laws, and what might not be expected of them now 
 that a President representing the anti-slavery move 
 ment had been elected f Was not the John Brown 
 raid and undisguised Northern sympathy therewith an 
 unequivocal indication of what was to come when the 
 time was ripe and men were ready to act on their con 
 victions ? The Northern States having already violated 
 the compact of Union, clearly there was now no hope 
 that the Southern States could long maintain their 
 Constitutional rights. Not only was the institution of 
 slavery doomed, but a minority of States must here- 
 
158 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 after submit to dictation from a hostile majority in 
 control of the central government. Thus secession ap 
 peared to be the only means of redress, the right of such 
 action being now questioned by nobody at the South, 
 apparently, not even by Unionists like Stephens. 
 Such was the mental attitude and the feeling among 
 the great body of conservatives as well as among ex 
 tremists. Even the "poor whites, 7 although they 
 could not have been unaware of the damage done 
 them by the competition of slave labor, shared the 
 universal dread of the consequences of freeing the 
 negroes and turning them loose upon society, and were 
 instinctively as much inclined to resent interference 
 from the outside as the slaveholders themselves. 
 
 On November 14, 1860, immediately after the elec 
 tion of Lincoln, Stephens was invited to address the 
 Georgia legislature on the situation. Eobert Toornbs 
 had spoken before the same assembly the preceding 
 iiight. "Will you submit to Abolition rule, or re- 
 si st?" he thundered. "I ask you to give me the 
 sword, for if you do not give it to me, as God lives, I 
 will take it myself ! " 
 
 Stephens, on his side, spoke dispassionately and 
 earnestly, denying that the Union had been "a curse 
 up to this time," and pointing out the many and great 
 blessings, and the prosperity, which all the States had 
 enjoyed. He recalled how, in 1832, the tariff question 
 had so agitated the country that South Carolina was 
 ready to nullify or secede because of it ; and yet an 
 equitable adjustment had been brought about, reason, 
 not passion, had triumphed, and "the present tariff 
 was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina." 
 He declared that the election of no man constitution- 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 159 
 
 ally chosen was sufficient cause for any State to sepa 
 rate from the Union. " I do not anticipate, 77 he said, 
 "that Mr. Lincoln will do anything to jeopard our 
 safety or security. He can do nothing unless he is 
 backed by power in Congress. The House of Bepre- 
 sentatives is largely in the majority against him. In 
 the Senate he will also be powerless. There will be a 
 majority of four against him. 7 Speaking of the haz 
 ards of secession and the fate of ancient, disintegrating, 
 republics, he said : 
 
 t i My countrymen, if we shall in an evil hour rashly 
 pull down and destroy those institutions which the 
 patriotic hand of our fathers labored so long and so 
 hard to build up, and which have done so much for 
 us and for the world, who can venture the prediction 
 that similar results will not ensue ? There were many 
 amongst us in 1850 zealous to go at once out of the 
 Union, to disrupt every tie that binds us together. 
 Now do you believe, had that policy been carried out 
 at that time, we should have been the same great 
 people we are to-day ? 77 
 
 He was for seeking redress of grievances within the 
 Union of the fathers, as long as any hope of success 
 existed ; but should there be an end of hope in the 
 face of wilful aggression, "no man in Georgia will be 
 more willing to defend our rights, interest and honor, 
 at every hazard and to the last extremity. 77 He ad 
 mitted that the policy of Lincoln and his Eepublican 
 associates was to t use the power of the general gov 
 ernment against the extension of our institutions, 77 and 
 went on to say : 
 
 "Our position on this point is, and ought to be, at 
 all hazards, for perfect equality between all the States 
 
160 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 and the citizens of all the States in the Territories, 
 under the Constitution of the United States. If Con 
 gress should exercise its power against this, then I am 
 for standing where Georgia planted herself in 1850. 
 These were plain propositions which were then laid 
 down in her celebrated platform, as sufficient for the 
 disruption of the Union if the occasion should ever 
 come ; on these Georgia has declared that she will go 
 out of the Union ; and for these she would be justified 
 by the nations of the earth in so doing. I say the 
 same . . . if Mr. Lincoln s policy should be carried 
 out. I have told you that I do not think his bare 
 election sufficient cause ; but if his policy should be 
 carried out, in the violation of any of the principles 
 set forth in the Georgia platform, that would be such 
 an act of aggression, which ought to be met as therein 
 provided for. If his policy should be carried out in 
 repealing or modifying the Fugitive Slave Law so as to 
 weaken its efficacy, Georgia has declared that she will, 
 in the last resort, disrupt the ties of the Union and I 
 say so, too. I stand upon the Georgia platform and 
 upon every plank of it ; and if these aggressions therein 
 provided for take place, I say to you and to the people 
 of Georgia, be ready for the assault when it comes ; 
 keep your powder dry and let your assailants then 
 have lead if need be. I would wait for an act of 
 aggression. This is my position. " 
 
 Stephens then discussed the action of the Northern 
 States which by legislation had nullified the Fugitive 
 Slave Law based on the well known clause in the Con 
 stitution, and had so long ignored repeated demands 
 for redress of this most serious grievance. 
 
 " Northern States," he said, " on entering the Fed 
 eral compact pledged themselves to surrender such 
 fugitives. . . . They have violated their plighted 
 faith. What ought we to do in view of this ? By the 
 law of nations you would have the right to demand the 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 161 
 
 carrying out of this article of agreement, and I do not 
 see that it should be otherwise with respect to the 
 States of this Union ; and in case it be not done, we 
 would by these principles, have the right to commit 
 acts of reprisal on those faithless governments, and 
 seize upon their property, or that of their citizens 
 wherever found. The States of this Union stand upon 
 the same footing as foreign nations in this respect. 
 But by the law of nations we are equally bound, before 
 proceeding to violent measures, to set forth our griev 
 ances before the offending governments, to give them 
 an opportunity to redress the wrong. . . . Let us, 
 therefore, not act hastily. Let your committee on the 
 state of the republic make out a bill of grievances ; let 
 it be sent to the governors of those faithless States ; 
 and if reason and argument shall be tried in vain if 
 all shall fail to induce them to return to their Consti 
 tutional obligations, I would be for retaliatory meas 
 ures, such as the Governor [Brown] has suggested to 
 you. This mode of resistance in the Union is in our 
 power. It might be effectual, and if not, in the last 
 resort, we would be justified in the eyes of nations, 
 not only in separating from them but in using force. 
 . . . My own opinion is that if this course be pur 
 sued, and they are informed of the consequences of 
 refusal, these States will recede, will repeal their nulli 
 fying acts ; but if they should not, then let the conse 
 quences be with them, and the responsibility of the 
 consequences rest upon them." 
 
 Toombs and others had demanded that the legis 
 lature of Georgia, then in session, pass an ordinance 
 of secession, but Stephens contended that this body 
 had no such power and insisted that a special conven 
 tion be called to consider the matter (which later was 
 done) in order to "hear from the crossroads and the 
 groceries" and know the will of the people. He sug 
 gested that the proposed convention reaffirm the 
 
162 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 Georgia platform of 1850, with an additional plank in 
 it calling for the fulfilment of their Constitutional 
 obligations on the part of the " faithless States" and 
 their " repeal of these obnoxious laws as the condition 
 of our remaining in the Union, 7 adding : 
 
 * I am for exhausting all that patriotism demands 
 before taking the last step. I would therefore invite 
 South Carolina to a conference. I would ask the same 
 of all the other Southern States, so that if the evil has 
 got beyond our control, which God in His mercy grant 
 may not be the case, we may not be divided among 
 ourselves, but if possible secure the united cooperation 
 of all the Southern States ; and then, in the face of the 
 civilized world, we may justify our action, and, with 
 the wrong all on the other side, we can appeal to the 
 God of battles to aid us in our cause. But do nothing 
 in which any portion of our people may charge you 
 with rash and hasty action. It is certainly a matter 
 of great importance to tear this government asunder. 
 You were not sent here for that purpose. I would 
 wish the whole South to be united if that is to be 
 done. ... In this way our sister Southern States 
 may be induced to act with us ; and I have but little 
 doubt that the States of New York, Pennsylvania, 
 and Ohio and the other Western States, will compel 
 their legislatures to recede from their hostile attitude, 
 if the others do not. Then with these we would go 
 on without New England, if she chose to stay out." 
 
 During Stephens s speech there were several critical 
 interjections from Toombs aud others, and one of these 
 was to the effect that the argument with the faithless 
 States of the North had already been exhausted. This 
 was duly effective, being not without point, in view of 
 the fact that Calhoun had protested in the Senate in 
 1850, and even Webster had at the same time urged 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 163 
 
 the Northern States to right the wrong of their nullify 
 ing legislation which was already notorious. Later 
 Southern protest had been loud and repeated, yet 
 nullifying legislation continued and became still more 
 obnoxious in form and scope. 1 
 
 Stephens closed with an appeal to Georgia s motto 
 of " wisdom, justice and moderation," and reminded 
 his hearers that in the event of the failure of all 
 measures of enlightened conservatism "we shall at 
 least have the satisfaction ^ of knowing that we have 
 done our duty and all that patriotism could require." 
 Notwithstanding his opposing and radical position, 
 Toombs generously rose at the close of Stephens s 
 speech and said: " Fellow citizens, we have just 
 listened to a speech from one of the brightest intellects 
 and purest patriots that now lives. I move that this 
 meeting now adjourn, with three cheers for Alexander 
 H. Stephens of Georgia ! The applause greeting 
 the proposal is described as deaf ening.X This speech 
 against secession attracted attention throughout the 
 country, and being either misquoted, or quoted only 
 in part, gave rise to the impression that Stephens not 
 only opposed the disruption of the Union on the 
 ground of policy but denied the abstract right of 
 secession. Never was a misapprehension more com 
 plete. Disunion sentiment had been denounced as 
 treasonable by certain Georgia newspapers in 1851, 
 but the opposition ten years later does not appear to 
 have taken any such violent form. Not the right or 
 the wrong, but the wisdom or folly of such a course 
 was now the question at issue, and Stephens, the 
 strongest Union man in Georgia, had been a seces- 
 ^ee ante, pp. 104-106, 113-115, 124-126. 
 
164 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 sionist theoretically ever since the nullification agita 
 tion of 1832. Apparently it did not occur to any of 
 the Southern leaders to question the right of secession, 
 which was regarded as a matter of course in the last 
 resort. Even after the tragic collapse of the move 
 ment Stephens never wavered in his belief in and 
 assertion of a sovereign State s right to secede, as his 
 answers when called before the Reconstruction Com 
 mittee clearly show. His Constitutional View of the 
 Late War Between the States, written between 1866 and 
 1870 is the most exhaustive and the most able de 
 fense of the secession of the Southern States in ex 
 istence. 
 
 In his private correspondence Stephens spoke of re 
 ceiving a large number of letters from the Northern 
 States discussing his anti-secession speech, nearly all 
 of them favorably. He referred to one from George 
 P. Curtis, of Boston, " an old Webster Whig," who 
 1 says that he believes that Massachusetts will repeal 
 her laws ; that if our State would send a proper man 
 there, it would, in his judgment, be done. They in 
 tend, at any rate, to make the effort ; and if they do 
 not, we would be justified in quitting the Union. " 
 Another was from Richard Broadhead, of Pennsyl 
 vania, a former senator, who i i gave it as his opinion 
 that the present Republican legislature of Pennsyl 
 vania would immediately in January repeal their 
 personal liberty laws." One of the letters was from 
 president-elect Lincoln asking for a revised copy of 
 the speech. Stephens replied saying that his revision 
 amounted to no more than a glance over the reporters 
 notes, which were substantially correct. Ever since 
 they had been Whigs together in the House in the 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 165 
 
 forties, Lincoln had admired Stephens, and it is even 
 said that he now considered the advisability of invit 
 ing him to become a member of his cabinet. 1 In view 
 of Lincoln s position and that of Stephens on the 
 slavery question, the story is doubtful. There is 
 nothing in Stephens s correspondence to suggest that 
 he had any knowledge of the matter. He would un 
 doubtedly have regarded such an invitation as an in 
 tolerable reflection upon his sincerity and good faith, 
 even though admitting it to be well meant. 
 
 Shortly after Stephens s reply to Lincoln s request 
 a reply in which he spoke of the country s "great 
 peril" and declared that "no man ever had heavier 
 or greater responsibilities than you have in the present 
 momentous crisis," Lincoln wrote as follows : 
 
 " For your own eye only 
 
 "SPRINGFIELD, ILL., DEC. 22, 1860. 
 "HoN. A. H. STEPHENS 
 
 "MY DEAR SIR: 
 
 "Your obliging answer to my short note is just 
 received, and for which please accept my thanks. I 
 fully appreciate the present peril the country is in, 
 and the weight of responsibility on me. 
 
 " Do the people of the South really entertain fear 
 that a Eepublican administration would directly or 
 indirectly interfere with the slaves or with them about 
 the slaves ? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once 
 a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is 
 no cause for such fears. 
 
 i The South would be in no more danger in this re 
 spect than it was in the days of Washington. I sup 
 pose, however, that does not meet the case. You 
 think slavery is right and ought to be extended ; while 
 
 1 Ellis Paxsoii Oberholtzer, Abraham Lincoln, p. 162. 
 
166 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 we think it is wrwig, and ought to be abolished. 
 That, I suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only 
 substantial difference between us. 
 
 " Yours veiy truly, 
 
 " A. LINCOLN." l 
 
 The two positions were as wide apart as the poles ; 
 they were mutually antagonistic and destructive, and 
 no one saw this more clearly than Abraham Lincoln, 
 whose campaign oratory for five years had been based 
 on his well known theorem that the nation could not 
 endure half slave and half free. It is quite clear that 
 he had thoughts and aims of which he was not yet 
 ready to speak. Great man, patriot, and friend of hu 
 manity though he was, he was nevertheless one of the 
 shrewdest and most calculating of politicians, moving 
 with the current, not ahead of it, feeling his way, 
 keeping his ear to the ground, and biding his time. 
 His latest biographer well says of him that "he told 
 anecdotes to evade issues, cherished intentions that he 
 did not publish, and tempered his speeches for those 
 to whom they were addressed." 2 
 
 Stephens, in his prompt reply, said there was no 
 fear that a Eepublican administration would " attempt 
 to interfere directly and immediately with slavery in the 
 States," but he pointed to just reasons for the convic 
 tion that such an attempt would sooner or later be 
 made. " I entreat you," he wrote, "not to be de 
 ceived as to the nature and extent of the danger, nor 
 as to the remedy." He spoke as "one who would 
 
 facsimile, p. 266, Vol. II, Stephens s Constitutional View 
 of the War. 
 
 9 Oberholtzer s Abraham Lincoln, p. 301. 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 167 
 
 have you do what you can to save our common coun 
 try," when he added : 
 
 "The Union was formed by the consent of inde 
 pendent sovereign States. Ultimate sovereignty still 
 resides with them separately, which can be resumed, 
 and will be, if their safety, tranquillity and security, in 
 their judgment require it. Under our system as I 
 view it, there is no rightful power in the general gov 
 ernment to coerce a State, in case any one of them 
 should throw herself upon her reserved rights and re 
 sume the full exercise of her sovereign powers. Force 
 may perpetuate a Union. That depends upon the 
 contingencies of war. But such a Union would not be 
 the Union of the Constitution. It would be nothing 
 short of a consolidated despotism. . . . Consider 
 well what I write, and let it have such weight with 
 you as in your judgment, under all the responsibilities 
 resting upon you, it merits." 
 
 Stephens could have had little hope that this appeal 
 would serve its purpose. He was convinced that if the 
 Southern States seceded an effort to coerce them would 
 be made by the Northern States, through the govern 
 ment they had placed in control at Washington. He 
 knew also that in spite of all the efforts of himself and 
 other conservatives, secession would take place. He 
 was in despair. "I am daily becoming more con 
 firmed," he wrote to Linton Stephens on November 30th, 
 "that all efforts to save the Union will be unavailing. 
 The truth is, our leaders and public men who have 
 taken hold of this question do not desire to continue it 
 on any terms. They do not wish any redress of wrongs ; 
 they are disunionists per se, and avail themselves of 
 present circumstances to press their objects ; and my 
 
168 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 present conviction is that they will carry the State by 
 ajority." Happy is the man who in a great 
 crisis can be an uncompromising partisan. His path 
 1 is easy. No such ready decision and contentment of 
 mind pertain to the lot of the truer patriots and philos 
 ophers, such as Stephens, who see and mourn over 
 the errors of both sides. 
 
 All Southern Union men must have regarded the 
 message of President Buchanan, sent to Congress on 
 the first Monday in December, 1860, as unfortunate in 
 its effect in their section. It was intended to recall the 
 nullifying Northern States to their Constitutional ob 
 ligations, and thus prevent a rupture ; but, while it 
 denied the legal right of secession, its effect was really 
 to encourage the intending seceders to follow the course 
 they had determined upon. The Democratic Presi 
 dent was a Pennsylvania!!, without a slaveholdiug 
 Southerner s prejudices, and the abuse heaped upon 
 him by those whom he forced to face certain facts 
 which they wished to ignore, was unwarranted. It 
 might have been more prudent in the circumstances 
 to have acknowledged less fully the South s just 
 grounds of complaint, but he spoke the truth. 
 
 He said that "the long- continued and intemperate 
 interference of the Northern people with the question 
 I of slavery in the Southern States has at length pro 
 duced its natural effects," and declared that "the 
 most palpable violations of Constitutional duty which 
 have yet been committed consist in the acts of different 
 Northern State legislatures to defeat the execution of 
 the Fugitive Slave Law " a law "founded upon the 
 express provision of the Constitution requiring that 
 fugitive slaves who escape from service in one State to 
 
HE OPPOSES SECESSION 169 
 
 another shall be t delivered up to their masters." He 
 pointedly added that l i without this provision it is a 
 well known historical fact that the Constitution itself 
 could never have been adopted by the convention." 
 He therefore called upon the Northern States to " re 
 peal their unconstitutional and obnoxious enactments," 
 for " unless this shall be done without unnecessary de 
 lay, it is impossible for any human power to save the 
 Union." He urged Congress to admonish the offend 
 ing States to repeal their "personal liberty" laws. 
 President Buchanan solemnly declared that the " sov 
 ereign" States of the South, " standing on the basis 
 of the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of 
 justice from the States of the North. Should it be re 
 fused, then the Constitution, to which all the States 
 are parties, will have been wilfully violated by one 
 portion of them in a provision essential to the do 
 mestic security and happiness of the remainder. In 
 that event the injured States, after having first used all 
 peaceful and Constitutional means to obtain redress, 
 would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the 
 government of the Union." 1 
 
 Whether Congress would have taken any decisive 
 action, whether the offending Northern States would 
 have paid any attention to the remonstrance, will 
 never be certainly known. But probably nothing 
 would have done, for they had persisted in their Con 
 stitution-nullifying course for years in the teeth of 
 solemn protest. Having refused to notice Daniel 
 Webster 7 s appeal in 1850, they could scarcely be ex 
 pected to do other than ignore the voice of Buchanan 
 
 1 George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, Vol. II, pp. 
 338-349. 
 
170 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 in 1860. In any case, South Carolina did not wait to 
 see, but passed her ordinance of secession on Decem 
 ber 20th. The other Southern States, including Geor 
 gia, which had already called a secession conven 
 tion to meet on January 16, 1861, followed after brief 
 intervals, and the most momentous political event of 
 the nineteenth century in America was accomplished. 
 The feeling of exasperation in the South, and the 
 spirit of determination to do and dare at all hazards, 
 were vividly expressed in Timrod s powerful and im 
 passioned ode, of which the following is a brief ex 
 tract : 
 
 4 Ere thou shall own the tyrant s thrall 
 Ten times ten thousand men must fall ; 
 Thy corpse may hearken to his call, 
 
 Carolina ! 
 
 " When by thy bier in mournful throngs 
 The women chant thy mortal wrongs, 
 Twill be their own funereal songs, 
 
 Carolina I 
 
 11 From thy dead breast by ruffians trod 
 No helpless child shall look to God ; 
 All shall be safe beneath thy sod, 
 
 Carolina ! 
 
 " Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns, 
 And roar the challenge from thy guns, 
 Then leave the future to thy sons, 
 
 Carolina ! " 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 GEORGIA SECEDES 
 
 AFTER Congress assembled in December, 1860, fu 
 tile compromise measures were proposed by Mr. 
 Crittenden, but they did not satisfy the Southern ex 
 tremists and the Eepublican members refused to vote 
 for them. A resolution was adopted by the Senate 
 declaring that the provisions of the Constitution were 
 already ample for the preservation of the Union and 
 that they needed to be obeyed rather than amended. 
 This was true, but it was equally true that the Consti 
 tution had not been obeyed for many years. As 
 Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, naively confessed in the 
 peace convention called by Virginia to meet in Wash 
 ington, February 4, 1861, the trouble was that, inas 
 much as the people of the free States believed that 
 slavery was wrong, the mandate of the Constitution 
 that fugitive slaves be surrendered " becomes a dead 
 letter. The obvious reply of the South to this reason 
 ing was that when one group of States took it upon 
 themselves to decide which important mandates of the 
 Constitution had become so much "dead letter" and 
 which had not, it was high time for the other group or 
 groups to repudiate the violated compact of Union 
 and form new alliances or associations. 
 
 It is interesting to note that Mr. Chase, who 
 four years later became Chief- Justice of the United 
 States, went on to express the view that a " true solu 
 tion " of the difficulty was " attainable by regarding 
 
172 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 it as a simple case where a contract from changed 
 circumstances l cannot be fulfilled exactly as made." 
 Here again the obvious answer was that though this 
 solution was a simple, " it was not just unless accom 
 panied by the admission that the other parties to the 
 repudiated contract were no longer to be bound by it 
 in any particular. Truly the days of compromise 
 were at an end. The dominating element at the North 
 was determined not to grant redress, and no adjust 
 ment was possible. 
 
 The radicals at the South now appeared to be 
 equally determined not to be satisfied even if redress 
 were granted. Stephens well said that certain Southern 
 leaders were disunionists per se and preferred not to 
 remain in the Union on any terms. He might well 
 have added that one of these was his friend, Robert 
 Toombs, who, on December 22, 1860, telegraphed from 
 Washington to his "fellow citizens of Georgia " that 
 secession should be thundered forth from the ballot- 
 box by the united voice" of that State, and then, 
 without waiting to know the issue of Georgia s secession 
 convention called to meet on January 16th, delivered 
 on January 9th his farewell speech to the Senate of 
 the United States. Toombs spoke defiantly and 
 passionately, but his demands were just. Slavery 
 was an evil in reality as well as in the Northern view, 
 but all the appeals in the world to a " higher law could 
 not dispose of Constitutional obligations resting upon 
 all the States alike, or displace the fact that the nulli 
 fying " personal liberty" laws of the Northern States 
 
 1 Change of conditions as well as of sentiment was involved. See 
 ante, p. 59, foot-note referring to the great number of slaves in some 
 of the Northern States when the Constitution was adopted. 
 
GEOEGIA SECEDES 173 
 
 were a deliberate violation of the " compact " of 
 Union. The Constitution might be regarded as a 
 "covenant with hell, 77 but nevertheless it stood and 
 was to be obeyed until abolished or radically amended. 
 Toombs, therefore, was supported by the facts when 
 he exclaimed : u You will not regard confederate obli 
 gations you will not regard Constitutional obligations 
 you will not regard your oaths ! J But Toombs was 
 not Georgia, and he had no right to declare that t i we 
 will trust to the blood of the brave and the God of 
 battles 7 before the State had accepted that hazard by 
 passing her ordinance of secession. Not to follow but 
 to lead his State out of the Union was his evident de 
 termination. 
 
 Governor Brown also anticipated Georgia s action 
 when, on January 2d, he ordered Colonel Lawton, of 
 the First Eegiment of the State militia, to take and 
 hold Fort Pulaski at Savannah, which was done 
 accordingly on the next day. In justification of 
 this seizure of a United States fort, Governor Brown 
 pointed to information received on high authority 
 to the effect that the government at Washington had 
 " decided on the policy of coercing a seceding State 
 back into the Union"; but Georgia was not yet a se 
 ceding State, and would not be one if Alexander H. 
 Stephens, Benjamin H. Hill, and ex- Governor Herschel 
 V. Johnson, three of her ablest men, could prevent it. 
 Governor Brown promptly notified the governors of 
 Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana by tele 
 graph of what he had done, and " received strong en 
 dorsements of his course in reply and the intimation 
 that his example should be immediately followed." 1 
 
 1 1. W. Avery, History of Georgia, p. 147. 
 
174 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 This seizure of Fort Pulaski, without resistance on 
 the part of the garrison and without the firing of a 
 gun, three months and nine days before Fort Sumter 
 at Charleston was shelled and taken by assault, seems 
 to have escaped the notice of the average historian 
 who begins the record of aggressive action with the 
 latter event. The United States revenue cutter 
 Dobbin was seized in the Savannah River by l unau 
 thorized persons " on the same day, but this action was 
 promptly disavowed by Governor Brown and by his 
 order the vessel was surrendered to the United States 
 collector of the port. Too little has been made of this 
 incident of the capture of Fort Pulaski by order of a 
 secessionist governor, for if the garrison had resisted 
 even by no more than the firing of a few shots into the 
 air, the war would have begun in Georgia instead of 
 in South Carolina, and three months earlier. 
 
 The resolute character of Georgia s governor and his 
 confiding belief in the sovereignty and independence 
 of his State were again strikingly displayed a month 
 later. On January 22, 1861, the New York police 
 seized two hundred muskets that were about to be 
 shipped to a firm in Macon and placed them in the 
 State arsenal. Being appealed to by the Macon firm, 
 Governor Brown telegraphed on February 2d to Gov 
 ernor Morgan, of New York, demanding that the guns 
 be immediately given up to an agent in New York 
 City, whom he appointed to receive them. There 
 being no reply, Governor Brown on February 4th tele 
 graphed to the operator at Albany to learn if his dis 
 patch had been delivered, and was promptly informed 
 that it had. Thereupon he telegraphed to Colonel 
 H. E. Jackson to order out a sufficient military force 
 
GEOEGIA SECEDES 175 
 
 to seize and hold subject to his later instructions every 
 ship in the harbor of Savannah belonging to citizens of 
 New Y"ork. After issuing this order Governor Brown 
 received a dispatch from Governor Morgan of an 
 evasive character evidently intended to gain time for 
 consideration. On February 8th Colonel Jackson seized 
 three brigs, one schooner and one bark in the 
 Savannah harbor. Governor Morgan was then offi 
 cially informed of what had been done, and apparently 
 there was an end of further hesitation. 
 
 On February 9th Governor Brown s agent in New 
 York notified him that the guns had been placed sub 
 ject to the order of the owners. The incident being 
 closed, or so appearing, he at once ordered the re 
 lease of the vessels that had been seized. But by this 
 time the affair had been widely discussed, strong pres 
 sure was brought to bear on the governor of New York, 
 and when the agent sought to take possession of the 
 guns he was informed that they were not to be given 
 up. Therefore on February 21st Governor Brown, 
 greatly incensed, ordered another seizure of ships in 
 the Savannah harbor, declaring that this time they 
 should be held until the guns were on their way 
 south. On February 25th he notified Governor 
 Morgan that if they were not released and actually 
 shipped from New York by the 25th of March the 
 detained vessels would on that day be sold in Savannah 
 to the highest bidder and the money employed to in 
 demnify the owners of the unlawfully captured arms. 
 One vessel, found laden with cotton belonging to 
 British and Eussian subjects, was released, but two 
 others were held and their coming sale on March 25th 
 was advertised in the newspapers. This produced the 
 
176 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 desired effect, for on March 18th the news was received 
 from New York that the guns had been finally sur 
 rendered and were then on the road to Georgia. Thus 
 terminated this remarkable incident with the complete 
 triumph of the Southern governor, who thereupon 
 ordered the immediate release of the two ships. 1 
 
 In the presidential election of 1860 the Unionists of 
 Georgia were divided between Douglas and Bell, the 
 Breckinridge platform attracting all inclined toward 
 secession. The vote indicated a majority against dis 
 union, but after the election of Lincoln the current set 
 strongly the other way. Many county meetings were 
 immediately held and resolutions, urging action, 
 were adopted, and sent to the General Assembly. The 
 meeting at Savannah, under the lead of Francis S. 
 Bartow, called for measures to arm the forces of the 
 State. A convention of military companies resolved 
 that "Georgia can no longer remain in the Union 
 consistently with her safety and best interests," and 
 endorsed the recommendation of Governor Brown that 
 there should be an appropriation of a million dollars 
 for military purposes. Many counties took no action, 
 but of the more than forty that transmitted resolutions 
 to the legislature, a large majority demanded secession. 
 Some of the others, however, put forth " eloquent and 
 prophetic appeals and pleas for union." 2 Greene 
 County, for example, opposed any hasty action because 
 the election of Lincoln was constitutional, because the 
 South was not yet united, because it was right to give 
 the North time to take action looking toward a redress 
 of Southern grievances ; because the masses of the 
 
 1 1. W. A very, History of Georgia, pp. 171-179. 
 p. 135. 
 
GEORGIA SECEDES 177 
 
 Southern people were not ready for secession, they 
 were not ready for war, no serious effort toward recon 
 ciliation had been made, and they owed a duty to 
 mankind to preserve the American republic and its 
 genius j because a dissolution of the Union, even if 
 proper, ought to be accomplished with soberness and 
 deliberation and after all endeavors to preserve it had 
 failed, including a State convention, and then a South 
 ern convention which should temperately but firmly 
 recall the North to its duty, and make a last, earnest 
 and united effort to secure an equitable adjustment. 
 The final utterance of these admirable resolutions read 
 as follows : 
 
 "Resolved, That in view of the great and solemn 
 crisis which is upon us, we request our fellow citizens 
 to unite with us in prayer to Almighty God that He 
 would deliver us from discord and disunion, and above 
 all, from civil war and from bloodshed ; and that He 
 would so guide our counsels and actions that we may 
 be able to maintain our rights without revolution." 
 
 The modern student marvels that even the most 
 radical partisans in the delinquent Northern States 
 were not ready to stop and listen to such noble and 
 patriotic utterances as these, and, under their in 
 fluence, to be induced to express a willingness to take 
 the proper course. And their proper course was to 
 annul their unconstitutional " personal liberty" laws 
 and then work with all their might and main for the 
 repeal of that provision of the Constitution which they 
 had so long refused to obey. 
 
 Even the resolutions from some of the secession coun 
 ties deprecated hasty action. Those from Dougherty, 
 
178 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 for example, declared that "it would be monstrous if 
 a single Southern State, without consultation and by 
 separate action, should attempt to decide the great 
 question that now presses upon the South, not only for 
 herself, but for her remaining fourteen sister States. " 
 This " monstrous" thing is precisely what happened, 
 but in view of the accepted theory of separate State 
 sovereignty it was inevitable. Had South Carolina 
 been less precipitate, it may be that concerted action 
 could have been arranged, but this was perhaps too 
 much to expect at a time when the public pulse was at 
 fever heat. It is interesting to note that the resolu 
 tions of Eichmond County were adopted in a court 
 house, over which waved a white flag with a single star 
 and this significant inscription thereon : u Georgia 
 Equality in or Independence out of the Union." 
 
 Georgia s secession convention assembled on January 
 16, 1861. The result was already foreshadowed, for 
 the vote for delegates showed an aggregate of 50, 243 
 for and 37,123 against secession, giving a majority of 
 13,120, which was nearly 5,000 less than the 18,000 
 majority against disunion in Georgia in 1851, when 
 Howell Cobb now conspicuously in favor of the dis 
 solution of the Union was triumphantly elected 
 governor on the anti- secession ticket. A few counties 
 in the State were nearly unanimous for secession and 
 no opposition candidate was put in the field. On the 
 other hand, in Stephens s county of Taliaferro and in 
 Tatnall not a vote was cast for secession. The con 
 vention has been described as the ablest that ever as 
 sembled in the State, its membership including nearly 
 every leading public man in the commonwealth. Ex- 
 Governor George W. Crawford presided. The chief 
 
GEOEGIA SECEDES 179 
 
 secession champions were Eobert Toombs, T. E. E. 
 Cobb, Judge Nisbet, Judge Eeese, and Francis S. 
 Bartow. Governor Joseph E. Brown and ex-Governor 
 Howell Cobb, both secessionists, were invited to oc 
 cupy seats on the floor. The leading unionists were 
 Alexander H. Stephens, Benjamin H. Hill, ex-Gov 
 ernor Herschel V. Johnson, Alexander Means, and 
 Linton Stephens, Judge of the Supreme Court of the 
 State. The friends of the Union regarded it as un 
 fortunate that the elder Stephens, Hill and Johnson 
 went into the convention and fought the battle with 
 out a concerted plan. This, it is said, was due to the 
 fact that Stephens and Hill had not been on speaking 
 terms for years not since 1856 when they quarreled 
 bitterly and the latter refused to fight a duel with 
 Stephens. In addition to this lack of union and coun 
 sel between these two leaders, Herschel V. Johnson, 
 ordinarily a very able speaker, was not at his best. 
 According to a story current in Georgia as late as 
 1904, his " lemonade" was tampered with by a 
 secessionist agent. A dispatch from Crawfordville in 
 1893, when the Stephens monument was unveiled, 
 signed by James Callaway, asserts that " secession 
 was carried by log-rolling." But no such suggestions 
 are needed in explanation of the defeat of the unionist 
 cause in a convention with a clear majority of delegates 
 virtually instructed for secession. There is no doubt 
 that the unionists were discouraged from the outset, 
 while the secessionists, conscious of strength, were 
 confident and aggressive. 
 
 The convention was first addressed by commissioners 
 from South Carolina and Alabama, explaining the 
 attitude of those States and seeking cooperation in 
 
180 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 the revolutionary movement. On January 18th Judge 
 Eugenius A. Nisbet brought in a resolution "that in 
 the opinion of this convention it is the right and duty 
 of Georgia to secede from the Union." Ex-Governor 
 Johnson, acting in concert with Stephens, offered a 
 substitute proposing to delay the issue by inviting all 
 the Southern States still in the Union, and u the in 
 dependent republics of South Carolina, Florida, 
 Alabama and Mississippi, 77 to send delegates to a 
 Congress at Atlanta on February 16, 1861, to consider 
 the situation and determine a course of action. This 
 resolution, which covered many points, agreed that 
 Georgia should join the seceded States in resistance 
 if an attempt to coerce them were made, and that 
 if all efforts to arrive at an equitable adjustment 
 failed she would engage to secede and join informing 
 a Southern Confederacy. In the debate the secession 
 ists urgently contended that "we can make better 
 terms out of the Union than in it 77 and this single 
 idea eloquently reiterated did more to carry the con 
 vention, in the opinion of Stephens, than all the other 
 arguments combined. The answer of the unionists, 
 as made by him, was that the time for such a 
 radical and irrevocable step had not come. 
 
 "We should not, 77 [he said] "take this extreme 
 step before some positive aggression upon our rights 
 by the general government, which may never occur ; 
 or until we fail, after effort made, to get a faithful per 
 formance of the Constitutional obligations on the part 
 of those confederate States which now stand so 
 derelict in their plighted faith. I have been, and am 
 still opposed to secession as a remedy against antici 
 pated aggressions on the part of the Federal Executive 
 or Congress. I have held and do now hold that the 
 
GEOKGIA SECEDES 181 
 
 point of resistance should be the point of aggres 
 sion. ... I have ever believed and do now be 
 lieve that it is to the interest of all the States to be 
 and remain united under the Constitution of the United 
 States, with a faithful performance by each of its Con 
 stitutional obligations. If the Union could be main 
 tained on this basis and on these principles, I think it 
 would be best for the security, the liberty, happiness, 
 and common prosperity of all. I do further feel con 
 fident that if Georgia would now stand firm, and unite 
 with the Border States to obtain a redress of those 
 grievances on the part of some of their Northern 
 confederates, whereof they have such just cause to 
 complain, complete success would attend the effort 
 our just and reasonable demands would be granted. 
 . . . My judgment is against the policy of im 
 mediate secession for any existing causes ; but if the 
 judgment of the majority of this convention, embody 
 ing as it does the sovereignty of Georgia, be against 
 mine ... I shall bow in submission to that 
 decision. 7 
 
 The character of the debate on the secession side 
 justified the later declaration of Toombs that "the 
 question of slavery moved not the people of Georgia 
 half as much as the fact that their rights as a com 
 munity were insulted, " adding : " There are tens of 
 thousands of people in Georgia who do not own slaves, 
 a very large portion of the people own none of them. 
 But these [non-slaveholding] sons of Georgia are ex 
 celled by none of their countrymen in loyalty to their 
 rights and to the honor and glory of the common 
 wealth." 
 
 After the debate the previous question was called 
 and sustained, bringing before the convention Judge 
 Nisbet s secession resolution, which passed by a vote 
 
182 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 of 166 yeas to 130 nays. This was a significantly 
 narrow majority, considering the boast of the dis- 
 unionists that Georgia was united for secession. If 
 Stephens s conservative and sound policy had pre 
 vailed in Georgia, if that important State had then 
 undertaken the role of peacemaker, and her attitude 
 had been supported by promised concessions on the 
 part of the delinquent Northern States, it is probable 
 that at least a temporary adjustment would have been 
 reached. Georgia s action made certain a formidable 
 confederacy, and the vote on Judge Nisbet s resolution 
 decided the momentous question which was destined 
 to influence the course of American history for many 
 years and perhaps for a century. The fateful ordi 
 nance reported by the appointed committee and twice 
 read before the convention was as follows : 
 
 "AN ORDINANCE 
 
 "To dissolve the Union between the State of Georgia 
 and other States united with her under a com 
 pact of Government entitled the Constitution of 
 the United States of America. 
 
 " We the people of the State of Georgia, in Convention 
 assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby 
 declared and ordained : 
 
 "That the ordinance adopted by the people of the 
 State of Georgia in convention on the second day of 
 January, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the 
 Constitution of the United States of America was as 
 sented to, ratified and adopted ; and also all acts and 
 parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State 
 ratifying and adopting amendments of the said Consti 
 tution, are hereby repealed, rescinded and abrogated. 
 " We do further declare and ordain, That the Union 
 now subsisting between the State of Georgia and other 
 States, under the name of the United States of America, 
 
GEOEGIA SECEDES 183 
 
 is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Georgia is in 
 full possession and exercise of all those rights of sov 
 ereignty which belong and appertain to a free and 
 independent State." 
 
 Benjamin H. Hill moved, as a substitute for the 
 ordinance, the resolution that had been offered by 
 ex-Governor Johnson. A vote followed of 133 yeas 
 and 164 nays. The passage of the ordinance was then 
 moved and the vote thereon was 208 yeas to 89 nays, 
 showing that forty-four unionists had now turned to 
 secession as the only possible course. Among these 
 forty-four was Benjamin H. Hill, but Stephens, his 
 step -brother Linton and ex- Governor Johnson voted 
 against secession to the last. It was moved that all 
 members of the convention, even those who voted 
 against it, sign the ordinance as a pledge of u the unani 
 mous determination of this convention to sustain and 
 defend the State in this her chosen remedy." This 
 motion was adopted, and on January 21st, the paper was 
 signed by all the delegates (six of them under written 
 protest) in the presence of the governor, the State offi 
 cials, and a throng of spectators. No sooner had the 
 ordinance been passed than the flag of the Union was 
 lowered from the State Capitol and the white colonial 
 flag of Georgia took its place. The news spread at 
 once to the remotest corners of the State and every 
 where there were uproarious expressions of popular 
 excitement and satisfaction. Describing the effect of 
 the passage of the ordinance in Milledgeville, the capi 
 tal city itself, the Atlanta Intelligencer said : 
 
 " There was an exultant shout, and men breathed 
 freer and looked nobler, and felt more like freemen 
 who had burst the shackles that had enslaved them 
 
184 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 for years. From the hall of the House of Bepresenta- 
 tives the news of the momentous event soon reached 
 the vast and excited multitude outside, who had 
 crowded to Milledgeville, most of them with the patri 
 otic intent to urge upon the convention Georgia s right 
 and duty to secede. The people shouted, the bells 
 were rung, the cannon roared, the city was illuminated 
 and great was the rejoicing." 
 
 And those who shook their heads and looked anx 
 iously into the future were forgotten. The confidence 
 of the home-keeping masses of the South in that sec 
 tion s success, in the event of war with the North, can 
 be readily understood ; but this attitude on the part 
 of the wealthier, better informed and traveled element 
 passes understanding. For it was to be a war between 
 a relatively poor and undeveloped group of agricultural 
 States and a rich and industrially advanced section 
 with a white population four times as great, and which, 
 moreover, had the advantage of controlling all the 
 machinery of the Federal government. The leaders 
 of secession made light of the prospect of war, and 
 certainly it was to their interest to do so, whether 
 they were perfectly sincere in this or not, whether 
 they were or were not impressed by Stephens s warn 
 ing that the Northern States would resist the disrup 
 tion of the Union even to the extent of a protracted 
 and bloody conflict. 
 
 Had the masses at the South believed war to be an 
 inevitable result of secession, had they been gifted 
 with an intelligent understanding of the great odds 
 against them, they would probably have been more 
 inclined to listen to the counsels of such conservative 
 men as Stephens and to cast their votes accordingly. 
 
GEOBGIA SECEDES 185 
 
 The determination of a brave people to seek their in 
 dependence at all hazards and against all odds is 
 comprehensible, but the light-hearted confidence of a 
 majority of the Southern people can only be set down 
 to ignorance of the true conditions, to a misguided 
 underestimate of the determination as well as of the 
 resources of their opponents, and to the persuasions of 
 leaders who were either less sure of ultimate success 
 than they appeared to be or were singularly deluded. 
 
CHAPTEE XI 
 
 SEVENTY YEABS OF DISUNION 
 
 IT is appropriate at this point to depart from the 
 current of events long enough to consider the theory 
 of the right of secession, so firmly upheld even by 
 Southern unionists such as Alexander H. Stephens. 
 Indeed, it is necessary to do this, if we would under 
 stand either the character and course of Stephens or 
 the secession movement of 1860-61. Without such an 
 inquiry this volume would be incomplete, for not less 
 than half of Stephens s Constitutional View of the War 
 Between the States, his most important historical work, 
 is devoted to a defense of the secession of the Southern 
 States. Our space will not permit even an outline of 
 his constitutional argument, but we may note some 
 of the historical facts which he presents in support of 
 his view as well as a number of others brought to light 
 after his time which he would have been glad to 
 employ for that purpose. 
 
 The theory of the right of nullification and seces 
 sion was widely and tenaciously held from the begin 
 ning, being based on the State sovereignty idea which 
 was at one time universal. The Constitution itself 
 was an unavoidable compromise, and as such provided 
 for a division of sovereignty between the States and 
 the Federal government which the States created. No 
 observant reader of the debates in the convention 
 which adopted the Constitution, and in the State con- 
 
SEVENTY YEAKS OF DISUNION 187 
 
 ventions which ratified it, is surprised at the tendency 
 manifested in all sections from time to time for seventy 
 years to assert the right of States to nullify national 
 enactments and even the right to sever their relations 
 with the Union whenever self-interest seemed to favor 
 such a course. 
 
 Prior to the war with Great Britain the thirteen 
 colonies were no further connected than merely as 
 common dependencies of the mother country. They 
 were established at different times, and some were 
 known as provincial, some as proprietary, and some 
 as charter colonies. A species of confederation of 
 some of the New England colonies was formed for 
 mutual protection in 1643, but it was dissolved forty 
 years later. 1 The colonies revolted against and en 
 gaged in war upon Great Britain at the same time, but 
 they acted separately, adopted separate constitutions, 
 appointed officers for the administration of govern 
 ment in all its departments, legislative, executive, and 
 judicial ; and the people of each colony were chiefly 
 concerned for the defense of their own territory, being 
 with difficulty persuaded to fight on any other soil. 
 This was one of the most serious and disheartening 
 problems that faced General Washington during the 
 war. In 1778, however, the colonies entered into a 
 formal league and adopted Articles of Confederation, 
 whereby they agreed to intrust the administration of 
 this league s affairs to a common agent which took the 
 form of a congress. The first article declared that 
 ( i each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and inde 
 pendence, and every power, jurisdiction and right 
 which is not, by this Confederation, expressly dele- 
 1 Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 127. 
 
188 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 gated to the United States in Congress assembled." 
 The treaty of peace signed by Great Britain in 1783 
 mentioned the thirteen colonies by name and ac 
 knowledged them to be "free, sovereign and inde 
 pendent States." 
 
 Eleven States ratified the Articles and entered the 
 Confederation in 1778. Delaware did not come in 
 until 1779, and Maryland not until 1781, five years 
 after the Declaration of Independence and when the 
 war was near its end. These latter surely exercised 
 the deliberation of independent States, notwithstand 
 ing Judge Story s remarkable theory that the people 
 of the revolting colonies formed a nation even before 
 the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. Ac 
 cording to another authority, writing in 1854, " the 
 parties to this instrument were free, sovereign political 
 communities, each possessing within itself all the 
 powers of legislation and government which any 
 political society can possess." Motley, in 1861, also 
 took this view of the Confederation, although he con 
 tended that the league became a nation when the 
 States ratified the Constitution. "The Continental 
 Congress, says he, " which was the central administra 
 tive board during this epoch, was a diet of envoys 
 from sovereign States. It had no power to act on 
 individuals. It could not command the States. It 
 could move only by requisitions and recommenda 
 tions. . . . We were a league of petty sovereign 
 ties." 3 If we accept this as true, we must also ac 
 cept Stephens s assertion that the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence was a joint act of all the colonies ; that the 
 
 1 Curtis on the Constitution of the United States, Vol. I, p. 142. 
 8 The Rebellion Record (Putnam, 1861), Vol. I, p. 210. 
 
SEVENTY YEAKS OF DISUNION 189 
 
 Congress that made it was a congress of States as 
 States ; that the Declaration " was made by the people 
 of each colony, for each colony, through representa 
 tives acting by the paramount authority of each colony 
 separately and respectively. 7 l Massachusetts in 
 structed and empowered her delegates so to act in 
 January, 1776 ; South Carolina in March j Ehode 
 Island and Virginia in May ; New Hampshire, Con 
 necticut, New Jersey and Maryland in June. The 
 instructions from Pennsylvania and New York did 
 not arrive until after July 1st, and not until full powers 
 had been received from all the States was the Dec 
 laration given to the world on the fourth of that 
 month. 3 
 
 In this connection Stephens cites Peters s Condensed 
 Reports to show that in 1805 the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, in the case of Mcllvaine vs. Coxe, held 
 that " on the fourth of October, 1776, the State of New 
 Jersey was completely a sovereign, independent 
 State . . . [with the] right to compel the inhabit 
 ants of the State to become citizens thereof" ; and 
 that Chief- Justice Marshall, in the case of Gibbons vs. 
 Ogden, in 1824, described as "true" the assertion 
 that the States, prior to the adoption of the Constitu 
 tion, " were sovereign, were completely independent, 
 and were connected with each other only by a 
 league." 3 The argument that this "league "was a 
 nation is clearly no more than the afterthought of 
 partisans. The argument that the Constitution later 
 
 1 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. I, p. 67. 
 
 2 Bancroft, Vol. VIII, pp. 449, 450, 475. 
 
 8 Stephens, Constitutional View, Vol. I, pp. 76, 80. Petere e Re 
 ports, Vol. V, p. 565. 
 
190 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 formed and adopted for the sake of a "more perfect 
 Union " changed the original independent status of the 
 States has a much less attenuated basis. If the States 
 were sovereign and independent when they adopted 
 the Articles of Confederation, and if these articles 
 made them only a u league, 7 as Chief- Justice Marshall 
 and many other authorities held, they were sovereign 
 and independent when they ratified the Constitution. 
 The question is, therefore, did they by such ratifica 
 tion transfer sovereignty to the central government 
 and give up their independence entirely, or only in 
 part, or did they merely confer certain powers on the 
 central government and reserve paramount powers to 
 themselves I 
 
 The debates at the time and for seventy years after 
 ward show that this question was never fully, defi 
 nitely and finally answered until the issue of the war 
 of 1861-5 was known. Throughout that period lead 
 ing statesmen contended for the paramount powers of 
 the central government, while other, and apparently 
 a larger number of prominent statesmen contended 
 for the paramount powers of the States, each party 
 being able to point to facts of history and to utterances 
 of the Constitution which seemed to confirm their 
 view. The Constitution a compromise of opposing 
 factions gave more power to the Federal government 
 than some of the State leaders believed it did, or were 
 willing to yield, while, on the other hand, it gave less 
 than other State leaders desired it to give and less 
 than they thought would be necessary for a govern 
 ment that could live. 
 
 Thus Patrick Henry, who saw national features in 
 the Constitution, warned the Virginians of "the awful 
 
SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION 191 
 
 immensity of the dangers with which it is pregnant." l 
 He went so far as to say that "it squints toward 
 monarchy," u and urged the people of his State in 
 the ratifying convention to be " extremely cautious, 
 watchful, jealous of your liberties ; for instead of se 
 curing your rights you may lose them forever." And 
 further : "What right had they to say, We, the people f 
 Who authorized them to speak the language of i We, the 
 people > instead of i We, the States 1 If the States be 
 not the agents of this compact, it must be one great 
 consolidated National Government of all the States." 3 
 In vain did Edmund Pendleton, president of Virginia s 
 ratifying convention, who favored the Constitution, 
 answer that, if necessary, "we will assemble in con 
 vention, wholly recall our delegated powers, or reform 
 them so as to prevent such abuse, and further urge : 
 " There is no quarrel between government and liberty j 
 the former is the shield and protector of the latter." 4 
 In vain did John Marshall recall "the maxim that 
 those who give may take away." 5 In vain did Gov 
 ernor Eandolph declare that " every power not given 
 it [the Federal government] by this system is left with 
 the States." 6 In vain did Madison urge that "the 
 powers of the general government . . . are but 
 few . . . which will be exercised mostly in time 
 of war." 7 Patrick Henry did not believe that it 
 would be so easy to take back what had been once 
 given away, particularly when, as he was convinced, 
 so much was given ; and, supported by George Mason, 
 he remained the Cassandra of Virginia s great ratify- 
 
 1 Elliot s Debates, Vol. Ill, p. 625. 2 Ibid., p. 58. 
 
 8 Ibid., pp. 21-22. *Ibid., p. 37. 
 
 6 Ibid., p. 233. 6 Ibid., p. 203. Ibid., pp. 259-60. 
 
192 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 ing convention. It was to pacify him and other fear 
 ful State patriots that at the first Congress in 1789 ten 
 amendments to the Constitution were adopted, the 
 tenth declaring that "the powers not delegated to the 
 United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by 
 it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, 
 or to the people. " 
 
 Unlike Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton thought 
 the Constitution gave the Federal government powers 
 so limited that the system based thereon could not en 
 dure. In this particular he regarded that instrument 
 as radically defective. " Perhaps," he said, writing 
 to Gouverneur Morris in 1802, * l no man in the United 
 States has sacrificed or done more for the present 
 Constitution than myself; and contrary to all my 
 anticipations of its fate, as you know, from the be 
 ginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail and 
 worthless fabric." He plainly thought the Constitu 
 tion no very great improvement on the Articles of 
 Confederation. 
 
 After a careful comparison of the two instruments, 
 Stephens concludes that there were but two important 
 additional powers delegated by the States, through the 
 Constitution, and these were "the power to regulate 
 trade with foreign nations and between the States" 
 and " the power to lay taxes directly upon the people 
 of the several States, or to raise revenue by levying 
 duties upon imports, without resorting to requisitions 
 upon the States." J There was, however, still another 
 important change, which Jefferson in a letter to Madi 
 son from France in 1786 thus suggested : "To enable 
 
 1 Hamilton 1 8 Works, Vol. VI, p. 530. 
 "Stephens, A Constitutional View, Vol. I, p. 88. 
 
SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION 193 
 
 the Federal head to exercise the powers given it to the 
 best advantage, it should be organized as the particular 
 ones [State governments] are, into Legislative, Execu 
 tive and Judiciary." l An examination will show that 
 the powers granted the Confederation were really ex 
 tensive and that its weakness resulted less from what 
 was lacking in this respect than from the jealousies of 
 the States and their unwillingness to recognize Con 
 gressional rulings as binding. Stephens cites EllioVs 
 Debates as authority for the significant fact that Con 
 gress appealed in vain to the States in 1781, 1783 and 
 again in 1784 for power to levy duties on certain im 
 ports, and that not until Madison took up the project 
 in the Virginia Assembly in 1785-6 did it have any 
 prospect of success. 2 Virginia s recommendations led 
 to a convention, at Annapolis in 1786, of commissioners 
 from five States who proposed a general convention 
 of all the States at Philadelphia in the following year 
 " to devise such further provisions as shall . . . 
 render the Constitution of the Federal government 
 adequate to the exigencies of the Union." s Not until 
 after all this did Congress " resolve," in February, 
 1787, that in its " opinion" it was u expedient" that 
 all the States send delegates to the proposed conven 
 tion for the sole and express purpose of revising the 
 Articles of Confederation." Thus was brought about 
 the memorable convention that produced our present 
 Constitution. 
 
 It is interesting to note that Georgia s commissions 
 to the six delegates, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, 
 
 1 Jefferson s Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 66. 
 1 Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, pp. 92, 93, 111. 
 *Ibid., p. 118. 
 
194 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 William Pierce, George Walton, Nathaniel Pendleton, 
 and William Houston, appointed to attend the con 
 vention of 1787 " for the purpose of revising the 
 Federal Constitution," all begin as follows: "The 
 State of Georgia, by the grace of God, Free, Sovereign 
 and Independent To the Hon. William Few, Esq.," 
 etc., etc. And they are signed by Governor Matthews 
 " under his hand and our great seal, the 17th day of 
 April, in the year of our Lord 1787, and of our 
 Sovereignty and Independence the eleventh." l Gov 
 ernor Clinton signed the commission of New York s 
 delegates * this ninth day of May, in the eleventh year 
 of the Independence of the said State." Governor 
 Livingston of New Jersey signed "the 23d day of 
 November in the year of our Lord 1786, and of our 
 Sovereignty and Independence the eleventh. > Thomas 
 Collins, "President, Captain-General, and Commauder- 
 in-Chief, of the Delaware State," quotes in his proc 
 lamation an act appointing delegates l in the eleventh 
 year of the Independence of the Delaware State," but 
 signs "in the llth year of the Independence of the 
 United States of America. Massachusetts and South 
 Carolina are the only other States whose governors 
 signed "in the llth year of the Independence of the 
 United States of America" instead of in the eleventh 
 year of State independence. 
 
 This claim of independence continued in the 
 language of State documents even after the Constitu 
 tion had been adopted and the Union formed. For 
 example, a letter of Governor Clinton of New York, 
 dated April 2, 1790, transmitting an act ratifying 
 
 1 Documentary History of the Constitution, Vol. I, p. 
 Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, pp. 126, 138. 
 
 43 ; also 
 
SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION 195 
 
 certain amendments to the Constitution, begins : t The 
 people of the State of New York, by the Grace of 
 God, Free and Independent," etc. 1 
 
 The Governor of North Carolina signed "in the 
 eleventh year of our Independence." New Hamp 
 shire s act "to enlarge the powers of Congress" be 
 gins, "Whereas, in the formation of the Federal 
 Compact, which frames the bond of union of the 
 American States," etc. The majority of the twelve 
 States responding refer to the Articles of Confedera 
 tion as "the Federal Constitution," and all speak of 
 revision as the object of the convention. 
 
 No purpose of an absolute departure from the gen 
 eral plan already existing is anywhere suggested, and 
 a comparison of the Articles with the Constitution 
 will show that no absolute alteration in the status of 
 the States was effected by the latter s adoption. The 
 Constitution joined the loosely bound States more 
 closely together, by putting the Federal system into 
 better shape, but did not make them a nation. 
 Nationality, as we now have it, was a gradual growth. 
 The nationalists of 1787 were defeated, nominally at 
 least, and this explains Hamilton s description of the 
 Constitution as "a frail and worthless fabric." For 
 example, the word "national " itself was stricken out 
 of the resolutions. Governor Eandolph, of Virginia, 
 a strong nationalist, " Resolved, That a National Gov 
 ernment ought to be established, consisting of a 
 supreme Judicial, Legislative and Executive," but 
 this was not finally accepted until on motion, of 
 Mr. Ellsworth, of Connecticut, it read as follows : 
 "Resolved, That the Government of the United States 
 
 1 Documentary History of the Constitution, Vol. II, p. 357. 
 
196 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 ought to consist of a Supreme Legislative, Judiciary 
 and Executive." l And it was explained to those who 
 made objection that there would be supremacy only as 
 to "the powers intended to be granted to the new 
 Government." a That the Constitution caused no very 
 great change in existing conditions was clearly be 
 lieved at the time. If the new Constitution be ex 
 amined with candor," wrote Madison, discussing this 
 point, "it will be found that the change which it 
 proposes consists much less in the addition of new 
 powers to the Union than in the invigoration of its 
 original powers." 3 Eoger Sherman and Oliver Ells 
 worth, in their letter to the governor of Connecticut 
 transmitting a copy of the " new Constitution," stated 
 that "some additional powers are vested in Congress," 
 but that "those powers extend only to matters re 
 specting the common interests of the Union, and are 
 specially defined so that the particular States retain 
 their sovereignty in all other matters." 4 
 
 There is not a great deal, aside from a few phrases 
 in the Constitution itself, to support the theory that that 
 instrument transferred (and that the Americans of 
 1787 understood it to transfer) power from the people 
 of the States to the people of the country at large. 
 " The assent and ratification of the people," explained 
 Madison, "not as individuals composing an entire 
 nation, (jut as composing the distinct and independent 
 States to which they belong, are the sources of the 
 Constitution^] It is therefore not a national but a 
 federal compact." There has been such a transfer in 
 effect, but it came through a century of gradual 
 
 > Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, p. 183. > Ibid., p. 392. 
 
 8 The Federalist, No. 44. Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, p. 491. 
 
SEVENTY YEAKS OF DISUNION 197 
 
 nationalization of sentiment. How great has been the 
 change in a century is illustrated by the fact that at 
 the outset State offices were generally regarded as 
 superior in dignity to national. It was in consequence 
 of this that Governor Hancock, of Massachusetts, in 
 sisted that he himself must receive the first visit of 
 state when President Washington, making a tour of 
 the country, visited Boston. " We, the people of the 
 United States," is one of the phrases of the Con 
 stitution that seem to indicate an immediate transfer 
 of power from the people of the separate States to the 
 people of the Union as a whole. It is therefore both 
 an interesting and a significant fact that the opening of 
 the preamble, as originally adopted, read : " We, the 
 people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
 Ehode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, 
 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
 Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
 and Georgia ... do ordain, declare and establish 
 the following Constitution," etc. 1 Stephens points out 
 that a sub-committee on style made the change to the 
 present form and that the convention agreed to it for 
 the obvious reason that in the absence of any positive 
 assurance that all the States would ratify and become 
 parties to the Constitution, it was inappropriate to set 
 forth their names in advance. Article VII provided 
 that the Constitution should go into effect if as many 
 as nine States ratified it. Eleven ratified it more or 
 less promptly, while North Carolina and Ehode Island 
 hesitated for two years. 
 
 It is quite clear that the people of 1787 understood 
 the term, u United States" literally, without any 
 1 Elliots Debates, Vol. I, p. 224 (Lippincott edition, 1881). 
 
198 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 of the consolidated nation idea afterward put into it. 
 Nor is it likely that many of them read into the 
 " paramount" clause of the Constitution the full 
 meaning afterward attached thereto. The clause 
 reads : " This Constitution and the laws of the United 
 States made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made 
 or which shall be made under the authority of the 
 United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, 
 and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, 
 anything in the constitution or the laws of any State 
 to the contrary notwithstanding. 7 There were those 
 who feared this clause, and they had to be pacified in 
 order to secure the ratifications of a sufficient number 
 of States. Hamilton labored hard with them before 
 the convention of New York. He was a i i nationalist " 
 of the most extreme type and would have been glad to 
 believe that this clause .took ultimate sovereignty away 
 from the States, but if he so believed, he dishonestly 
 sought to convey a different impression. He explained 
 that this clause "expressly confines supremacy to the 
 laws made pursuant of the Constitution" 1 and de 
 scribed any other view as " sophistry." In the 
 twenty -seventh number of The Federalist he even 
 referred to the Union under the Constitution as a 
 " Confederacy." It was precisely because he be 
 lieved that the authority of the central govern 
 ment was unhappily restricted within the sphere of 
 its delegated powers that he spoke as late as 1802 
 of the government established by the Constitution 
 as " a frail and worthless fabric." Far-seeing Patrick 
 Henry, however, had good reason for his conviction 
 that certain utterances of the Constitution were elastic 
 1 The Federalist, No. 31. 
 
SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION 199 
 
 and susceptible of interpretations different from those 
 given them by the ratifying States, although it con 
 cluded with the significant, "Done in convention by 
 the unanimous consent of the States present," although 
 it provided a Senate with two representatives from 
 each State irrespective of population, although it di 
 rected that the President be chosen through votes for 
 State electors, and although the entire proceedings 
 indicated the fact that the people of the whole land 
 were not acting collectively but that the States 
 acted as States ; as, for example, where the original 
 records read: "Monday, July 28, 1788. Congress 
 assembled. Present New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
 Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
 Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South 
 Carolina, and Georgia." l In this and all other in 
 stances, so far as noted, the States, not the represent 
 atives thereof, were recorded as present and acting. 
 
 The leading purpose of the arguments presented in 
 the ratifying conventions of the States, so far as these 
 have been preserved, seems to have been to convince 
 the fearful that the States still retained ultimate sov 
 ereignty. In the Pennsylvania convention, James 
 Wilson said : " As to the first [objection], that it is a 
 Consolidated Government, that it puts the thirteen 
 United States into one if it is meant that the General 
 Government will destroy the Governments of the States, 
 I will admit that such a Government would not suit 
 the people of America. It would be improper for this 
 country. . . . But that description does not apply 
 to the system before you." 2 Oliver Ellsworth said in 
 
 1 Documentary History of the Constitution,^ bl. II, p. 204. 
 
 2 Elliot s Debates, Vol. II, pp. 481-2, 502, 503. 
 
200 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Connecticut s convention: "This Constitution does 
 not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, States, in their 
 political capacity." Massachusetts convention rec 
 ommended certain amendments to the Constitution in 
 order to " quiet the apprehensions of many good people 
 of this commonwealth," and the language employed 
 clearly implies that the "new Constitution" was re 
 garded as " a solemn compact of union between the 
 States. 3 In the discussion Fisher Ames said : " The sen 
 ators will represent the sovereignty of the States. . . . 
 They are in the quality of ambassadors of the States." 8 
 Samuel Adams said, speaking favorably of a demand 
 made by John Hancock and others, which was after 
 ward met by the tenth amendment to the Constitution, 
 reserving to the States all the powers l not delegated " : 
 "It removes a doubt which many have entertained 
 and gives assurance that, if any law made by the 
 Federal Government shall be extended beyond the 
 power granted by the proposed Constitution and in 
 consistent with the Constitution of this State, it will 
 be an error, and adjudged by the courts of law to be 
 void. It is consonant with the second article in the 
 present Confederation that each State retains its sov 
 ereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, 
 jurisdiction and right which is not by this Confedera 
 tion expressly delegated to the United States in Con 
 gress assembled." * South Carolina s convention de 
 clared "that no section or paragraph of the said 
 Constitution warrants a construction that the States 
 do not retain every power not expressly relinquished 
 by them and vested in the General Government of the 
 
 1 Elliot s Debates, Vol. II, p. 197. 2 IMd., Vol. I, pp. 322-3. 
 8 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 11-45. 4 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 130-131. 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 201 
 
 Union." Nevertheless, the prophetic soul of Eawlins 
 Lowndes was troubled and he declared that he wished 
 for no other epitaph than, "Here lies the man that 
 opposed the Constitution because it was ruinous to the 
 liberties of America." 2 
 
 Eeference has already been made to Patrick Henry s 
 objections in the Virginia convention and the reas 
 suring responses of John Marshall, Edmund Pendleton, 
 and others, to the effect that if necessary the mother 
 of States would recall her delegated powers. Labor 
 ing to quiet apprehension in New York s convention, 
 Hamilton said: "The State Governments possess in 
 herent advantages which will ever give them an 
 influence and ascendency over the National Govern 
 ment and will forever preclude the possibility of 
 Federal encroachments." 3 He also described a propo 
 sition to coerce the States as "one of the maddest 
 projects ever devised." 4 New York finally voted 
 ratification on the declared premise that " the powers 
 of government may be reassumed by the people when 
 soever it shall become necessary to their happiness." 5 
 
 After considering the action of the several State 
 conventions and the debates therein, Alexander H. 
 Stephens reached this conclusion : 
 
 "While many apprehended danger to the sov 
 ereignty of the separate States from constructions and 
 implications, yet on all hands it was universally ad 
 mitted that it purported to be a Federal Constitution ; 
 aud it was with this avowed understanding of its nature 
 by every advocate and supporter it had in every State 
 
 l Elliot s Debates, Vol. I, p. 325. 9 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 311. 
 
 *Ibid., Vol. II, p. 239. 4 /6td., Vol. II, pp. 231-3. 
 
 6 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 327-9. 
 
202 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 of the Union, even by Hamilton, Morris, "Wilson, 
 King, Madison and Kandolph, who had favored a 
 National Government proper, in the Federal conven 
 tion, instead of the plan embodied in the Constitution. 
 The leading idea in all the conventions was that a 
 Confederate Eepublic was to be established by it upon 
 the model set forth in Montesquieu. According to 
 that model, an artificial State is created for Foreign or 
 National, as well as inter-State purposes, and these 
 only, by several small Eepublics, thus confederating 
 for their common defense and happiness ; each retain 
 ing its separate sovereignty, and the artificial State so 
 created by them being, at all times, subject to their 
 will and power. That this artificial State so created 
 may be dissolved, and yet the separate Eepublics sur 
 vive, retaining at all times their State organization 
 and sovereignty. ... Is it not clear that the 
 United States are, or constitute, a Confederated Ee 
 public (as Washington styled it), 1 bound together by 
 the solemn Compact of Union, entered into by the 
 several members thereof under the Constitution ? 
 . . . Is not the Constitution, as appears not only 
 from the history of its formation but from its face, a 
 compact between sovereign States?" 2 
 
 It may be justly observed that the powers of such a 
 confederated republic would be too restricted for the 
 legitimate purposes of successful government, and that 
 no such republic could long endure. But it may with 
 equal propriety be remarked that this was precisely 
 the weakness in the government of the United States 
 of America, as at first constituted, and even until the 
 issue of the war of 1861-5 was known and accepted, 
 when the assertion of State sovereignty was made for 
 
 1 Washington also spoke of it as "the new Confederacy" ir his 
 letter to Chas. C. Pinckney, June 28, 1788. Washington s Writ 
 ings, Vol. IX, pp. 389-90. 
 
 2 Stephens, Constitutional View of the War, Vol. I, pp. 296-7 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 203 
 
 the last time and the national government finally be 
 came supreme, although the form, and, in purely State 
 affairs, the substance, of our dual system remained. 
 Even then the national government triumphed and 
 State sovereignty breathed its last breath only because 
 the more powerful States found it to their interest to 
 sustain the central authority. Stephens s general con 
 clusion, so far as early conditions were concerned, 
 cannot be successfully assailed. The debates indicate 
 that a similar view predominated when the Constitu 
 tion was adopted, and subsequent events can be ex-^ 
 plained in no other way. Nullification having been 
 the rule under the first Confederation, and the States 
 of the Union still regarding themselves as sovereign, 
 the spirit of nullification continued to flourish and 
 produced many overt acts as time passed. For seventy 
 years there existed a marked tendency to assert the 
 right of States to nullify Congressional enactments and 
 even to sever their relations with the Union. 
 
 The first of these, of considerable importance, oc 
 curred in 1798-9, and in Virginia and Kentucky took 
 the shape of nullification resolutions. These interest 
 ing declarations were aimed particularly at the Alien 
 and Sedition acts, but were the result of many mistakes 
 of the Federalists while in power, including the high 
 handed behavior of President John Adams, who 
 recklessly cast free-tongued citizens into prison in a mis 
 guided effort to suppress criticism. Free-spoken print 
 ers and editors were among those prosecuted for sedi 
 tion. These and similar unwarranted assumptions of 
 
 1 For example, Thomas Cooper dared to say in 1797 that Presi 
 dent Adams was "hardly in the infancy of his political mistakes." 
 For such " sedition " he was imprisoned six months and fined $400. 
 
204 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 power led the Virginia Assembly to adopt resolutions 
 calling on the States to nullify the enforcement of the 
 sedition laws. The resolutions set forth that Virginia 
 would support the general government in all measures 
 warranted by the Constitution, but that t this As 
 sembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that 
 it views the powers of the Federal Government, as re 
 sulting from the compact to which States are parties, 
 as limited by the plain sense and intention of the 
 instrument constituting that compact, as no further 
 valid than they are authorized by the grants 
 enumerated in that compact ; and that, in case of a 
 deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other 
 powers, not granted by the said compact, the States, 
 who are parties thereto, have the right and are in duty 
 bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the 
 evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, 
 the authorities, rights and liberties, appertaining to 
 them. The resolutions further declared the Alien and 
 Sedition laws unconstitutional, and Virginia invited 
 the other States to cooperate in resisting them, "in 
 order to maintain unimpaired the authorities, rights 
 and liberties reserved to the States respectively, or to 
 the people. " Madison drew up these resolutions, and 
 they also expressed the views of Patrick Henry, Jeffer 
 son, Mason, and many other prominent Virginians. 
 Kentucky s resolutions, which were drafted in the 
 
 Matthew Lyon, a Congressman of Vermont, in the course of a 
 stump speech in a campaign for reelection, attributed to Adams an 
 "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and 
 a selfish avarice." For this he was cast into jail, kept there four 
 months and compelled to pay a fine of $1,000. Nearly half a 
 century later, in 1840, Congress refunded the amount of this fine 
 with interest to Lyon s heirs. 
 
SEVENTY YEAKS OF DISUNION 205 
 
 main by Jefferson, declared, in brief, that when 
 powers were assumed by the central government 
 which had not been granted by the States, " nullifica 
 tion is the rightful remedy " j and that " every State 
 has a natural right in all cases not within the compact 
 (casus nonfcederis) to nullify of their own authority all 
 assumptions of power by others within their limits." 
 The hope was expressed that " the co-States, recurring 
 to their natural right in cases not made Federal, will 
 concur in declaring these acts void," and that each 
 "will take measures of its own for providing that 
 neither these acts, nor any others of the general 
 government not plainly and intentionally authorized 
 by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their re 
 spective territories." 
 
 In New York and New England, where the influence 
 of the Federalist party (now in control of the general 
 government) was predominating, there was no favor 
 able response to these resolutions, but John Adams 
 described the position of "the whole South and West 
 as menacing. > Federalist New England now attributed 
 disloyalty to Virginia whose ablest men had in 1787 
 sought to strengthen the hands of the general govern 
 ment. A few years later when Jefferson 7 s Eepublican 
 party succeeded to power, the situation was reversed. 
 Jefferson s electors, at a dinner at Swan Tavern, 
 Eichmond, toasted the Union and hurled the charge of 
 " treason" at the New England Federalists who were 
 then plotting the establishment of a separate Northern 
 Confederacy, although they, when it suited them later 
 on, posed as devout Unionists and invented the 
 abstract distinction betw.een "the people" and the 
 State governments, obscuring the real truth that the 
 
206 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 Constitution was accepted with reservations by "the 
 people" in their organic capacity as separate States, 
 each claiming individual sovereignty. 
 
 The Federalists desired a stronger central govern 
 ment than that " frail and worthless fabric," the 
 Constitution, permitted them to have, and their ideal 
 was in essence aristocratic class rule. It was this that 
 caused Madison to part company with Hamilton, who, 
 like all the Federalist leaders, abhorred and distrusted 
 democracy as (to quote Cabot) "the government of 
 the worst." At a banquet in New York Hamilton ex 
 claimed : i i The people ! Gentlemen, the people are a 
 great Beast!" The time had come, however, when 
 the large majority of the people were ripe for democ 
 racy. This explains the triumph and long lease of 
 power of Jefferson s Eepublican (Democratic) party, 
 which was execrated by the New England Federalists 
 precisely for the reason that it was the party of human 
 rights, home rule, self-government, and individualism, 
 as opposed to autocratic and paternalistic government. 
 Barring the accidental defense of slavery in later times, 
 inevitable under the circumstances, it may be said 
 that the party of Jefferson lived up to its ideals to a 
 very considerable extent and was of immense service 
 to this country in banishing the government-ridden 
 and government- stifled conditions similar to those of 
 Europe which were fast taking root under Federalist 
 rule. 
 
 /^Tartly their hatred of Jefferson s democracy and 
 partly the ineradicable idea of State sovereignty 
 brought about the attempt of leading Federalists to 
 form a separate Northern Confederacy in 1803-4. 
 Associated in the movement were Timothy Pickering, 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 207 
 
 Fisher Ames, George Cabot, and Theophilus Parsons, 
 of Massachusetts, Eoger Griswold, of Connecticut, 
 William Plumer, of New Hampshire, and other 
 prominent New England Federalists. When his 
 cooperation was invited, Hamilton wrote rather dis- 
 couragingly to Sedgwick, thus : t i Dismemberment of 
 our empire will be a clear sacrifice of great positive 
 advantages without any counterbalancing good ; ad 
 ministering no relief to our real disease which is 
 democracy." l His ambitions were too far-reaching 
 to permit him contentment as a leader in a mere 
 Northern half of the "empire." Later, however, he 
 consented to attend a secessionist meeting of Federal 
 ists in Boston, but this was prevented by his untimely 
 death in the summer of 1804. 2 The more enthusiastic 
 Pickering wrote to Stephen Higginson, December 4, 
 1803: "I will not yet despair. . . . There will be 
 a separation. The British provinces, even with the 
 assent of Britain, will become members of the North 
 ern Confederacy." 3 He believed that the proposition 
 "would be welcomed in Connecticut, and could we 
 doubt of New Hampshire? New York must be as 
 sociated. She must be made the centre of the Con 
 federacy. Vermont and New Jersey would follow of 
 course." But Eoger Griswold ventured the astute 
 opinion that "the magnitude and jealousy of Massa 
 chusetts will render it necessary that the operation 
 shall begin there." Pickering did not "know of owe 
 reflecting Nov- Anglian who is not anxious for the 
 
 1 Hamilton s Works, Vol. I, p. 568 ; Lodge s Life of George 
 Cabot, p. 438. 
 
 2 C. F. Robertson, The Louisiana Purchase in Its Influence on the 
 American System (Papers Am. Hist. Jss n., Vol. I, pp. 262-263). 
 
 8 Lodge, Life of Cabot, p. 441. 
 
208 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 Great Event." l George Cabot thought the time was 
 not yet ripe; "a separation now is impracticable." 
 But Griswold wrote warningly to Wolcott : " Whilst 
 we are waiting for the time to arrive in New England, 
 it is certain that the Democracy is daily making in 
 roads on us." The leaders hesitated, unable to agree. 
 In all the plotting there is no evidence that anybody 
 questioned the right of the Northern States to secede. 
 "The objections were only on the ground of practical 
 difficulty, owing to the growth of Jefferson s party 
 even in New England. Its growth was enough to give 
 the Federalist secessionists pause, for in the election 
 of 1804 Jefferson carried every State in the Union 
 except Connecticut and Delaware. Writing his Life 
 of George Cabot (president of the Hartford Convention) 
 in the year 1877, Henry Cabot Lodge (now Senator 
 Lodge) observes : The men who were prominent in 
 1804 had formed our present Union from pure motives 
 of policy and they regarded separation in exactly the 
 same way. The individuality and separate existence 
 of the States were quite as familiar to them as the 
 conception of the Union." 2 This is an accurate de 
 scription of the dominant attitude in the South in 
 1860. "The tone," adds Lodge, "in which the men 
 of that day discussed the question of a dissolution of 
 the Union is one that may well startle the present 
 generation which has passed through a great civil war 
 and has learned to consider the mere mention of 
 separation as the blackest treason." 8 Lodge s own 
 "tone" is not dissimilar. He does not speak of the 
 plot to form a Northern Confederacy as "rebellion " 
 
 1 Lodge, Life of Cabot, p. 449. *Ibid., p. 440. 
 
 *lUd., p. 440. 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 209 
 
 or " treason," but as the u separatist scheme." In 
 excuse for his ancestor and the other intending se 
 cessionists he says that i i the success of Jefferson was a 
 revolution" l and it is not to be wondered at that the 
 New England Federalists should wish to flock to them 
 selves. But the election of Jefferson was less a rev 
 olution than the election of Lincoln. Speaking of 
 the action of the Hartford Convention a few years 
 later, Lodge says it must be remembered that the 
 question of nullification and secession " was then an 
 open one. " a It has been shown in earlier pages of this 
 volume that it was regarded as an open question by 
 the legislature and governor of Massachusetts as late 
 as 1845. Why was it not still an open question in 
 1860, no new Constitution or other pledge of nation 
 ality having been either provided or adopted since 
 1787? 
 
 The next attempt to break up the Union, that of 
 Aaron Burr, was a conspiracy pure and simple, into 
 which the State sovereignty idea did not appreciably 
 enter, and it therefore has no place in this review. 
 The nullification and secession sentiment in New 
 England only smoldered. It flamed up again under 
 the unpopular embargo in 1808 and again during the 
 unpopular War of 1812. John Quincy Adams testified 
 that the Essex Junto planned a convention to consider 
 secession, the movement of 1803-4 taking on new life 
 in 1808. In his second letter to the thirteen Boston 
 gentlemen he declared that the old plot was never 
 abandoned, but was revived in 1808 and again in 
 1814, and that " the Hartford Convention was the 
 culmination of this conspiracy and was intended as a 
 
 1 Lodge, Life of Cabot, p. 422. 2 Ibid., p. 520. 
 
210 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 preliminary step to the attainment of the object of 
 the conspirators, a dissolution of the Union." In 
 1811 Josiah Quincy, member of Congress from Massa 
 chusetts, in opposing the admission of Louisiana as a 
 State, boldly announced on the floor of the House 
 that i i if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are 
 virtually dissolved ; that the States which compose it 
 are free from their moral obligations, and that, as it 
 will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, 
 to prepare definitely for a separation ; amicably if 
 they can, violently if they must." 2 
 
 Even young Daniel Webster, who in after years in 
 his debates with Hayne and Calhoun so emphatically 
 denied the right of nullification and secession, at this 
 period shared in the prevalent belief that the States 
 were independent of the general government. In his 
 speech on the conscription bill in the House on De 
 cember 14, 1814, he threatened defiance of the central 
 authority on the part of Massachusetts and intimated 
 that if driven to it his State would secede. He opposed 
 the War of 1812, and especially the conscription bill, 
 declaring that the fate of the Union rested on the 
 issue. "It will be the solemn duty of the State gov 
 ernments," he declared, " to protect their own authority 
 over their own militia and to interpose between their 
 citizens and arbitrary power." 3 When Webster 
 " threatens that the State government will interfere," 
 pointedly observes Professor Van Tyne, l i we wonder 
 if Hayne and Calhoun went any further." * At 
 
 1 Lodge, Life of Cabot, pp. 412-13. 
 
 2 Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 206. 
 
 8 C. H. Van Tyne, Letters of Daniel Webster, p. 67. 
 Ibid., p. 31. 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 211 
 
 Eockingham, N. H., Webster offered this resolution : 
 "We shrink from the separation of the States as 
 fraught with incalculable evil. If a separation should 
 ever take place it will be when one portion of the 
 country undertakes to control, to regulate and to 
 sacrifice the interests of another." The secessionists 
 of 1860-61 might well have pointed to this as a true 
 prophecy of the raison d etre of their own hazardous 
 undertaking. As one of the leading Federalists of New 
 England, Webster was included in the charge of John 
 Quincy Adams that those leading Federalists from 
 1807-8 down to the close of the War of 1812 were plot 
 ting to sever their section from the Union. It has 
 recently been brought to light that in 1828 Daniel 
 Webster prosecuted Theodore Lyman, of Boston, for 
 libel because the latter had charged that he had 
 taken part in the plot to dissolve the Union in 1807-8. 
 The jury was unable to agree on a verdict and the case 
 was dismissed. The connected fact of greatest interest 
 is that Samuel Hubbard, who defended Lyman, and 
 who later became a Justice of the Supreme Court of 
 Massachusetts, argued fnaT it was " not libelous " to 
 make such a charge, because : " A Confederation of 
 the New England States to confer with each other on 
 the subject of dissolving the Union was no treason. 
 The several States are independent and not dependent. 
 Every State has a right to secede from the Union without 
 committing treason." * 
 
 At the time of the Hartford Convention in 1814 New 
 England was virtually an open enemy of the Washing 
 ton government and the Boston Centinal made no mis- 
 
 1 Josiah H. Benton, A Notable Libel Case, pp. 90-103 (Goodspeed, 
 Boston, 1904). 
 
212 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 take when it declared that the Union was as good as 
 dissolved. Resolutions were sent to the Massachusetts 
 legislature from the town of Newberry in Pickering s 
 district pledging a the sacrifice of our lives and prop 
 erty in support of whatever measures the dignities 
 and liberties of this free, sovereign and independent 
 State may seem to your wisdom to demand." In the 
 Hartford Convention were twelve delegates from 
 Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, four from 
 Rhode Island, two from New Hampshire and one from 
 Vermont, and "they represented a majority of the 
 people of their respective States." To make a sepa 
 rate and special treaty with England, as well as to 
 secede, had already been publicly proposed, 2 but the 
 convention itself discreetly sat behind closed doors 
 and complete records are not obtainable. John Quincy 
 Adams charged that the journal preserved did not 
 contain a full account and that the " twenty-seven 
 written pages " mentioned by George Cabot were in 
 sufficient as a report of such a convention. The con 
 vention is certainly known to have reported that "if 
 the Union be destined to dissolution, some new form 
 of Confederacy should be substituted among those 
 States which shall intend to retain a federal relation 
 toward each other;" that "separation by equitable 
 arrangement is preferable to an alliance by constraint 
 among nominal friends but real enemies, inflamed by 
 mutual hatred and jealousy, and inviting by intestine 
 division, contempt and aggression from abroad ; " but 
 that i i a severance of the Union by one or more States, 
 especially in time of war, can be justified only by 
 absolute necessity." 
 1 Lodge, Life of Cabot, p. 507. 2 Jbid., pp. 516-17. 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 213 
 
 Even iii his apology, Lodge admits that the men of 
 the Hartford Convention intended to coerce the Ad 
 ministration by threatening them with separation." l 
 At the best it is clear that New England in its con 
 vention at Hartford threatened the general govern 
 ment, when that government was embarrassed and en 
 gaged in a foreign war, with secession to follow exist 
 ing nullification. John Quincy Adams charged that 
 the leaders both then and in 1807-8 were in commu 
 nication with Great Britain, 2 and the hostile spirit was 
 betrayed in the refusal of both Governor Strong 
 of Massachusetts and Governor Griswold of Connecticut 
 to send the troops first called for in 1812. 3 Vermont 
 also in 1813 refused to send troops in response to the 
 urgent call from Washington. Pickering unblushingly 
 wrote: "If the British succeed in their expedition 
 against New Orleans, I shall consider the Union as 
 severed." * But the British were beaten at New 
 Orleans and peace was soon declared. Had the result 
 been otherwise, all the facts indicate that the New 
 England States would have promptly cut themselves 
 loose from the Union and made a separate and humiliat- 
 ing peace with Great Britain. New England s trade 
 interests suffered seriously during the war and after 
 ward, but that section now received little sympathy. 
 According to Adams, "so discredited was Massa 
 chusetts that she scarcely ventured to complain ; for 
 every complaint by her press was followed by the 
 ironical advice that she call another Hartford Conven 
 tion. 7 The very name of < i Yankee became a by- word. 
 
 1 Lodge, Life of Cabot, p. 518. 2 Ibid., pp. 412-413. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 513. 
 4 Powell, Nullification and Secession in the United States, p. 221. 
 
214 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Among other instances of early nullification and the 
 assertion of State sovereignty may be mentioned the 
 " Whiskey Bebellion" in Pennsylvania, where for 
 three years the excise law was successfully resisted. 
 In 1809 the Governor of Pennsylvania ordered out the 
 State militia and prevented a process of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. In 1793 the Georgia 
 legislature, in connection with the suit of Chisholm 
 against the State passed " an act declaratory of certain 
 parts of the retained sovereignty of Georgia" which 
 provided "that any Federal marshal, or any other 
 person or persons levying or attempting to levy, on 
 the territory of this State, or any part thereof . . . 
 under or by virtue of any execution or other com 
 pulsory process issuing out of or by authority of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States . . . are 
 hereby declared to be guilty of felony, and shall suffer 
 death, without benefit of the clergy, by being 
 hanged. 1 After this we are prepared for Governor 
 Troup s resolute and successful defiance of the Wash 
 ington government in connection with the Creek In 
 dian difficulties during the John Quincy Adams ad 
 ministration. The treaty of Indian Springs being 
 disavowed by the more powerful chiefs of the Creeks, 
 the United States government entered into another, 
 the treaty of Washington. But Georgia insisted on 
 the validity of the former treaty, not only as more 
 favorable but because surveys and occupation of the 
 ceded territory had already begun. The Secretary of 
 War, on May 18, 1825, notified Governor Troup that 
 " the President expects " the survey to be abandoned, 
 and that force would be used if necessary. Governor 
 1 Ames, State Documents on Federal delations, pp. 7-11. 
 
SEVENTY YEABS OF DISUNION 215 
 
 Troup answered defiantly and called out the State 
 militia. 1 The State sustained him and there would 
 have been a bloody conflict between the two authorities 
 had not the central government yielded and receded 
 from its position. In messages to the Georgia legis 
 lature in May and June, 1825, Governor Troup de 
 nounced "officious and impertinent intermeddling 
 with our domestic concerns" (referring to a proposi 
 tion made in Congress to use the proceeds of the sale 
 of public lands for the emancipation and colonization 
 of slaves), and notified those concerned that "the 
 United States can choose between our enmity and our 
 love." 3 Georgia also successfully resisted the de 
 cision of the Supreme Court in connection with the 
 questions of the missionaries and the jurisdiction of 
 the Cherokee nation in 1831-5. 3 Alabama was equally 
 belligerent and triumphant. After the United States 
 marshals were ordered to remove the 30,000 white 
 settlers in the nine Indian counties, and war at 
 once appeared to be imminent, the governor of that 
 State received offers of voluntary service from persons 
 residing as far away as New York. 4 The troubles 
 were finally brought to a peaceable issue by the re 
 moval of all the Indian tribes to the west of the Mis 
 sissippi Eiver. 
 
 Later instances of nullification and the assertion of 
 State sovereignty include Maine s resolutions in 1831, 
 denouncing the Canadian boundary treaty as a decision 
 
 1 Niks a Register, XXXII, p. 16; ibid., XXVIII, pp. 155-208; 
 Acts of Georgia, 1825, pp. 204-209. 
 
 2 Niks 8 Register, XXVIII, pp. 274-277, 
 
 3 Ames, State Documents on Federal Relations, pp. 128-129; 
 Phillips, Georgia and States 1 Rights, ch. 2-3. 
 
 4 Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, pp. 8-9. 
 
216 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 to which she as a State with t sovereign power, " . . . 
 "can not yield" ; South Carolina s repudiation of 
 the tariff law in 1832, which would probably have 
 been followed by secession had not the offending tariff 
 been promptly modified to an extent satisfactory to 
 Calhoun ; the defiant attitude of the legislature and 
 governor of Massachusetts in 1843-5 and their virtual 
 threat of New England s secession if Texas were ad 
 mitted as a State ; and the widespread secession move 
 ment in the Southern States in 1850-51, checked by 
 the hard-fought victory of Southern unionists in the 
 elections. 
 
 The Abolitionists from the very outset had been 
 saturated with the nullification and even the secession 
 spirit, as has been shown, and no more complete ex 
 amples of nullification and defiance of Constitutional 
 mandates and Congressional enactments are to be 
 found than the statutory repudiations of the Fugitive 
 Slave Law by a majority of the Northern States, so 
 pointedly complained of by Calhoun and rebuked by 
 Webster in 1850 and deplored by President Buchanan 
 in 1860. The history of the first seventy years of our 
 government is crowded with events and with utter 
 ances pointing to the act of the Southern States in 
 1860-61 as a perfectly comprehensible and logical out 
 come of all that had gone before. 
 
 It is generally supposed that but for the bitter 
 quarrel over the extension of slavery in the territories 
 the South would not have put forward the claim of 
 State sovereignty in other than an academic way as 
 late as 1850, much less 1860 ; but when we reflect upon 
 Massachusetts threatening resolutions as late as 1845, 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 51-54. 
 
SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION 217 
 
 it is made manifest that what we now call national 
 sentiment was of slower growth in New England as 
 well as in the South than in the Middle and Western 
 States. The creation of new States in the West 
 strengthened the Union for the obvious reason that 
 these new States, which were never sovereign and only 
 outlying territory claimed by the general government, 
 were devoid of the traditions, jealousies and pride of 
 the old thirteen originally independent common 
 wealths, and had no desire to stand apart. But per 
 haps the most important factor in the more rapid 
 growth of nationality in the Middle and Western 
 States is to be found in the great stream of European 
 immigration flowing through them. To the new 
 comers the country was one, Washington was its seat 
 of government, and the President its only ruler of 
 consequence. The foreign born were without intel 
 ligent comprehension of our dual system of govern 
 ment, were ignorant of the illuminating history of the 
 origin of that system, and as for the claim of State 
 sovereignty it was to them the veriest foolishness, 
 which they readily pronounced treason when the crisis 
 came. It was a semi-Europeanized as well as a com 
 mercial and slavery-hating North that declared for 
 the Union and forbade secession. 
 
 We have yet to notice some of the many utterances 
 of early writers indicating that State sovereignty, 
 nullification, and the right of secession were at least 
 open questions until the great war decided the issue 
 forever. One of the most notable of these was William 
 Bawle, principal author of the revised code of Penn 
 sylvania, for many years chancellor of the Law Asso 
 ciation of Philadelphia, and one of the most eminent 
 
218 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 lawyers of his time. In his View of the Constitution, 
 published in 1825, he describes the Union as "an 
 association of the people of republics," the preserva 
 tion of which "is calculated to depend on the pres 
 ervation of those republics." 1 And further: "It 
 depends on the State itself to retain or abolish the 
 principle of representation, because it depends on itself 
 whether it will continue a member of the Union" 
 (p. 289). "To deny this right would be inconsistent 
 with the principles on which our political systems are 
 founded. This right must be considered as an in 
 gredient in the original composition of the general 
 government, which, though not expressed, was mu 
 tually understood." [What pity it was not either 
 clearly "expressed" or never "mutually under 
 stood"!] "The States, then, may wholly withdraw 
 from the Union ; but while they continue, they must 
 retain the character of representative republics" 
 (p. 290). "The secession of a State from the Union 
 depends on the will of the people of such State" 
 (p. 295). " The people of a State may have reason to 
 complain in respect to acts of the general govern 
 ment ; they may in such cases invest some of their 
 own officers with the power of negotiation, and may de 
 clare an absolute secession in case of failure " (p. 296). 
 "To withdraw from the Union is a solemn, serious 
 act. Whenever it may appear expedient to the people 
 of a State, it must be manifested in a direct and 
 unequivocal manner" (p. 298). Etc., etc. 
 
 This work, which treated of the right of secession 
 as a matter of course, generally understood and ac- 
 
 1 Rawle s View of the Constitution (Philadelphia, 1825), pp. 288- 
 299. 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OF DISUNION 219 
 
 knowledged, was not only a reference book in the 
 average American college and public library, but, 
 according to Charles Francis Adams, was the standard 
 text-book on its subject at the West Point Military 
 Academy, where u anterior to 1840 the doctrine of the 
 right of secession seems to have been inculcated." 
 In a letter dated November 23, 1904, and signed 
 Edward S. Holden, Librarian of the West Point Mili 
 tary Academy, it is stated that the copy of Bawle s 
 View of the Constitution "owned by the Library U. S. 
 M. A., contains manuscript notes which make it very 
 probable that this book was used as a text-book at the 
 Military Academy, inasmuch as there is a list of sections 
 and lessons marked." 2 A similar statement appears 
 in a letter signed by Brigadier-General A. L. Mills, 
 Superintendent of the Military Academy, who also 
 says, date of November 18, 1904, that in "the forth 
 coming Memorial Volume of the Military Academy" 
 Bawle s View of the Constitution will be described as 
 "the text-book of the law department, from (?) to 
 (?) " (dates uncertain). 3 Having been published in 
 1825, it is reasonably certain that the book was in 
 use at West Point for some years, until the in 
 troduction of such later works as Kent s Com 
 mentaries and Story s Commentaries. 4 All this is of the 
 
 1 Charles Francis Adams, Constitutional Ethics of Secession, p. 16. 
 Robert Bingham, Sectional Misunderstandings (reprinted, with 
 brief additions, from North American Review of Sept., 1904). 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 In The Spirit of Old West Point, just published by General Mor 
 ris Schaff, who was sent to the Military Academy from Ohio in 
 1858, it is stated that Rawle "was used as a text-book for two 
 years only, from 1825 to 1827 " (p. 230). However that may be, 
 it still remains true that Davis, Lee and the two Johnstons were 
 students at West Point during those years. General Schaff states 
 that the influence of the book was felt long afterward and he assigns 
 
L-0 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 highest interest, in view of the tact that Ji-iYerson 
 Davis and Robert R Lee graduated at West Point in 
 
 1828 and 1829 respectively. According to the state 
 ment of John Kawle, grandson of William Kawle, 
 date of January 27. liKO, "General Lee told Bishop 
 Wilmer. of Louisiana, that if it had not been for the 
 instruction he got from Kawle s text -book at West 
 Point he would not have left the old army and joined 
 the South at the breaking out of the late war between 
 the States." l William l>rooke Kawle, of Philadelphia, 
 "always understood" that his ancestor s work "was 
 for many years a text -book at the United States Mili 
 tary Academy at West Point." * 
 
 According to General Dabuey H. Maury, "Mr. Davis 
 and Sidney Johnston and General Joe Johnston and 
 General Leo. and all the rest of us who retired with 
 Virginia from the Federal Union, were not only obey 
 ing the plain instincts of our nature and dictates of 
 duty, but we were obey ing the very inculcations we 
 had received in the Xatioua.1 School." According to 
 the statement of Kev. Dr. L. W. Racou, of Assouet, 
 Mass.. date of March 2o. 1884 : " While the question 
 of JerY Daviste trial for high treason was pending, Mr. 
 
 this &> or.e of the important reasons "why West Point men re 
 signed t< join the Confederacy " pp, 899-833 This assertion as 
 to the length of the period seems to be baaed on a statement made 
 in 1894 bj Col. R. T. Bennett, of North {V" 1 ^ that Jefferson 
 Davis had, in 1886, written to him as follows : "Jtaib on lit Otm~ 
 *it*Ho* was the text-book at West Point, but when the dan of 
 which I was a member entered the graduating year. Kent s Oom- 
 mf*t<trif was introduced aa the text-book on the Constitution and 
 International Law. Though not so decided on the point of State 
 - .-.:. i-.-tj h( waflTer hi in adwrn . Ihe oonsolidationists of 
 our time,** SbnOtm JTutertMl P*ptr* Vol. XXII. p. S3. 
 
 1 Robert Bingham, Srctiomal Mimmdmtmidiag*. 3 Ibid. 
 
 * Somtlfr* Historical Paprr*. Vol. VI, p. 349. 
 
SEVENTY YEAES OP DISUNION 221 
 
 W. B. Reed, counsel for the defense, was a member of 
 
 my brother s congregation at Orange Valley, X. J. 
 He told ray brother, after it had been decided that the 
 trial was not to take place, thai: if the ease had eome to 
 trial, the defense would have offered in evidence the 
 text-book on constitutional law from which Davis had 
 been instructed at West Point by the authority of the 
 United States government, and in which the right of 
 secession is maintained as one of the constitutional 
 rights of a State." l Thaddeus Stevens held - that as 
 the belligerent character of the Southern States was rec 
 ognized by the United States, neither Davis nor Clay 
 can be tried for treason ; " * but when the council of emi 
 nent Northern lawyers decided that the trial must be 
 abandoned because of "the insurmountable difficulties 
 in the way of getting a final conviction, 3 it is proba 
 ble that not the least serious of those obstacles was the 
 use of Kawle s "HW > / - at \\\-st Point, 
 
 when Davis was a cadet there. 
 
 Writing a few years later than Eawle. in 1835. that 
 observant French student of American government and 
 conditions. Alexis De Tocqueville. gives similar testi 
 mony, after the careful investigations of a long sojourn 
 in this country. De Tocqueville, as Eichard CobcK-n 
 observed in IVJl. "takes the Southern view " of the 
 right of secession. " He says, the Union was formed 
 by the voluntary agreement of the States, and in unit 
 ing together they have not forfeited their nationality, 
 nor have they been reduced to one and the same peo- 
 
 1 Robert BIngham, " f f i iT JfTiiniiri rfaifi aj. 
 
 : J/e;7i.o in of Mrs. C!emt,.- < . Doubieday, Page & Co. ;. let 
 ter of R. J. Haldeman. p. 291. 
 
 s I7i Republic of Republic-* Little. Brown & Co., Ia7=j. Prtf.aoe, 
 p. v. 
 
222 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 pie. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name 
 from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its 
 right of doing so j and the Federal government would 
 have no means of maintaining its claims either by force 
 or by right. He then goes on to argue that among 
 the States united by the Federal tie there may be some 
 which have a great interest in maintaining the Union 
 on which their prosperity depends [ which exclusively 
 enjoy the principal advantages of union ], and he then 
 remarks, Great things may then be done in the name 
 of the Federal government, but in reality that govern 
 ment will have ceased to exist. Has he not accurately 
 anticipated both the fact and the motive I " 
 
 De Tocqueville also astutely observes : " Patriotism 
 is still directed to the State and has not passed over to 
 the Union. . . . Whenever the Federal govern 
 ment has anything to do with a State, it begins to par 
 ley, to explain its motives and justify its conduct, to 
 advise and, in short, anything but command. . . . 
 The provincial government prefers its claim with bold 
 ness . . . while the government of the Union 
 reasons, temporizes, negotiates . . . [being] nat 
 urally so weak. ... If the sovereignty of the 
 Union were to engage in a struggle with that of the 
 States at the present day, its defeat may be confidently 
 predicted ; and it is not probable that such a struggle 
 would be seriously undertaken. Experience has hith 
 erto shown that whenever a State has demanded any 
 thing with perseverance and resolution, it has invaria 
 bly succeeded ; [as in the case three years before of 
 South Carolina s nullification, which secured the re 
 duction of the offending tariff, notwithstanding the 
 1 John Morley, Life of Richard Cobden, p. 385. 
 
SEVENTY YEABS OF DISUNION 223 
 
 fulmiuations of Andrew Jackson, who was stronger 
 than the government he represented] " and that if it 
 has distinctly refused to act, it was left to do as it 
 thought fit. 1 It appears to me unquestionable that the 
 present Union will last only as long as the States which 
 compose it choose to continue members of the con 
 federation." 
 
 De Tocqueville thought it was not so much a ques 
 tion as to whether the States are " capable of sepa 
 rating" as it is " whether they will choose to remain 
 united." This shrewd foreign observer put his finger 
 on an important factor in the strength of the Union 
 sentiment in one section when he added : The North, 
 which ships the products of the Anglo-Americans to 
 all parts of the world, and brings back the produce of 
 the globe to the Union, is evidently interested in main 
 taining the Confederation in its present condition, in 
 order that the number of American producers and con 
 sumers may remain as large as possible. . . . The 
 North cannot but desire the maintenance of the Union, 
 in order to remain as it now is the connecting link be 
 tween that vast body [the South and West] and the 
 other parts of the world." 2 
 
 Four years after De Tocqueville wrote, in a discourse 
 on the "Jubilee of the Constitution" at New York 
 in 1839, John Quincy Adams said : " If the day should 
 ever come (may Heaven avert it !) when the affections 
 
 1 A footnote adds : " See the conduct of the Northern States 
 during the War of 1812. During that war, says Jefferson, in a 
 letter to General Lafayette, four of the Eastern States were only 
 attached to the Union like so many inanimate bodies to living 
 men. 
 
 2 De Tocqueville s Democracy in America (Gilman ed., 1898), 
 Vol. I, pp. 496-504. 
 
224 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 of the people of these States are alienated from each 
 other, when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold 
 indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into 
 hatred, the bonds of political association will not long 
 hold together parties no longer attracted by the mag 
 netism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies j 
 and far better will it be for the people of the disunited 
 States to part in friendship from each other than to be 
 held together by constraint. Then will be the time 
 for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the 
 formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form 
 again a more perfect Union by dissolving that which 
 could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts 
 to be reunited by the law of political gravitation 
 to the centre. " 1 The ex -President spoke as one 
 who had learned through his unsuccessful struggle 
 with Governor Troup, of Georgia, that the State gov 
 ernments were stronger than the central authority, 
 and that it was wiser on the part of the latter not to 
 try conclusions with the former. 
 
 Massachusetts 7 threatening resolutions, to which 
 we have referred, show that the State sovereignty idea 
 still vigorously flourished in other sections than the 
 South as late as 1845. Even as late as 1860 the view 
 was publicly expressed in the North. In his Con 
 stitutional View Stephens called attention to the fact 
 that Horace Greeley declared editorially in the New 
 York Tribune on December 9th of this year : " That 
 was a base and hypocritic row that was once raised at 
 Southern dictation about the ears of John Quincy 
 Adams, because he presented a petition for the dissolu 
 tion of the Union. The petitioner had a right to 
 
 1 John Quincy Adams, Milee of the Constitution, p. 69. 
 
SEVENTY YEARS OF DISUNION 225 
 
 make the request ; it was the member s duty to pre 
 sent it. And now, if the Cotton States consider the 
 value of the Union debatable, we maintain their per 
 fect right to discuss it. Nay, we hold, with Jefferson, 
 to the inalienable right of communities to alter or 
 abolish forms of government that have become op 
 pressive or imperious j and if the Cotton States shall 
 decide that they can do better out of the Union than 
 in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. " 
 
 Of the inevitable conflict of 1861-5 it may be justly 
 said that both sections were fundamentally moved by 
 self-interest, but that each was amply supported by 
 sentiment. Therefore the North made much of the 
 facts and traditions tending to deny the right of seces 
 sion and the South made much of the facts and tradi 
 tions tending to confirm that right. The Constitution, 
 a compromise of contending factions, is elastic and 
 susceptible to varying interpretations. On its face it 
 confirms more strongly the national than the State 
 sovereignty idea barring the Tenth Amendment, but 
 it confirms both. Viewing it, however, in the light of 
 the conditions at the time of its adoption, the debates 
 accompanying its ratification, the illuminating events 
 of the subsequent seventy years, and the significant 
 utterances of early writers and speakers indicative of 
 the popular understanding, it will unquestionably ap-~ 
 pear to confirm more positively the State sovereignty 
 than the national idea. 
 
 The verdict of history can be no other than that 
 true nationality was the growth of a century, and that 
 the States, which were first in time, by creating a 
 central government with only certain delegated 
 
 1 Greeley s American Conflict, Vol. I, p. 359. 
 
226 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 powers, provided a divided sovereignty, and thus left 
 the people free to choose j and further that when the 
 people did choose, they were moved by instinctive 
 preference as well as influenced by environment and 
 sectional prejudice. This divided sovereignty would 
 have produced conflict pending the final triumph of 
 nationality even if slavery and the negro had injected 
 no lamentable apple of discord. Finally, the verdict 
 of history must declare that from 1850 to 1876 there 
 was more genuine revolution on the part of the union 
 ist North than the secessionist South the revolution 
 ary course of the former beginning with State nullifica 
 tion of the constitutional provision for the return of 
 fugitive slaves and continuing until a slavery-protect 
 ing Constitution had been reconstructed and Southern 
 society had been turned upside down and made to 
 stand upon its head. 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERACY 
 
 THE Congress of the new Southern Confederacy that 
 met at Montgomery, Ala., on February 4, 1861, rep 
 resented only the six States of South Carolina, 
 Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. 
 These had a slave population of 2, 165, 651 and a free 
 white population of only 2,287,147. Even after they 
 were joined by the five other seceding States of 
 Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and 
 Texas, the free white population of the eleven States 
 amounted to only about five millions. The States that 
 joined in the war for the Union, without including 
 Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, which were offi 
 cially neutral and actually divided, contained a free and 
 almost entirely white population four times as great 
 as that of the eleven seceding States and nearly nine 
 times as great as the white population of the first six 
 seceding States which formed the Confederate govern 
 ment at Montgomery. The remarkable temerity of 
 these latter can be explained only on the ground of 
 the general belief in the doctrine of State sovereignty 
 and the lack of any widespread apprehension that a 
 serious effort would be made to coerce the seceding 
 sovereignties by force of arms. 
 
 If the other leaders shared Stephens s expectation of 
 war they were less outspoken, and the people generally 
 
228 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 were full of joyful anticipations of the peaceable es 
 tablishment of the independence of their section. 
 " Georgia s Declaration of Independence, " for ex 
 ample, was celebrated with the happiest of festivities. 
 "Let us exult," said the Augusta Constitutionalist, 
 under the editorial caption, "The Republic of 
 Georgia, " on January 20, 1861 "let us rejoice in the 
 day which beheld our State resume all her delegated 
 sovereignty and take her place among the nations of 
 the earth." And the people exulted believing that 
 now at last the sectional wrangling of forty years 
 was at an end, and that the seceding States would be 
 free to govern themselves in all things as they saw fit. 
 The Church received secession with open arms. 
 Even before the issue was known Bishop Elliott in 
 structed the Episcopal clergymen of Georgia to use a 
 form of prayer supplicating the presence of the 
 Almighty "with the Supreme Council of our State 
 now assembled." One paragraph of his announce 
 ment to the diocese, dated January 14, 1861, reads : 
 " In the event of the secession of the State of Georgia 
 from the Union, the clergy will suspend the use of the 
 prayer entitled A Prayer for Congress ; and in the 
 prayer entitled A Prayer for the President of the 
 United States and all in civil authority, will omit the 
 words, <Thy servant, the President of the United 
 States, and substitute in their places the words, ( Thy 
 servant, the Governor of the State of Georgia/ " * 
 The first prayer at the opening of the Confederate 
 Congress at Montgomery, delivered by Eev. Dr. 
 Manley of the Baptist Church, is worthy of notice : 
 
 1 From a private scrap-book of clippings from Southern newt- 
 papers of the period. 
 
VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 229 
 
 " Oh, Thou God of the Universe ... we thank 
 Thee for all the hallowed memories connected with our 
 past history. Thou hast been the God of our fathers ; 
 oh, be Thou our God. Let it please Thee to vouchsafe 
 Thy sacred presence to this assembly. . . . We 
 appeal to Thee, the searcher of hearts, for the purity 
 and sincerity of our motives. If we are in violation of 
 any compact still obligatory upon us with those States 
 from which we have separated in order to set up a new 
 government, ... we cannot hope for Thy pres 
 ence and blessing. But oh, Thou heart-searching God, 
 we trust that Thou seest we are pursuing those rights 
 which were guaranteed to us by the solemn covenants 
 of our fathers and which were cemented by their blood. 
 And now we humbly recognize Thy hand in the 
 Providence which has brought us together. We pray 
 Thee to give the spirit of wisdom to Thy servants, with 
 all necessary grace, that they may act with delibera 
 tion and purpose, and that they will wisely adopt such 
 measures in this trying condition of our affairs as shall 
 redound to Thy glory and the good of our country. 
 . . . Oh, God, assist them to preserve our republi 
 can form of government and the purity of the forms of 
 religion . . . and when the hour of trial, which 
 may supervene, shall come, enable them to stand firm 
 in the exercise of truth, with great prudence and a just 
 regard for the sovereign rights of their constituents. 
 Oh, God, grant that the union of these States, and all 
 that may come into this union, may endure as long as 
 the sun and moon shall last, and until the Son of Man 
 shall come a second time to judge the world in right 
 eousness. Preside over this body . . . and let 
 truth and justice and equal rights be secured to our 
 government. . . ." l 
 
 //Alexander H. Stephens reluctantly agreed to be one 
 of Georgia s representatives at the Montgomery con- 
 
 ^rom scrap-book of clippings from Southern newspapers of 
 18615. 
 
230 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 vention of the seceded States, and his consent was 
 made contingent on satisfactory assurances that both 
 the provisional and permanent governments would be 
 formed " upon the principle and basis of the Constitu 
 tion of the United States.^/ Possibly he early took 
 such ground owing to certain tentative unofficial sug 
 gestions as to the advisability of establishing a 
 monarchical form of government, although the need of 
 such caution is not apparent. Andrew Johnson, in 
 his speech against secession on December 19, 1860, 
 greatly exaggerated the importance of certain Southern 
 utterances on this subject. He quoted a writer in the 
 Columbus, Ga., Times as saying, "I raise my voice for 
 a return to a constitutional monarchy," and showed 
 the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel as questioning 
 whether the people were ready for the " hereditary 
 constitutional monarchy" which " some of the wisest 
 and best citizens propose," and as noting that other 
 citizens favored a restricted suffrage, representatives 
 elected for seven years, senators for a long period, and 
 the executive for life. The two Georgia newspapers 
 named were the only authorities cited by Johnson. 
 
 It does not appear that this question was even men 
 tioned in the deliberations at Montgomery. Neither 
 Stephens 2 nor Dr. J. L. M. Curry, 3 another member, 
 refers to it when giving an account of the formation of 
 the Confederate Constitution, although the latter feels 
 called on emphatically to declare that " no proposition 
 was made to open or connive at the slave trade, nor 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 383. 
 
 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. II, pp. 335- 
 340. 
 
 3 J. L. M. Curry, Civil History of the Confederate States, pp. 62-86, 
 274-309. 
 
VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 231 
 
 did a single member favor such an infamous scheme. " 
 Conservative republicanism ruled, as will be seen. 
 Possibly Stephens was not sure of such conservatism 
 at the outset, for he made his cooperation conditional, 
 as noted, and before going to Montgomery he said in a 
 private letter that his apprehension and distrust of the 
 future arose from the want of u loyalty to principle, and 
 pure, disinterested patriotism in the men at the head 
 of the movement. 77 But his letters at all periods show 
 that such an attitude of distrust was habitual with him 
 whenever he disagreed as positively as he had with 
 Toombs and others on the advisability of secession. 
 He may have feared that Toombs would attempt to 
 force radical and revolutionary ideas on the Congress, 1 
 and was agreeably disappointed when he found how 
 nearly they were in agreement in the matter of the 
 proposed Constitution. " He is very friendly with me 
 now, 77 Stephens wrote, pleased, a few days after the 
 Congress met, "and confers freely with me on all 
 matters either before his committee on the Constitu 
 tion or before Congress. 77 
 
 During the sittings at Montgomery Stephens 7 s letters 
 are at times very critical. Referring to the proceedings 
 of the second day, he says he made a certain motion 
 "merely because the crowd generally seemed green 
 and not to know how to proceed. 7 7 On February 27th 
 he rather egotistically observes that i i only occasion- 1- 
 ally a member speaks whom I have any patience 
 
 1 When, in his speech against secession before the Georgia legis 
 lature, November 14, 1860, Stephens expressed his great admira 
 tion for the government of the United States, in spite of "all its 
 defects," and challenged unfavorable comparison with any other 
 "on the face of the earth," Toombs loudly interjected: "Eng 
 land ! "Cleveland s Letters and Speeches, p. 699. 
 
232 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 with." On March 1st: "We lack statesmanship of 
 what I consider a high order. We have but little if 
 any real forecast. This renders me uneasy." But 
 when the work was well forward and it pleased him, 
 he wrote : * l Upon the whole, this Congress is the 
 ablest, soberest, most intelligent and conservative body 
 I was ever in." Even after this he wrote that he 
 "was in agony all day yesterday for fear some mis 
 chief might be done," and that he was "constantly 
 suspended between hope and fear for the future." 
 
 It is of interest to note the impression made by this 
 first Confederate Congress and the Southern men there 
 on a foreign observer, W. H. Russell, the correspondent 
 of the London Times, afterward known as "Bull Run " 
 Russell, he having greatly displeased the Northern 
 public by a too truthful account of the hasty march 
 back to Washington after the first battle of Manassas 
 or Bull Run. "I could fancy," he writes, "that, in 
 all but garments, they were like the men who first 
 conceived the great rebellion which led to the inde 
 pendence of this wonderful country so earnest, so 
 grave, so sober and so vindictive at least so embit 
 tered against the power which they consider tyran 
 nical and insulting. . . . The word l liberty was 
 used repeatedly. " J At the same time the slave market 
 in Montgomery produced in Russell "a feeling of inex 
 pressible loathing and indignation." He might well 
 have added, however, that the " liberty "-loving seces 
 sionists of 1861 were not more inconsistent, if indeed 
 more blind, in this particular than were their grand 
 fathers of 1776 and 1787. 
 
 Stephens anxiously desired that the Confederate 
 
 1 W. H. Russell, My Diary North and South, pp. 67-68. 
 
VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 233 
 
 Constitution be so formed as to admit non-slaveholding 
 States also, and that the policy of the new government 
 should be such as might induce the Western States 
 and territories to join the Confederacy, which other 
 wise he feared would be known, to its damage, as 
 "the Black Republic. " He seemed not to perceive 
 that, in view of the South s position on the extension 
 of slavery into the territories, this was impossible, and 
 that such a hope could never be realized. The objec 
 tion to the extension of slavery into the Northwest 
 was ostensibly on moral but fundamentally on eco 
 nomic grounds. The working classes (the bulk of the 
 population) of the North and Northwest evidently 
 cared little about the duration of slavery as long as it 
 was confined to the South, but they were unalterably 
 opposed to the deadly competition of slave labor. 
 There is no indication that the Southern leaders saw 
 this vitally important matter in its true light, all of 
 them, even Stephens, viewing it from the aloof and 
 incomprehensive patrician standpoint. 
 
 Among the men who l ( did most toward suggesting 
 and enforcing the changes which were adopted 7 in 
 the Confederate Constitution, Dr. J. L. M. Curry 
 prominently mentions Stephens, and in referring to 
 the preliminary work, says: "On motion of Mr. 
 Stephens a committee on rules was appointed. He 
 soon reported a code which very much simplified 
 parliamentary procedure and facilitated business. The 
 simplification of the artificial previous question has 
 been adopted by legislatures and is incorporated in 
 many codes." * In his own account 2 Stephens attrib- 
 
 1 Curry, Civil History of the Confederate States, pp. 43-47, 63-64. 
 8 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. II, pp. 335-339. 
 
234 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 uted most of the important suggestions to other mem 
 bers of the convention, which included besides himself 
 the four Georgians, Toombs, Hill, T. E. E. Cobb, 
 Howell Cobb (the presiding officer), and Ehett, Walker, 
 Conrad, and Withers from the other States represented. 
 In a private letter from Montgomery, date of Febru 
 ary 9, 1861. he, however, made this statement : 
 
 " We agreed last night at about midnight to a 
 Constitution for a Provisional Government of the 
 Confederate States. That is the name. It is the Con 
 stitution of the United States, with such changes as 
 are necessary to meet the exigencies of the times. Two 
 new features have been introduced by nie : one, leav 
 ing out the clause that excluded cabinet ministers from 
 being members of Congress ; the other, that Congress 
 should not have power to appropriate any money un 
 less it be asked for by the Executive or some one of 
 the heads of departments," [except by a two-thirds 
 vote of both houses]. 1 
 
 He also wrote plaintively during the sittings : "I am 
 occupied day and night ; never did I have such a heavy 
 load of work on my hands. Sometimes I think I shall 
 sink under it." Well might one always so frail and 
 ailing as he complain. Even when out of Congress, 
 he writes, he was obliged to receive those who came 
 to consult him " until twelve o clock at night." 
 
 The Confederate Constitution, as Stephens explained, 
 
 1 When finally adopted this was accompanied by the requirement 
 that the Treasury publish at stated intervals its receipts and dis 
 bursements by items. These characteristic precautions recall 
 Blaine s testimony (Twenty Years of Congress}, that "through 
 out the long period of their domination [at Washington] the 
 Southern leaders guarded the treasury with rigid and increasing 
 vigilance against every attempt at extravagance and every form of 
 corruption." 
 
VICE-PKESIDENT OF CONFEDEKACY 235 
 
 was little more than the Constitution of the United 
 States with certain more explicit statements bearing 
 on the political issues of the time. The following 
 change in the preamble, the insertions or substitutions 
 appearing in italics, will give an idea of the general 
 spirit of the alterations. 
 
 1 i We the people of the Confederate States, each State 
 acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order 
 to form a permanent federal government, establish 
 justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the 
 blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity 
 invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do 
 ordain and establish this Constitution of the Confeder 
 ate States of America." 
 
 In Article I, " all legislative powers herein granted " 
 was altered so as to read, " all legislative powers 
 herein delegated," with the obvious purpose of a more 
 positive expression of the reserved sovereignty of the 
 States forming the Confederacy. The " importation 
 of negroes of the African race from any foreign country 
 other than the slave-holding States or Territories of the 
 United States of America" was forbidden. The para 
 graph in the Constitution of the United States provid 
 ing for the inter-State surrender of escaped slaves was 
 thus changed: "No slave or other person held to 
 service or labor in any State or Territory of the Con 
 federate States, escaping or lawfully carried into 
 another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation 
 therein be discharged from such service or labor ; but 
 shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom 
 such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor 
 may be due." 
 
 Among the changes in no way related to the polit- 
 
236 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 ical controversies of the time, other than those already 
 noted in the extract from Stephens s private letter, 
 were provisions to prevent infringements upon popular 
 liberty and upon State rights, and restrictions upon 
 the taxing power. " The question of building up class 
 interests, " said Stephens in a speech at Savannah on 
 March 21st, " or fostering one branch of industry to the 
 prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue 
 power, which gave us so much trouble under the old 
 Constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. 
 We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of 
 giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade 
 or business, over those of another. All, under our 
 system, stand upon the same broad principles of per 
 fect equality." 
 
 The tenure of the President s office was fixed at six 
 years, after which he was not eligible for a second 
 term. This last provision is of itself sufficient dis 
 proof of the existence of any leaning toward either the 
 substance or the form of monarchy. Indeed, new 
 restrictions were placed upon the power of the Presi 
 dent, eligible for but one term, by providing that he 
 might remove only cabinet and diplomatic officers at 
 discretion and requiring that in all other cases removals 
 could be made only for cause reported to the Senate. 
 
 Stephens well said that "the whole document 
 utterly negatives the idea, which so many have been 
 active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of 
 history, that the convention at Montgomery was noth- 
 iug but a set of conspirators whose object was the 
 overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the 
 United States." 1 Dr. Curry saw in the debates at 
 
 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. II, p. 339. 
 
VICE-PKESIDENT OF CONFEDEKACY 237 
 
 Montgomery only " the one controlling desire" to 
 devise a system which, l while avoiding the weaknesses 
 or failures of the old," would "result in the welfare 
 of the people and the safeguarding of human rights." 
 With the inevitable exception of the " human rights " 
 of the negro slaves, this is absolutely true. 1 
 
 Early in the session, on February 9th, Jefferson Davis 
 and Alexander H. Stephens were unanimously chosen 
 President and Vice- President of the new government. 
 In a private letter, dated February 21st, Stephens 
 stated that he was induced to accept "from no motive in 
 the world but a desire to promote the public weal. 7 He 
 1 l thought it would have that effect and therefore could 
 not decline." Undoubtedly it helped to unite all 
 
 1 In advising his State to join the Southern Confederacy for 
 commercial reasons, Governor Price of New Jersey said: "The 
 Constitution made at Montgomery has many modifications desired 
 by the people of this State" (Powell s Nullification and Secession 
 in the United States, pp. 373-4). No higher tribute could have been 
 paid to the merits of the Confederate Constitution than the sug 
 gestion of the New York Herald that it be adopted by all the States. 
 The Southern Republic, of Augusta, Ga., date of March 22,1861, 
 quoted as follows from the Herald: "Mr. Seward said in one of 
 his speeches that the North did not know what the Cotton States 
 wanted, and that it was time enough to take action toward recon 
 ciliation when the demands of the South were officially ascer 
 tained ; and Mr. Lincoln has declared in favor of a convention to 
 adopt amendments to the Constitution. Now, by the unanimous 
 adoption of the new Constitution by the Southern Congress, the 
 President, the Secretary of State, and the Republican party know 
 what the South wants; and as there is nothing unreasonable in 
 their demands, and as nothing less will satisfy the Southern States, 
 the best course for the border States and all the other States, North 
 and South, to pursue is to adopt this instrument of reconstruction. 
 As seven States are now out of the Union, which will not be rep 
 resented in the convention proposed by Mr. Lincoln, the only 
 practicable mode of restoring harmony is the adoption of the new 
 Southern Constitution by three-fourths of the States in the mode 
 required by our present Constitution. We shall then have a per 
 fect Union never to be broken." 
 
 The answer of The Southern Republic is no less interesting, and 
 
238 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 factions and elements. The choice of Jefferson Davis 
 for the first place is said to have been a surprise to 
 himself and many others. What the hero of Buena 
 Vista and the Secretary of War under the Pierce ad 
 ministration desired was the chief command of the 
 army, in the event of war. The Georgia delegation 
 had unanimously agreed to present the name of 
 Toonibs. South Carolina s delegates were also under 
 stood to favor either him or Stephens, but when the 
 suggestion was made to the latter by one of the 
 Carolina delegation, he promptly declared that he did 
 not want the office and, moreover, did not consider it 
 appropriate, as he had opposed secession. 1 Stephens 
 himself favored Toombs as " by far the best fitted for 
 the position, looking to all the qualifications necessary 
 to meet its full requirements. " 2 But when it was 
 found that delegates from Florida, Alabama, Mis 
 sissippi, and Louisiana had agreed to support Davis, 
 Toombs withdrew his name and the convention 
 
 clearly indicates that the breach was too wide to be healed in this 
 or any other manner. It was in part as follows : The Herald 
 might as well appeal to winter, as it glistens cold and bright upon 
 the New England hills, to melt and soften into summer at a word, 
 as to the Northern States to adopt that Constitution. It would be 
 as easy to storm Fort Sumter by logic, or lure the United States 
 troops at Forts Pickens, Jefferson and Taylor from their positions 
 by a tune upon a jew s-harp, as to make them do it. If some 
 mighty, almost miraculous power were to influence them to adopt 
 it, it would be too late so far as the Confederate States are con 
 cerned. They have come out from under a pall of gloom and 
 prospective ruin. . . . The Confederate States could not forget 
 the treachery of the North, the insults to which they have been 
 subjected, the wounds they have received. The Herald, however, 
 can do much good. Let it go on and preach peace, for the good of 
 both sections and the interests of humanity." From a clipping 
 in a private-scrap took of the war period. 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, pp. 389-390. 
 
 8 Stephens, A Constitutional View, Vol. II, pp. 329-333. 
 
VICE-PKESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 239 
 
 amicably united on the former, who was no doubt 
 the popular choice. 
 
 The permanent Confederate Constitution was com 
 pleted and unanimously adopted on March llth, by the 
 seven States represented, Texas having seceded on 
 February 14th, and sent her delegates. Meanwhile 
 Jefferson Davis had arrived at Montgomery, having 
 accepted the position tendered him, and was formally 
 inaugurated on February 18th. The newspapers of the 
 time state that the choice of Davis and Stephens was 
 received everywhere with demonstrations of great 
 enthusiasm, one hundred guns being fired at Mont 
 gomery in honor of the event. Similar demonstrations 
 marked the inaugural which was accompanied by all 
 the dignity, but necessarily less of the pomp, with 
 which we are familiar at Washington on such occa 
 sions. Stephens had publicly accepted, on February 
 llth, the position of Yice-President, and con 
 trived that the formalities should be of the simplest 
 character. His private correspondence contains the 
 following references to his election and assumption of 
 office: 
 
 February 9th. " We have just elected the President 
 and Yice-President of the Confederacy. Mr. Davis, of 
 Mississippi, was unanimously chosen President, and 
 I was unanimously chosen Yice-President. I knew 
 that such was the understanding as to what would be 
 the result, and did not go to the hall when the election 
 took place. The vote was cast by States. " 
 
 February 10th. i i To-morrow I am to be inaugurated, 
 or signify my acceptance and take the oath of office 
 publicly in the Congress hall at twelve o clock. . . . 
 I almost shrink from the responsibilities I shall as 
 sume. To making any speech on the occasion I have 
 
240 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 a strong aversion ; but such is the request in the letter 
 asking my acceptance. " 
 
 February llth. u This, as you know, is my birthday 
 [aged forty -nine] ; and this day at the hour of one I 
 was inaugurated (if such be the proper term) Vice- 
 President of the Confederate States of America. The 
 coincidence, altogether accidental, made a marked 
 impression on my mind. The remarks I made . . . 
 were delivered as if extemporaneous, though they had 
 been written and committed to memory. I wrote 
 them down this morning before going to the Capitol. 
 There was, I suspect, great disappointment at their 
 brevity. I had been urged to make a speech, and 
 a very large crowd was assembled to hear it. I was 
 satisfied that such a course would be injudicious, 
 indelicate and improper. Since it is all over, a great 
 many have told me that I did exactly right. I was 
 governed entirely by my own judgment and sense of 
 propriety in the matter. " 
 
 On February 15th, the Confederate Congress provided 
 that after his inauguration the President of the seven 
 seceded States should appoint three commissioners to 
 be sent to Washington " for the purpose of negotiating 
 friendly relations" and "for the settlement of all 
 questions of disagreement" between the two govern 
 ments, including that of just compensation for forts 
 held by the United States in Confederate territory, 
 which now must necessarily be relinquished. These 
 appointments were promptly made and the commis 
 sioners proceeded to Washington, where, on March 12th, 
 they addressed a note to Secretary Seward, informing 
 him of their mission and their government s pacific 
 purposes. Seward refused to receive them officially 
 or even to see them personally, but their dispatches to 
 the Confederate government show that there were 
 
VICE-PKESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 241 
 
 unofficial communications from him through Justice 
 John A. Campbell, who assured them that the dis 
 position of the Lincoln administration was pacific, that 
 it was desired that a direct answer be not pressed at 
 the moment and that Fort Sumter would probably 
 be evacuated in a short time. 
 
 Further assurances were sent the commissioners 
 through Justice Campbell some ten days later. Not un 
 til April 7th, when it was known that the relief squad 
 ron of eleven ships had left New York to reinforce 
 Fort Sumter, did they become really alarmed, and not 
 until April 8th did they receive the " memorandum" 
 explaining the position of the United States govern 
 ment. In their letter of April 9th to Seward the Con 
 federate commissioners bitterly reproached him for not 
 placing this memorandum, dated March 15th, in their 
 hands until the 8th of April, and meanwhile leading 
 them to believe that Fort Sumter would not be rein 
 forced. 1 Justice Campbell shared their indignation, 
 for he had been assured by written message almost at 
 the last minute : " Faith as to Sumter fully kept 
 wait and see." In his letter to Seward, date of April 
 13th, Justice Campbell charged that the Confederate 
 commissioners had been " abused and overreached" 
 and that the l i equivocating conduct of the administra 
 tion was l i the proximate cause of the great calamity 
 that had followed at Fort Sumter. He felt outraged 
 by the part he had been made to play, and this is 
 understood to have hastened his resignation from the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, which, however, 
 would probably have followed in any case, his native 
 State of Alabama having seceded. 
 
 Stephens, A Constitutional View, Vol. II, pp. 345-355, 735-743. 
 
242 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 It is quite clear that Seward deluded or detained the 
 unsuspecting Confederate commissioners with promises 
 until his government had decided what course to pur 
 sue, although at the outset he may have inclined to 
 ward the proposition to evacuate Fort Sumter. This 
 was recommended by General Winfield Scott, and the 
 question was seriously discussed on March 15th in an 
 executive session of the Senate, where the Democrats 
 favored the withdrawal of the troops from all the forts 
 in the South except Key West and Tortugas. It was 
 telegraphed throughout the country on March 14th that 
 Fort Sumter was to be evacuated. If Lincoln and 
 Seward changed their minds, it was doubtless after the 
 governors of seven Northern States went to Washington 
 to urge an aggressive policy, and after other signs of 
 the public temper at the North had been carefully ob 
 served. That the administration was for some time 
 uncertain what course to pursue, and that the Secretary 
 of State was at first disposed to take a good deal upon 
 himself are clearly indicated by the " memorandum " 
 submitted to Lincoln by Seward in which the critical 
 assertion was made that at the end of a month s ad 
 ministration (that is, on] April 4th), the government was 
 still without a policy, and that, among others, the 
 question of the forts in the South was still unsettled. 1 
 
 Stephens declared in his Constitutional View with, for 
 him, unusual heat, that " the whole conduct of the 
 Confederate commissioners was marked with perfect 
 frankness and integrity of purpose, while they were met 
 with an equivocation, a duplicity, a craft, and deceit, 
 which, taken altogether, is without a parallel in modern 
 times!" The irritation in the South caused by such 
 1 Carl Schurz, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 67-73. 
 
VICE-PKESIDENT OF CONFEDEBACY 243 
 
 " crooked paths of diplomacy, 7 as Davis characterized 
 Seward s policy, was necessarily intense. And it was 
 perfectly natural, from the Southern view-point, to 
 regard the dispatch of the relief squadron as an act of 
 war. The theory held by Lincoln and Seward, how 
 ever sincerely, that the seceded States were not out of 
 the Union and could not go out, but were in rebellion 
 against constituted authority, made no difference so far 
 as this point was concerned. It could only have been 
 fully understood at Washington that, under the circum 
 stances, the dispatch of relief to Fort Sumter would 
 force the issue and precipitate the conflict. 
 
 In spite of all the excitement and irritation, how 
 ever, the order to reduce Fort Sumter was reluctantly 
 sent from Montgomery, where the policy was not unan 
 imously supported and where a most earnest desire 
 to avoid a hazardous war predominated. Even the 
 fiery Toombs is reported to have urged that i i it will 
 lose us every friend that we have in the North." l 
 But if the Confederate government had faltered at this 
 point, it would have been open to the charge of weak 
 ness and would have virtually abandoned its cause at 
 the outset. There is no record of Stephens s attitude 
 at the moment, but in his history he justified the 
 action at Montgomery and contended that the war " wa, 
 inaugurated and begun when the hostile fleet styled 
 the relief squadron, with eleven ships carrying 285 
 guns and 2,400 men, was sent out from New York and 
 Norfolk to reinforce Fort Sumter, peaceably if per 
 mitted, l but forcibly if they must. " a 
 
 Whether Lincoln deliberately forced the issue in 
 
 Life of Robert Toombs, p. 226. 
 s Stephens, A Constitutional View, Vol. II, pp. 34-39, 43. 
 
244 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 order to unite the hesitating, doubting Northern 
 masses, that result was now attained and within two 
 days of Major Anderson s capitulation, 1 he put forth his 
 proclamation calling for 75, 000 troops with no fear of 
 consequences. This proclamation solidified the South 
 ern masses in turn. Many of them might regret the 
 old Union established by their fathers, but the new and 
 separate Southern Union was a fact, and this, their 
 country, was to be invaded; they had accepted the 
 theory that a sovereign State could not and would not 
 be coerced, and had not expected war, but now the in 
 vader was coming, and they must stand shoulder to 
 shoulder in defense of native soil, forgetting all past 
 divisions and differences. Yet even at this stage the 
 gravity of the situation was but imperfectly under 
 stood. To the Southern mind it was incredible that so 
 much blood and treasure would be sacrificed in order 
 
 ^he spectacular and bloodless affair at Charleston was made a 
 subject of jest by the London Times, which informed its readers 
 that the ladies turned out to view a contest in which no one was 
 hurt ; that a telling shot from Fort Sumter was as generously ap 
 plauded as one from Fort Moultrie ; that when the American flag 
 was shot away, Beauregard sent another for Anderson to fight 
 under ; that when the fort took fire the polite enemy, who had 
 labored to cause the conflagration, gave equally energetic assist 
 ance in putting it out ; and that the only cause of indignation dur 
 ing the whole affair was the conduct of the Northern flotilla in 
 keeping at a safe distance and taking no part in the fray, the South 
 erners resenting this as an act of treachery to their admired enemy, 
 Major Anderson. 
 
 Very different was the same newspaper s comment at a later 
 day when the Confederacy s earlier successes in the field were the 
 talk of the world. " There can hardly be a citizen of the Federal 
 States," said the London Times, " who will not feel bitter envy as 
 he reads the address of the Southern President on the success of 
 the Confederacy s arms. The language of that address is familiar 
 to the history and still more to the imagination of the Americans. 
 All the topics are those which that nation has latterly claimed for 
 its own. A people suddenly thrown on its defense, and though 
 
VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 245 
 
 to bind a few unwilling States to a Union that would 
 be freer and therefore better off without them. Dis 
 cussing " the cuckoo cry " that " the nation " must be 
 saved, the Richmond Examiner said : " The Confeder 
 ate States can support a national existence very well 
 for themselves ; why cannot the North do likewise ! 
 And how unworthy of any nation is the plea that it 
 must die a political death if they lose their association 
 with another which desires to get rid of the fellow 
 ship ! " When the North found that the South was 
 determined to win independence at any cost, would not 
 the former reconsider and leave the latter in peace, on 
 the common-sense principle that the game was not 
 worth the candle ? The issue of the contest between 
 the governor of New York and the governor of Georgia 
 no doubt encouraged many in the South to believe that 
 equal firmness, resource and daring on the part of the 
 
 unprovided with ships, arms, powder and even food, hurling back 
 in disorder and disgrace fleets and armies on the scale of a Xerxes 
 or a Darius ; multiplying its hosts by rapidity of movement, 
 strengthening its unprovisioned fortresses by concealing their weak 
 ness ; sacrificing gain, comfort and every earthly consideration to 
 patriotism this is the particular portraiture of greatness on which 
 the American citizen fondly gazes and sees his own image. He 
 panted and pined for at least one more occasion in which the earn 
 est of his budding glory, given eighty years ago, might be more 
 largely realized on the grand scale of modern warfare. . . . 
 There was a time when we, on this side, sometimes smiled at these 
 dreams. Greece would never transfer itself to the Potomac, or the 
 Rappahannock become a classic stream. But this has come to 
 pass and these visions have been fulfilled. The parts, however, 
 were not as expected. It is the American himself the American 
 of the boastful, prosperous, teeming North who is the furious, 
 multitudinous, but discomfited invader. He is himself repelled, 
 shattered and prostrated. It is from him, not for him, that all this 
 glory has been won. In this famous world-wide story, which will 
 be told for all ages, he is the savage invader, crushed to the ground, 
 trodden under foot, or driven into outer darkness." From a 
 private scrap-book of the war period. 
 
246 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Confederate government would command an early 
 peace. Apparently there were few who, like Stephens, 
 foresaw the magnitude of the coming conflict. 
 
 Two days after President Lincoln s proclamation, the 
 " mother of States," whose Peace Convention was still 
 in session at Washington, withdrew from the Union 
 and proclaimed herself an independent commonwealth, 
 her governor having previously replied to the call for 
 Virginia s quota of 2,340 men that no troops would be 
 furnished for "an object not within the purview of 
 the Constitution or the laws." In likewise refusing to 
 furnish the desired quota, the governor of North Caro 
 lina (still in the Union) described the aggressive policy 
 of the Eepublican administration as " in violation of 
 the Constitution and a usurpation of power." The 
 governor of Arkansas (still in the Union) declared that 
 the demand for troops for such a purpose added insult 
 to injury. The reply of Tennessee (still in the Union) 
 was "not a man for purposes of coercion, but 50,000 
 if necessary for the defense of our rights and those of 
 our Southern brethren." The replies of the border 
 States, which announced and maintained the status of 
 neutrals, thus asserting State sovereignty as positively 
 as did the seceding States themselves, were no less em 
 phatic. Lincoln was informed that Kentucky would 
 furnish no troops "for the wicked purpose of subduing 
 her sister Southern States." The governor of Mary 
 land refused to answer the call unless it should be 
 necessary "to defend the national capital." The gov 
 ernor of Delaware replied that he had no authority to 
 comply with such a requisition. The governor of Mis 
 souri denounced the requisition as "illegal, unconsti 
 tutional, and revolutionary in its objects, inhuman and 
 
VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 247 
 
 diabolical." 1 Even in the free-labor States there was 
 vigorous and outspoken opposition to the policy of the 
 administration. 
 
 On April 17th, Stephens wrote from Montgomery : 
 " It is expected here that Virginia will secede, and all the 
 border States will follow her ; and then I think the 
 whole North will consolidate. This will keep the Re 
 publicans in power. This is perhaps what they are 
 mainly aiming at." The expected event took place on 
 the day this was written, and on the 19th Stephens 
 started for Richmond in the capacity of commissioner 
 "to negotiate an alliance" with the commonwealth of 
 Virginia, t according to the constitutions of both pow 
 ers." After due discussion, a convention was agreed 
 on, providing that Virginia should join the union of the 
 Confederate States and cede to the latter " all the pub 
 lic property, naval stores, munitions of war," etc., 
 "acquired from the United States," "on the same 
 terms and in like manner as the other States of the 
 Confederacy have done in like cases." The articles 
 of agreement were promptly ratified by the Virginia 
 Assembly. It was provided, however, that this ordi 
 nance should not go into effect unless the people of the 
 State endorsed the ordinance of secession, which they 
 did soon after by a vote of 125,950 to 20,373. 
 
 After his arrival in Richmond on April 22d, Stephens 
 wrote home : "We are on the eve of a tremendous con 
 flict between the sections. Sentiment is rapidly con 
 solidating on both sides of the line. North Carolina 
 is in a blaze from one extremity to the other. I had 
 to make a speech at all the stations. . . . Our 
 people in Georgia have no idea of the feelings enter- 
 1 Larned s History for Ready Reference, Vol. V, pp. 3424-5. 
 
248 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 tained here of the dangers of war. All the cities and 
 towns of Virginia are under guard day and night j and 
 all persons not able to give an account of themselves 
 are taken up." Ill-starred Virginia dimly foresaw 
 that her bosom was to be the battle-field of the war and 
 would bear the scars for a generation, but she did not 
 dream that more than a third of her very soil would be 
 alienated by the government to which she had gener 
 ously ceded in earlier times her vast Western claims. 
 On April 25th, Stephens wrote: "The work of my 
 mission is in suspense before the convention. The 
 Virginians will debate and speak, though war be at 
 their gates. 7 Decision and action, however, were 
 prompt, as has been noted. 
 
 His purpose accomplished, Stephens returned south 
 ward, and on April 29th wrote from his home in Georgia : 
 4 1 Never was the country so thoroughly roused from 
 the Eio Grande to the Canada line. The feeling at the 
 North is just as intense, from all I can learn, as it is at 
 the South. I feel anxious to see the message of Presi 
 dent Davis delivered to-day. I trust he will recom 
 mend defensive measures only. If we act on the de 
 fensive strictly we may yet avoid a general war." 
 From Montgomery on May 4th he wrote : "I expect a 
 prolonged and bloody conflict. I have never believed 
 that a separation of the States of the old Confederation 
 would take place without a severe conflict of arms." 
 After privately announcing to Linton Stephens the de 
 cision to move the Confederate government to Bich- 
 mond in the following July, he wrote on May 14th : "I 
 will not permit myself to doubt that the people of the 
 South will prove equal to the crisis. I do not concur 
 with those who think we shall have a short war. I 
 
VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONFEDERACY 249 
 
 wish I could. " Referring on May 25th to a report 
 that he predicted little fighting, he wrote : " I have 
 been of the contrary opinion all the time. On May 30th : 
 "All Lincoln s cabinet, except Blair, were opposed 
 to the war at first honestly, as I think. They were 
 driven into it by such men as Cassius M. Clay, Jim 
 Lane and the Republican governors." 
 
 Having been summoned from his home to Montgom 
 ery by a telegram from Davis, on April 17th, Stephens 
 wrote : " He wished to consult me about receiving vol 
 unteers from the border States, the issuing of letters of 
 marque, and other matters relating to the state of the 
 country. A proclamation will be forthcoming to-mor 
 row, I expect, inviting privateering. The proclama 
 tion will be put forth to let the Northern merchants 
 know what they may expect, and to have privateers 
 ready." 
 
 The expected proclamation was issued by the Con 
 federacy s President two days later. There were two 
 immediate results. One was the instruction of United 
 States ministers to negotiate with the European Powers 
 with a view to making the United States a party to 
 the Paris compact of 1856 abolishing privateering. 
 The other was Lincoln s proclamation announcing a 
 blockade of the Southern ports and declaring that 
 Southern privateers would be treated as pirates. In 
 ternational opinion, however, could not be expected 
 to regard either Southern or Northern privateers as 
 pirates because the United States had not joined 
 Great Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and 
 Turkey, when in 1856 those countries had agreed to 
 abolish privateering. Earl Russell, therefore, insisted 
 that the proposed convention should have no bearing 
 
250 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 on the " internal difficulties" in the United States; 
 and as Minister Adams would not assent to this, the 
 United States again failed to become a party to the 
 Paris compact of 1856. 
 
 This action of Earl Russell, England s recognition 
 on May 6th of the Confederate States as belligerents, 
 and Queen Victoria s proclamation on May 13th of 
 neutrality between the belligerents were not only of 
 immense advantage to the Confederacy as such, but 
 subserved the interests of humanity. It was impos 
 sible to treat eleven States with a white population of 
 five millions and with great armies in the field other 
 wise than as belligerents. If the theory that the Con 
 federates were rebels in the ordinary sense of that 
 term, and that Confederate privateers were pirates, 
 had been acted upon, a series of appalling events 
 would have followed, which would have filled the 
 world with horror, and which every American would 
 soon have blushed to recall. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 / 
 
 THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 
 
 (V 
 
 A DISCUSSION of the battles of the war of 1861-5 
 would not be an appropriate feature of this chronicle, 
 its subject having taken no part in the operations in 
 the field. The military history of the great struggle 
 may be dismissed with the single statement that the 
 record of valiant fighting on both sides of the line is 
 one of which all Americans of the present day may 
 well be proud. A brief general account of the diffi 
 culties which faced the Confederates, and of the priva 
 tions they suffered, is, however, an essential part of 
 this narrative, Stephens having foreseen them more 
 clearly perhaps than any of his associates, and having 
 striven earnestly to provide for better conditions by 
 the prompt export and storing of cotton abroad. In 
 a sense also he was in his own person one of the Con 
 federacy s heavy handicaps, as will be shown. There 
 is much truth in the declaration of Benjamin H. Hill 
 that "the cause was lost by our own dissensions," and 
 no other man contributed to those dissensions in so 
 large a measure as Stephens. 
 
 But of these things later. We must now refer to 
 the damage done at the outset by his speech, delivered 
 at Savannah on March 21, 1861, in which he exalted 
 negro slavery as ideal and as the very " corner-stone " 
 of the new and proud edifice of the Confederacy. 
 Many years afterward a Scotch clergyman testified to 
 
252 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 the " thrill of horror" caused by the reports of that 
 speech in the British Isles, where the people, from the 
 Queeii to the peasant, had wept over the woes of those 
 unearthly saints and martyrs with black skins who 
 figured in the pages of Uncle Tom s Cabin. Speaking 
 as Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, 
 Stephens said : 
 
 The new Constitution has put at rest forever all 
 the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institu 
 tion 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 an 
 ticipated this as the rock upon which the Union 
 would split. He was right. What was conjecture 
 with him is now realized fact. But whether he fully 
 comprehended the great truth upon which that rock 
 stood and stands may be doubted. The prevailing 
 ideas entertained by him and most of the leading- 
 statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Con 
 stitution 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. This 
 idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was 
 the prevailing idea at that time. The Constitution, it 
 is true, secured every essential guarantee to the insti 
 tution while it should last, and hence no argument can 
 be justly urged against the constitutional guaranties 
 thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the 
 day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. 
 They rested upon the assumption of the equality of 
 races. This was an error. 
 
 "Our new government is founded upon exactly the 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 253 
 
 opposite idea ; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 
 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 
 . . . in conformity with the ordinance of the 
 Creator. . . . Our Confederacy is founded upon 
 principles in strict conformity with these [Divine] 
 laws. This stone which was rejected by the first 
 builders is become the chief of the corner 1 the real 
 4 corner-stone in our new edifice. " 
 
 A man of generous sympathies, of broad humanity, 
 a democrat of democrats, a friend of all the world, 
 Stephens" was the very last of the Southern leaders that 
 one would expect to make slavery the all-important 
 question, fet he went further than any of them in his 
 public utterances on this subject,) thus obscuring the 
 fundamental issue of State rights and doing incalcu 
 lable damage to the Confederate cause.) A year before 
 he had expressed the fear that "ifthere were only 
 slave States in the new Confederacy " it would "be 
 known as the Black Eepublic and be without the 
 sympathy of the world," but now he seemed to im 
 agine that the same world could be brought by argu 
 ment to another view. Nothing is more certain even 
 in our time than that such a race as the negro, when 
 placed in association with Americans or Europeans, 
 must inevitably occupy a subordinate position ; but to 
 see in this unquestionable condition an excuse and 
 mandate for either formal or actual slavery was not 
 reason but persuasion induced by impelling circum 
 stances. Stephens honestly confused the two things 
 and imagined that on this subject he and the other 
 later Southern leaders were wiser than Washington, 
 Jefferson, and all the slavery -condemning "fathers" 
 
254 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 of the South. But if the foresight of a year before 
 had not been absent, he would now have stressed the 
 "peculiar institution 7 less in speaking for the world 
 to hear and dwelt on the violated constitutional rights 
 of the Southern States as the imperative cause of seces 
 sion. His " corner-stone" speech no doubt brought 
 thousands of recruits to the Northern standard and 
 was not the least of the factors concerned in the pre 
 vention of the recognition of the Confederacy by the 
 governments of Europe. / 
 
 Among other handicaps, two of the most serious are 
 to be found in the fact that the Confederacy was hope 
 lessly outnumbered in available fighting men and in 
 calculably outclassed in material resources. In the 
 course of the war the United States had 2,778,304 
 troops on the rolls, and the strength of the Federal 
 army at the close of the struggle was 797,007 present 
 and 202,700 absent. In the Confederate army at the 
 surrender, according to the official estimate, 1 there 
 were 174,223 men. This number includes all who 
 were paroled between April and November, 1865, and 
 among these are counted the " Tories and mossbacks" 
 as well as the deserters, numbering from eight to ten 
 thousand in Alabama alone, who came forward from 
 their hiding-places to surrender, 2 much to the indig 
 nation of the genuine Confederate soldiers. The 
 greatest strength of the Confederate army, present and 
 absent, at any one time is given as 439,675, on Jan 
 uary 1, 1864. The authority just cited adds 250,000 
 for deaths previous to that time, and, allowing for 
 
 1 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. IV, pp. 767-8. 
 
 2 Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, pp. 118, 
 127-8. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 255 
 
 disability and desertion, suggests 1,000,000 as an ap 
 proximate estimate of the total Confederate enlist 
 ments. This would mean one soldier in every five of 
 a population including old men, women and children, 
 and is manifestly too liberal an estimate, especially in 
 the case of a section where large families of children 
 were the rule, where there were classes exempted from 
 service by law, and where the Tory, or Union, and 
 otherwise half-hearted elements were of more con 
 siderable dimensions than is generally supposed. The 
 usual estimate among Southern writers of 600,000 is 
 probably nearer the truth, and, in the absence of com 
 plete records, may be accepted as at least approxi 
 mately correct. 
 
 Some light is thrown on this question by a passage 
 in a letter written by Stephens on August 27, 1862, 
 referring to an interview with the Confederate Secre 
 tary of War on the previous day, as follows : 
 
 " He [the Secretary of War] is against the extension 
 of the Conscript Act to the age of forty-five. If more 
 troops should be wanted, he is in favor of calling on 
 the governors of the States in the first instance. He 
 says, however, and truly, I think, that we now have 
 in the field as many as we can clothe and feed and 
 arm. There are on the rolls about four hundred 
 thousand. " l 
 
 If four hundred thousand were as many soldiers as 
 the Confederacy could " clothe and feed and arm "in 
 1862, much less than half that number could have been 
 made effective in the field during the last year of the 
 
 1 In a letter written six months later Stephens expressed the 
 opinion that Lincoln would " not call out a great many more 
 troops ; he will keep his army at about a million strong." 
 
256 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 war, in view of the distressing conditions which are to 
 be pointed out. Napoleon well said that an army is 
 like a serpent in that it moves on its belly. Even if 
 all the troops desired had been available, the Con 
 federate government would have been utterly in 
 capable of profitably employing them during the 
 latter part of the war, and would, indeed, have been 
 embarrassed by their presence all the more, for they 
 would have promptly exhausted the scant supplies 
 that were carefully husbanded for the benefit of the 
 half-starved remnant still on the firing line. 
 
 It is true that the estimate of 600,000 enlistments 
 does not agree altogether with the claims of the 
 separate States as to the number of soldiers each 
 contributed, but it may be doubted whether these 
 claims are always based on reliable records. Even if 
 there were no more than 600,000 enlistments, one- 
 eighth of the entire white population of the South was 
 found in the Confederate armies, and was a remark 
 ably large representation in view of the conditions 
 which will be shown, and of the fact that only a ma 
 jority not the whole people longed for independence 
 and were determined to win the war at every cost of 
 blood, treasure and cruel privation. The census of 
 1860 gave the eleven States of the Confederacy a 
 population of 9,103,329, including West Virginia and 
 eastern Tennessee which contributed so largely to the 
 Union armies a loss that was perhaps offset by 
 the soldiers contributed to the Confederacy by the di 
 vided States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. 
 From these nine millions must be subtracted, as 
 unavailable material, nearly four million slaves, 
 leaving about five million white persons of both 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 257 
 
 sexes and all ages from which to recruit the Con 
 federate armies. The census of 1860 gives the United 
 States a population of 31,443,321. The States out 
 side of the Confederacy, therefore, had a popula 
 tion of 22,339,992. The divided States of Kentucky, 
 Maryland and Missouri had a combined population, 
 including slaves, of 3,024,745. Even if we deduct 
 their inhabitants in toto, it will still appear that the 
 North had a white population to draw from four times 
 as large as that of the South, and with the same effort 
 could muster an army four times as great. In addi 
 tion it was able throughout the war to draw enlist 
 ments from Europe, which the blockaded South, suf 
 fering for the want of funds for the most ordinary 
 expenses, could not do. Official statistics furnished 
 by the Federal Secretary of War have been cited to 
 show that more than 700,000 foreigners from first to 
 last were induced to emigrate and enter the armies 
 of the Union. 1 Moreover, there were 178,975 negroes 
 in the Northern armies, according to the official 
 figures, and large numbers of these were slaves escap 
 ing from the South. The census of 1860 alone is im 
 perishable testimony to the devotion of the South in 
 the field, or if this be thoughtlessly denied to the 
 utter lack of such devotion in the teeming, prosperous, 
 unfettered North. 
 
 The Confederates inevitably did their best work 
 during the first half of the war while still hopeful of a 
 successful issue, before the South had exhausted its 
 limited resources, before the disagreements, divided 
 counsels, and errors of its leaders had impaired the 
 
 1 J. L. M. Curry, Civil History of the Government of the Confederate 
 States, p. 152. 
 
258 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 confidence of the people, and before fearful hardships 
 and the doubtful outlook had weakened the determina 
 tion to win at any cost, had checked voluntary enlist 
 ments, and had induced many to long for the end of 
 war even with defeat. 
 
 The straits to which the people of the Confederacy 
 were reduced by the blockade of their ports and the 
 interruption of commerce between North and South 
 may be readily understood when it is recalled that the 
 institution of slavery had caused the Southern States 
 to be wholly agricultural, with scarcely a manufactur 
 ing establishment of any sort. Food was at first gen 
 erally plentiful and was always sufficient on the plan 
 tations of the lower South, but in a land of small 
 railroad mileage and with coastwise commerce at an 
 end owing to the blockade, lack of transportation 
 facilities and the inward advance of the Federal lines 
 made its proper distribution difficult from the outset 
 and finally impossible. Even in the beginning the in 
 sufficient supply of ammunition was a source of 
 anxiety. "We dare not make known the condition of 
 the army," wrote a Confederate war clerk in Richmond 
 on June 18, 1861, " the awful fact that we have not 
 enough ammunition at Manassas to fight a battle. 
 There are not percussion caps enough in the army for 
 a serious skirmish." l Although there was cotton in 
 abundance, only primitive handlooms were now avail 
 able, and the time came when women made shirts for 
 their husbands out of their own petticoats. An Eng 
 lish correspondent wrote of a gown worn by the wife 
 of Senator Clement C. Clay at a ball in Richmond in 
 the spring of 1864 made of unbleached homespun 
 1 Diary of J. B. Jones, Vol. I, p. 53. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 259 
 
 cotton trimmed with gourd-seed buttons dyed crimson. 
 Delicately bred ladies were glad to get coarse brogan 
 shoes at $100 a pair in 1863-4. Calico sold at $10 a 
 yard and later on at $25. Even as far South as 
 Georgia, early in the war i i ordinary fifteen cent 
 muslin sold at $2.50 a yard," says Mrs. Clement C. 
 Clay in her memoirs. In Eichmond physicians felt 
 forced to charge $30 a visit and the cost of medicines 
 was enormous. Newspapers were printed finally on 
 the back of wall paper and sold at fifty cents a copy. 
 Parched potato coffee, peanut " chocolate" and 
 orange-leaf tea were prized beverages. Needles were 
 as precious as heirlooms and locust thorns were used 
 instead. High and low were glad to stoop and pick 
 up a pin wherever found. Bed ink was made of poke- 
 berries and black ink of soot mixed with vinegar. 
 Salt had to be extracted from the earthen floors of 
 smoke-houses. 
 
 On December 5, 1864, Stephens wrote from Eich 
 mond that he was paying thirty dollars a day for 
 meals and a room, and added : i Fuel, lights, and 
 extras generally will be about thirty dollars per day 
 more ; so it will not take long to consume my salary." l 
 
 Throughout the South the prices for all necessaries 
 soared upward, owing to the depreciation of the Con 
 federate currency, the scarcity of merchandise and at 
 many points even of food, the lack of transportation 
 facilities, and the tightening grip of the blockade. 
 Both the soldiers and the people suffered for the want 
 of medicines, quinine selling at $100 an ounce when the 
 war was only half over. At Eichmond in April, 1863, 
 flour brought $36 a barrel ; in October of the same 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 475, 
 
260 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 year $70 a barrel. "How can I pay such prices t" 
 asked a poor woman. "I have seven children, 
 what shall I do?" "I don t know, madam," replied 
 the dealer, " unless you eat your children." A 
 year later flour sold in Richmond at $275 a barrel ; in 
 January, 1865, at $700 a barrel, and on March 20, 
 1865, at $1,500 a barrel. 2 Many people suffered for the 
 want of food and the majority lived on short rations. 
 The Diary of J. B. Jones, December 30, 1864, quotes 
 " second-hand shirts at auction $40," blankets $75; 
 February 11, 1865, men-slaves $5,000 in Confederate 
 money or $100 in gold ; March 18, 1865, bacon $20 a 
 pound, meal $140 a bushel. Correspondingly prohibi 
 tive prices for other food, clothing and medicines 
 were demanded. At the Oriental Restaurant in Rich 
 mond 3 in 1864 a boiled egg cost $2, a cup of coffee $3, 
 and so on. 
 
 As early as April 2, 1863, President Davis checked 
 a bread riot in Richmond by mounting a dray and ad 
 dressing the people. A mob of a thousand persons, 
 shouting that they were hungry, rushed into " diverse 
 stores of the speculators," and helped themselves. 
 Davis l urged them to return to their homes, so that 
 the bayonets now threatening them might be used 
 against the common enemy. He told them that such 
 acts would bring famine, as it would deter people from 
 bringing food to the city. He said he was willing to 
 share his last loaf with the suffering people (his best 
 horse had been stolen the night before) and he trusted 
 we would all bear our privations with fortitude, and 
 continue united against the Northern invaders who 
 
 1 Diary of J. B. Jones, Vol. II, p. 78. 
 
 8 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 454. 3 The Confederate Scrap Boole, p. 136. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 261 
 
 were the authors of all our sufferings." * The poor 
 and the salaried clerks were not the only sufferers ; 
 even the President of the Confederacy was embarrassed 
 to meet his expenses on a salary of 125,000 paid in a 
 currency so depreciated that in 1864, $33, and early in 
 1865, $60 of it equaled only one dollar in gold. He 
 was able to give few receptions or entertainments of 
 any kind, and he had cause to regret that he had de 
 clined the gift of a house which the people of Eich- 
 niond had offered him. 
 
 Senator Clement C. Clay wrote from Bichrnond to 
 his wife in Macon as early as March, 1863 : " A gen 
 eral gloom prevails here because of the scarcity and 
 high price of food. Our soldiers are on half rations of 
 meat, one- quarter pound of salt, one-half pound of 
 fresh meat, without vegetables or fruit or coffee or 
 sugar ! Don t mention this, as it will do harm to let 
 it get abroad. Eeally there is serious apprehension of 
 having to disband part of the army for want of food. 
 In this city the poor clerks and subaltern military 
 officers are threatened with starvation, as they cannot 
 get board on their pay. God only knows what is to 
 become of us, if we do not soon drive the enemy from 
 Tennessee and Kentucky and get food from their 
 granaries. ... I dined with the President yester 
 day at six P. M. en fmnille on beef soup, beef stew, 
 meat pie, potatoes, coffee and bread." 
 
 By December of the same year, the soldiers were re 
 duced to " one quarter pound of fat pork with a little 
 meal or a little flour," and Lee wrote of his men : 
 1 1 Thousands are barefooted, a greater number partially 
 
 1 Diary of J. B. Jones, Vol. I, pp. 284-5. 
 9 Memoirs of Mrs. Clement C. Clay, p. 194. 
 
262 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 shod and nearly all without overcoats, blankets, or 
 warm clothing." One of his soldiers wrote to him 
 anonymously that " although a gentleman, he had 
 been compelled to steal " in order to satisfy his hunger. 
 Some officers who dined with Lee about this time re 
 ported that the meal consisted of a dish of boiled 
 cabbage with a diminutive slice of bacon in the centre, 
 which latter was offered to and declined by all. * 
 
 On March 29, 1863, Stephens wrote : "Our coun 
 try is in a sad condition. It is painful to me to look 
 toward the future. I shrink from it as from a fright 
 ful gulf toward which we are rapidly tending. This 
 is a general fast day, dedicated to humiliation and 
 prayer most appropriate duties." A little later on 
 he might well have written that for too many citizens, 
 as well as soldiers, every day had virtually become a 
 fast day ! 
 
 In the following extract from a letter written by 
 Stephens describing his unsuccessful attempt to reach 
 Eichmond from his home in Georgia in the spring of 
 1864, we get an interesting glimpse of war-time in the 
 Confederacy and some of the attendant hardships : 
 
 " A train is brought out [at Columbia, S. C.], and 
 seven hundred and fifty Yankee prisoners marched out 
 to be put 011 it. Another train brought out, and two 
 hundred and fifty more Yankee prisoners marched out 
 and put in. At the end of this train a passenger car 
 is attached, all the others and all the cars of the first 
 train being box cars. My conductor appears . . . 
 takes me to the car and gives me a good seat. Bag 
 gage put on. I walk out on the platform before the 
 car leaves. A great number of wounded soldiers stand 
 ing about trying to get passage home ; some with 
 1 Henry A. White, Life of Robert E. Lee, pp. 516-519. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 263 
 
 bandages on the head, some with arms in slings and 
 some on crutches. In reply to their questions the con 
 ductor says they cannot go, they mast wait until to 
 morrow. Great murmuring in the crowd : They had 
 been there two days waiting and without money. - 
 1 No more care or thought is given to a wounded soldier 
 than if he were a dog, such exclamations were com 
 mon. ... I take my seat in the car, the man 
 with a gun at the door lets me in. On this quite a 
 number of the wounded soldiers get in at the windows. 
 Conductor comes and makes them get out they com 
 plain bitterly. Some one tells them, I suppose, that I 
 was the Vice- President, for I hear some vociferous fel 
 low say aloud, in a passion, i I ll be damned if I don t 
 go ; I am as good as the Vice- President ! ...! 
 had gone to see Major Morphet, who had come down 
 in charge of the prisoners, and urged upon him to send 
 the wounded soldiers forward as soon as possible. 
 Among the loudest complaints they were making was 
 one that the Yankees should be sent on before them. 
 Some of them swore in their wrath that the Yankees 
 ought to be killed ; but instead of that they were cared 
 for more than the men who had been wounded in de 
 fending their country. I was truly sorry for them. 
 . . . It was three o clock when we got to Greens 
 boro [next morning]. The water on the road had 
 given out, and the hands had to haul it up with buck 
 ets at the creeks and branches. . . . Soon after 
 starting, a soldier looking very weak and sick, and 
 much emaciated, passed by me, looking for a seat. 
 The conductor had given me a seat to myself, so I 
 touched the soldier and told him to take a seat by me. 
 He did so with a good deal of modesty as well as thank 
 fulness. He evidently, from his manner, knew who I 
 was. He seemed to be sick and not wounded . . . 
 and was a mere boy. What regiment ? i The Fif 
 teenth Georgia. ... I was taken sick . . . 
 have been here three days trying to get on, but 
 couldn t. The poor fellow looked very badly. On 
 my asking him if he had any money, he said he had 
 
264 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 not a cent. I asked him if he had had anything to eat 
 that day. Nothing since breakfast. I hauled out my 
 basket and gave him as much as he wanted. Seeing 
 others about looking anxiously on, I passed the basket 
 round, about half a dozen ate up what was laid in for 
 our traveling lunch for some days. I was sorry I did 
 not have enough for all." 
 
 The Confederate government was seriously em 
 barrassed by its great accumulation of Federal cap 
 tives, who necessarily shared in the common privations. 
 With calomel at $20 and quinine at $100 an ounce, and 
 the cost of other medicines to correspond, and with 
 flour at $70 a barrel when the war was only half over, 
 the best care of Federal prisoners in all cases would 
 seem to have been impossible. Yet the mortality ap 
 pears to have been greater in Northern than in South 
 ern prisons. Secretary Stanton s report of July 19, 
 1866, as now found in the House Executive Documents, 
 states that 22,576 Union prisoners died in the South and 
 26,436 Confederate prisoners in the North, while the 
 total of Confederate captives is given as 220,000 and of 
 Federal as " about 126,940." Stephens and Davis in 
 their histories, and Hill in Congress, cited a subsequent 
 report of Surgeon-General Barnes, estimating the whole 
 number of prisoners in the South as 270,000. This 
 Barnes report, though apparently not now in 
 cluded in the government s printed documents, is 
 referred to by the National Intelligencer of June 2, 
 1869, in an editorial statement giving exactly the 
 same figures, as having appeared " year before last " 
 (1867). The policy of non-exchange persisted in 
 by the Federal government, in spite of all the 
 representations and propositions from the Confed- 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 265 
 
 erate, kept the prisons on both sides overcrowded 
 and undoubtedly was the cause of much of the suffering 
 and mortality. 
 
 Stephens was so moved by the spectacle of the hard 
 ships and needs of the great accumulations of prison 
 ers in the South that in 1864 he urged that they be ex 
 tended an unconditional discharge and sent home, sup 
 porting his suggestion by the argument that such an 
 unexampled act of generosity would strengthen the 
 anti- war party in the North. l These very unfortunate 
 suffering prisoners," reads Stephens 7 s argument "suf 
 fering from the inhumanity of their own high officials, 
 who had beguiled them by false pretexts into this cru 
 sade against unoffending neighbors so relieved and 
 sent home to the bosom of their families and friends by 
 such an act of mercy on our part, I thought would be 
 the most effective of instruments at our command for 
 accomplishing this great end." The answer to his 
 remarkable proposal was that " if the Federal prison 
 ers should be thus discharged, there would be no se 
 curity for the safety of the equally suffering Confeder 
 ates in Northern prisons," who "might be tried and 
 executed for treason, as the privateersmen had been 
 tried and condemned to death for piracy," and "had 
 been saved only by the retaliatory course to which the 
 Confederates had been compelled to resort." The 
 policy of non-exchange, though apparently cruel, was 
 no doubt justified at Washington on the ground that 
 it would cause the sacrifice of fewer Northern lives in 
 the end. It steadily weakened the Confederate armies, 
 which found it increasingly difficult and finally impos 
 sible to renew their losses, while the unfailing sources 
 1 Stephens, A Constitutional View, Vol. II, pp. 516-519. 
 
266 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 of supply on the Federal side caused such losses to be 
 of comparatively small account. The Federal govern 
 ment could well afford to sacrifice the aid of the vast 
 number of prisoners held in the South in exchange for 
 the privilege of keeping 220,000 Confederates away 
 from the firing line. 
 
 In the midst of the distresses and perplexities over 
 whelming the Confederacy, its inexperienced govern 
 ment made mistakes that in some cases rendered the sit 
 uation still more desperate. Why reflecting men should 
 have enacted a law exempting large slaveholders, 
 or those owning twenty negroes or more, from military 
 service, passes understanding. Its prompt and easily 
 foreseen result was to excite class feeling and bring for 
 ward the demoralizing and not in all respects unrea 
 soning complaint that it was " a rich man s war and a 
 poor man s fight. There were less than 400, 000 slave 
 holders in the entire South, and just enough truth in 
 the charge to render such an issue seriously damaging 
 to the Confederacy s cause. The feeling thus aroused 
 was no doubt fruitful of desertions during the latter 
 half of the war, encouraging a certain half-heartedness 
 that obtained among many of the poorer whites from 
 the outset in spite of the fact that they shared in the 
 universal dread of the consequences of emancipation. 
 These Southern people of the lowly class in which 
 Abraham Lincoln had been born, though as a rule very 
 ignorant, were at least dimly conscious that slave labor 
 was practically an insurmountable obstacle in the path 
 of their own advancement. The deserters and those 
 who fled from the conscript officers to the swamps and 
 mountains were largely from this class. It was charged 
 that even the rich who were not exempt were bribing 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 267 
 
 the conscript officers and buying their way out 
 of the service, and that wealthy young men were 
 elected magistrates in order that they might es 
 cape. l 
 
 There was a certain amount of plausibility in the 
 plea that the large slaveholders were needed to raise 
 provisions for the army, and, after quelling the bread 
 riot in Richmond in 1863, Davis issued a pathetic ap 
 peal to them and all farmers to abandon cotton and 
 raise food only. But too many large slaveholders went 
 on growing cotton and secreting it for a future rainy 
 day, or doing still greater injury to the Confederacy s 
 cause by selling it across the lines into the North ; and 
 it was largely these self-seekers and the heartless food 
 speculators who were able to hold their own in the al 
 most universal financial ruin that overwhelmed the 
 South after the collapse of the movement for independ 
 ence. The Eichmond Examiner declared that the 
 " apostate" cotton planters had " inflicted as heavy a 
 blow upon the South as all the Yankee armies." 2 On 
 July 21, 1863, the Examiner declared that " those 
 rampant cotton and sugar planters, who were so early 
 and furiously in the field for secession, and who after 
 the war had commenced were so resolved on burning 
 their cotton and destroying their sugar, not only did 
 not burn and destroy in three cases out of four, but a 
 great many of them, having taken the oath of allegiance 
 to the Yankees, are now raising cotton in partnership 
 with their Yankee protectors and shipping it to Yankee 
 markets." The Examiner very pointedly added that 
 
 1 Callahan, Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy, p. 46. 
 1 Writings of Jno. M. Daniel in the Richmond " Examiner " During 
 the War, p. 100. 
 
268 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 i i the want of tenacity of purpose and inflexibility of 
 patriotism in the character of a class of Southern peo 
 ple is painfully conspicuous in these cotton transac 
 tions. " 
 
 On the other hand, there were poorer men who 
 patriotically sought to respond to the appeal of the 
 Confederacy s sorely-tried chief. A verified instance 
 may be mentioned of a Southern officer, who, although 
 a professional man with comparatively little wealth, 
 after being incapacitated for further military service 
 by broken health, actually bought more negroes and 
 began to raise provisions for the army at a time when 
 the Confederacy was plainly near the end of its career 
 and slavery was doomed. The modern financier may 
 not admire him, but he was of the stuff that real 
 patriots are made. Undoubtedly the majority of the 
 people in the South were united in the desire for an 
 independent political existence and were as willing to 
 make enormous sacrifices in order to secure it as any 
 people who have ever been engaged in a similarly 
 exhausting struggle ; but lack of public spirit was in 
 evidence, and the world-old story of the selfish rich 
 and the patriotic poor was told again in the Southern 
 Confederacy. A demand for the diminution of the 
 excepted classes was inevitable, and the exemption of 
 overseers from eighteen to forty-five years of age 
 was repealed. Davis finally recommended the aboli 
 tion of all provisions involving or suggesting class 
 exemptions, but the Congressional committee, ap 
 parently still yielding to outside influence, in its reply 
 to a second recommendation of this nature, declared 
 that the measures proposed by Mr. Davis to promote 
 the efficiency of the army had already been adopted, 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 269 
 
 l except the entire repeal of class exemptions. l This 
 important exception, which obtained up to the last 
 hours, shows how strong was the influence brought to 
 bear on the Congress in favor of the damaging policy. 
 But, in any case, it was now too late. The mischief 
 was done. The Confederate government had resorted 
 to conscription, to impressment of food for the army, 
 to the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and was 
 finally driven to decide on the policy of enlisting 
 negro slaves with the prospect of their emancipation 
 in return for such military service ; but its harassed 
 and desperate President was unable to force the aboli 
 tion of " class exemptions." " Over 100,000 landed 
 proprietors and most of the slave owners are now out of 
 the ranks, wrote J. B. Jones in his Diary on September 
 12,1864 . . . " the result of the pernicious policy 
 of partiality. 2 This is the exaggerated statement of a 
 man whose family was suffering for the want of suf 
 ficient food, but it nevertheless contains no inconsider 
 able measure of truth. 
 
 The negroes, because they were employed in raising 
 cotton and grain, have been usually reckoned as one 
 of the Confederacy s assets, but their value in this 
 respect was more than offset by the damage resulting 
 from their presence in the South as slaves. As has 
 been noted, overseers were excused from military 
 service because they were needed to direct, watch over 
 and guard the blacks. Acquiescence by intelligent 
 non-slaveholders in this and other exemptions, such as 
 that of the owners of twenty or more slaves, can be 
 explained only on the ground of the general belief that 
 
 1 The Richmond Dispatch of March 15, 1865, as quoted by CaU- 
 ban. 2 Vol. II, p. 281. 
 
270 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 the South s safety required able-bodied and determined 
 white men at home as well as at the front. The 
 negroes in the mass were densely ignorant, and it was 
 provided, as far as possible, that they should know 
 little of what was taking place outside of the com 
 munities in which they lived. They were, moreover, 
 remarkably docile on the whole, and in many instances 
 attached by a childlike affection to the families of 
 their masters ; but it is absurd to suppose that the 
 thinking men of the Confederacy were ever free of the 
 fear of servile insurrections. The handicap of the 
 negro did not end in such anxiety as this, or in the 
 inevitable reduction of the number of white men 
 available for military service. The presence of the 
 negroes in the South as slaves not only furnished in 
 spiration to a large element among those fighting for 
 the Union, providing Lincoln rather than Davis with 
 an asset of great value, but contributed more largely 
 than any other factor to the Confederacy s failure after 
 long and weary efforts to obtain recognition from the 
 governments of Europe. 
 
 Both President Davis and Secretary of State Benja 
 min favored negro enlistments as a last resort, and the 
 former recommended the policy in a message to Con 
 gress early in November, 1864. Some of the newspa 
 pers approved it, but the Eichmond Examiner thought 
 the proposition could be supported "only on the 
 ground that good soldiers can be made of the negroes," 
 which, judging from "the experiments of Europeans 
 and the Yankees," was not to be expected. The North 
 had raised its negro army not as a military but as a 
 political measure to have the cant of the world on its 
 side." Moreover, the plan was thought objectionable 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 271 
 
 as the inevitable " first step ... to universal 
 abolition" ; and "to make a negro a soldier and free 
 him as a reward is to confess that slavery is wrong." 
 There was also strong opposition from slaveholders as 
 a matter of course. But by the opening of the year 
 1865, the Sentinel and the Enquirer, published at 
 Bichmond, had begun the task of winning the people 
 over to the policy, the former declaring that "any 
 sacrifice of opinion and sacrifice of property, any 
 surrender of prejudice, if necessary to defeat our 
 enemy, is now the watchword." Returning from 
 Eichmond early in January, George D. Prentice, of the 
 Louisville Journal, declared that 200, 000 negroes would 
 soon be equipped to fight under promise of both liberty 
 and laud. On February 18th, General Lee wrote that 
 he regarded the measure as not only expedient but 
 necessary, inasmuch as the South s white population 
 alone was insufficient to meet the necessities of a long 
 war. He added that he thought the enlisted negroes 
 should be set free, as it would be " neither just nor 
 wise to require them to serve as slaves." 2 " From all 
 the signs," wrote J. B. Jones, "slavery is doomed. 
 But if 200, 000 negro recruits can be made to fight, and 
 can be enlisted, General Lee may maintain the war." s 
 The reluctant Confederate Congress debated long in 
 secret session and did not pass a bill for arming and 
 emancipating 200,000 slaves until March 10th, when 
 there was not sufficient time before the surrender of 
 Lee on April 9th to put it into execution. Some 
 
 1 The Richmond Examiner, November 8, 1864. 
 
 2 Henry A. White, Robert E. Lee and the Southern Confederacy, 
 pp. 416-417. 
 
 8 Diary of J. B. Jones, Vol. II, p. 424. 
 
272 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 initial steps against opposition were taken, however, 
 in several States. The parade of a few companies 
 of negro troops yesterday [in Richmond], reads the 
 Diary of J. B. Jones, date of March 23, 1865, " was 
 rather a ridiculous affair. The owners are opposed to 
 it." The only men of negro blood of whom record 
 is found, as fighting for the Confederacy, were certain 
 mulattoes of Mobile whose ancestors were made free by 
 the treaties with France in 1803. At their earnest 
 request they were enlisted for the defense of Mobile in 
 1862 by authorization of the Alabama legislature, and 
 a year later they were received into the Confederate 
 service as heavy artillery. 1 
 
 Meanwhile Lincoln had shrewdly employed the negro 
 question for all it was worth as a means of weakening 
 the Confederacy. His various proclamations and 
 public utterances from 1861 to 1863, whether declar 
 ing free only those negroes i i engaged in the rebel 
 service " 2 (which virtually meant none), or recom 
 mending pecuniary aid to any State which might 
 * * adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, " 3 or giving 
 assurances that if he could he would save the Union 
 " without freeing any slave," 4 were so timed and ex 
 pressed that all factions, including slaveholding 
 Unionists in the South and the border States, were 
 kept hopeful. In September, 1862, it was made plain 
 that the seceded States could preserve slavery within 
 their limits only by winning the war, or secure com 
 pensation for their slave property only by abandoning 
 
 1 Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 86. 
 J J. G. Holland, Life of Lincoln, Chap. 20. 
 Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. II, Chap. 12. 
 4 Lincoln s Complete Works, Vol. II, pp. 227-8. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 273 
 
 their allies and seeking a separate peace an offer add 
 ing greatly to the burden under which the Confederate 
 government staggered at a time when the privations of 
 the soldiers and people had already become severe, and 
 the favorable issue of the conflict had begun to admit 
 of grave doubt among thinking men. Even the final 
 proclamation of January, 1863, freed the negroes only 
 in the States " in rebellion " and left them slaves in 
 the " loyal " sections of Southern and the border States, 
 causing the London Times to see in the purpose of the 
 pronouncement nothing better than l i the execrable ex 
 pedient of a servile insurrection." But when Lincoln 
 finally secured the ratification of the Thirteenth 
 Amendment, admitting the "mining camp" of 
 Nevada into the Union as a State and not scrupling to 
 buy a few votes in order to compass that end, it being 
 "a question of three votes or new armies," he no 
 doubt achieved his long-desired but unavowed object. 
 Among those prominently connected with the Con 
 federate government, perhaps the only man capable of 
 a course along similar large, bold and revolutionary 
 lines was Eobert Toornbs, whose quality was revealed 
 when, in addressing the Georgia legislature before that 
 State had seceded, he recklessly declared : /" I ask 
 you to give me the sword, for if you do not give it to 
 me, as God lives, I will take it myselEy Toombs was 
 the qualified leader, had he been in supreme com 
 mand, to have ordered a prompt march upon Wash 
 ington after the battle of Bull Eun, and to have 
 gathered promptly all the possible fruits of its cap 
 ture. But Davis, true to the theory that the Confed 
 eracy merely wished to defend the right of secession 
 1 Oberholtzer, Life of Lincoln, p. 306. 
 
274 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 and repel the invader, that there was neither the right 
 nor the desire to attack the " sister States" which 
 chose to remain with the old Union^ opposed any snch 
 aggressive action, and thus was lost what was perhaps 
 the Confederacy s only opportunity of success ever 
 within its grasp. A sincere, high-minded man, no less a 
 patriot and less of a revolutionist than Lincoln, more 
 scrupulous as to means and methods, Davis was disquali 
 fied for his position, as well by his admirable personal 
 virtues as by his lack of the needed Napoleonic spirit 
 and devotion to the theory of the most successful 
 leaders in all ages that the end justifies the means. 
 The odium visited upon the head of the chosen leader, 
 the burden bearer, of a lost and discredited cause has 
 inevitably prevented a recognition of his superior 
 qualities as a man as well as of the purity of his 
 motives as a statesman. The one leader, barring the 
 most popular commanders in the field, who retained the 
 admiration and affection of the Southern masses to the 
 last because of his consistent devotion to his prin 
 ciples throughout the struggle and his manly fortitude 
 and dignity under misfortune afterward Jefferson 
 Davis was not enough of a revolutionist to be able to 
 grapple successfully with the overwhelming difficulties 
 confronting him as President of the ill-fated Southern 
 Confederacy. His regard for the constitutional limita 
 tions that were supposed to hedge him round was such 
 as no revolutionary leader could afford to cherish. 
 Lincoln, on the other hand, acted on the theory, and 
 the only one possible with success in view, that the 
 Constitution of the United States was temporarily 
 suspended, and that a war President, confronted with 
 such unusual conditions, must be virtually a dictator, 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 275 
 
 providing for extra- constitutional acts and decisions 
 at will, and without the delays and hazards of debate. 
 
 As a revolutionary leader, Stephens was more unfit 
 in this respect than Davis, his fear of extra- constitu 
 tional acts and invasions of the rights and liberties of 
 the people, even in the hours of a supreme crisis when 
 there was room for desperate measures or none, 
 amounted almost to a monomania. This tendency, as 
 will be shown, led him to such extremes that, al 
 though his motives were those of a sincere lover of pop 
 ular liberty, he by his open criticism of and resistance 
 to the adopted policies of the Confederate government 
 and predictions of evil to come, without knowing or 
 intending it, rendered aid to the enemies of the cause 
 he represented. It was from these misguided protests 
 of Stephens that the North not unreasonably derived 
 the erroneous impression that Davis was an autocrat 
 by nature and a dictator in fact. It would have been 
 better for the Confederacy, so far as prospects of suc 
 cess were concerned, if its President had been more of a 
 dictator, if he had dared to ignore altogether the 
 protests of the Yice-President and retire their author 
 to private life. 
 
 Stephens was less and less consulted by his chief as\ 
 the war progressed, but his criticisms were effective in V 
 causing a more timid policy on the part of the Con 
 federate government than otherwise would have ob 
 tained. Fear of consequences alone prevented an open 
 rupture, Stephens s influence with the people, es 
 pecially in the powerful State of Georgia, being too 
 great to be lightly dismissed. And here we find one 
 of the important factors contributing to the failure of 
 the South in the war. The single Southern States 
 
276 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 were strong, but the Confederacy itself was weak. 
 The conditions were altogether similar to those during 
 the struggle of the loosely -connected Colonies against 
 Great Britain. The Confederate government, knowing 
 that it could ill afford to antagonize influential Stale 
 leaders and the powerful sovereign States they repre 
 sented, dared not act more fully on the advice of those 
 who answered Stephens with the pointed argument 
 that independence was the immediate and should be 
 the all-absorbing object, and that civil liberty might 
 receive due attention afterward. That there should 
 have been this difference between the Washington and 
 Eichmond governments from the outset was an inevi 
 table consequence of the fact that Southern statesmen, 
 comparatively speaking, had always been opposed to 
 a strong central government, and the habits of thought 
 acquired during a lifetime were not to be changed in a 
 moment. 
 
 Davis spoke from the accepted, consistent, but dis 
 astrous defensive policy urged by Stephens from the 
 beginning when, in his letter to Pope Pius IX, Sep 
 tember 23, 1863, he said : " We desire no evil to our 
 enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions ; 
 but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease 
 to devastate our land . . . and that we be per 
 mitted to live at peace with all mankind, under our 
 own laws and institutions." The defensive policy was 
 only in a measure modified by the marching of Lee s 
 army across the Pennsylvania boundary line. Even 
 after the battles about Gettysburg, the Eichmond Ex 
 aminer complained that it was still in force and scoffed 
 at the "milk and water spirit" which it involved. 
 1 From manuscript letter in the Congressional Library. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 277 
 
 "In the outset of the conflict, " said the Examiner, 
 1 i when we could have invaded the North, we stood on 
 the defensive from a desire felt by our government 
 not to excite a war feeling in our enemies ; and lately 
 in carrying invasion to their own doors, we purchased 
 our supplies at fair prices, in the hope, by thus heap 
 ing coals of fire on their heads, to excite some con 
 trition for the barbarities they have committed in our 
 own confines, and dispose them to peace. The strange 
 and fierce contrast to this amiable Southern feeling 
 which the Northern government has exhibited in its 
 conduct of the war, presents a subject of serious reflec 
 tion. . . . Peaceful sentiments and overtures on 
 our side are worse than vain ; and they only imply a 
 trifling imbecility in our councils. * 
 
 Some days earlier, on July 11, 1863, while Lee was 
 still on Pennsylvania soil, discussing that general s 
 orders " forbidding pillage and marauders, " the Ex 
 aminer urgently called for l l retaliatory punishment on 
 the nation that has desolated the Southern country," 
 bitterly complained of a policy which " gives the 
 Yankee the same protection as our own people," and 
 contemptuously informed the government at Eichmond 
 that " there are few persons in this Confederacy who 
 boast the philosophy of milksops in war, and would 
 have our armies enact the part of Uncle Toby and the 
 fly." 
 
 Some disposition to abandon the defensive policy 
 developed only when the golden opportunity had fled. 
 So likewise only the logic of events and the spur of 
 dire necessity finally drove Davis farther from consti 
 tutionalism and nearer to dictatorship, inevitable exi- 
 
 1 The Richmond Examiner, July 28, 1863. 
 
278 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 gencies in the stupendous conflict tending to give the 
 executive will the force of law. Thus it came to pass 
 that criticism from, the other leaders rained upon him 
 more heavily than before, and even the people to some 
 extent turned and accused him, restoring to him their 
 complete respect and lasting affection only after the 
 dread collapse when, with feelings of inexpressible 
 outrage, they saw him martyred in the irons Of a com 
 mon malefactor. 
 
 The last year of the Confederacy was a fitting prepa 
 ration for its tragic downfall. A hopeless achievement 
 had been undertaken and its hopelessness was more 
 widely understood than acknowledged. Despair per 
 vaded the intellectual atmosphere, and there developed 
 the inevitable tendency in each man to accuse his 
 neighbor. Confederate and State authority clashed, 
 and it was feared that some of the complaining States 
 might make a separate peace with the common enemy. 
 The Vice-President accused the President, Congress 
 defied the Executive, and the latter, in the midst of 
 crowding difficulties such as few mortals have ever 
 been called upon to face, struggled on in the service of 
 a cause visibly tottering to its fall, his every act 
 branded in some quarter as a mistake for the simple 
 reason, if for no other, that no movement of the Con 
 federate government could now be crowned with suc 
 cess without supernatural interference and the employ 
 ment of miracles. The people who suffered for the 
 want of food and medicines had a natural right to 
 complain of their leaders, and ask for the hastening 
 of the inevitable end, but it ill became secessionist 
 newspapers, as fully responsible as any of the leaders, 
 to turn upon the government and upon Davis. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 279 
 
 The disposition to accuse the Confederacy s chief 
 because of accumulating disasters, which no man or 
 men could have stayed under the same conditions, was 
 stimulated by such journals as the Richmond Examiner, 
 which began with the abuse of Lincoln and ended 
 with the emptying of its vials on Davis, and the 
 Charleston Mercury , which had been Calhoun s organ 
 in the forties, had boomed secession in 1850-1, and 
 again in 1860. The Macon Telegraph, which was 
 secessionist as far back as 1850, in the spring of 1865, 
 bitterly complained of the " ultraists of both sections," 
 the "men who were governed alone by an insatiate 
 and restless ambition," who "were satisfied only to 
 rule or ruin" these were the "guilty parties," the 
 "instigators of this war," and were responsible for the 
 woes of the South. There were Southern editors, how 
 ever, who, apprehensive of results, refused to report 
 WigfalPs bitter and vindictive speeches against Davis. 
 
 Long before the last terrible months when the ex 
 hausted and starving Confederacy was gasping for its 
 breath, its representatives were greatly embarrassed 
 by the threatening opposition of some jf the State 
 governments as well as by the controversies between 
 the highest officials. Secession from the Confederacy 
 seemed to be impending. Governor Yance of North 
 Carolina uttered threats, and the attitude of Stephens, 
 Toombs, and Governor Brown caused the fear that 
 Georgia was in danger of making a separate peace. 
 In the hour of the darkest temptation all the States 
 remained true, as when Governor Brown sent his 
 thrilling reply to Sherman s overtures ; but Davis had 
 previously found it necessary to go South and deliver 
 speeches in defense of the government he represented. 
 
280 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 The tottering Confederacy was not only fighting against 
 incalculable odds in men and resources, not only suf 
 focated by the blockade and weakened by the pangs of 
 hunger, but was distracted by divided counsels and 
 embarrassed by internal dissensions. What it accom 
 plished in spite of all is a marvel of history. 
 
 The best that was in the South of 1861-5 was not 
 represented by its soulless speculators, its exempted 
 slaveholders, its self-seeking cotton planters, its in 
 criminating newspapers, or its contending statesmen, 
 but by its inconspicuous people who remained true 
 in the midst of cruel privations, by its soldiers who 
 stood on the firing line with empty stomachs and did 
 not flinch, and by its women who gave their jewels 1 
 and the labor of their hands to feed and clothe the 
 men in gray. Lord Wolseley, former commander-in- 
 chief of the British army, ranked Lee with Marl- 
 borough and Wellington and described him as the 
 greatest military hero of modern times. Theodore 
 Eoosevelt has expressed the belief that "the world 
 will never see better soldiers than followed Lee, and 
 their leader will undoubtedly rank without any ex 
 ception as the very greatest of all the great captains 
 that the English speaking people have brought forth." a 
 But the supreme tribute to the genius of Confederate 
 captains and to the valor of their followers is to be 
 found in the Federal pension roll which forty years 
 after the great conflict contained nearly twice as many 
 names of wounded veterans as the Confederates had in 
 the field during the entire four years of war. The 
 Southern States have contributed through taxation in 
 
 1 Diary of J. B. Jones, Yol. II, p. 453. 
 
 2 Theodore Roosevelt, Life of Benton, p. 38. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 281 
 
 various forms, and without any return, about one- 
 third, or $50,000,000 a year, to keep alive this monu 
 ment to Confederate valor. Few direct war indemnities 
 have been as heavy ; fewer still have been a similar 
 source of pride. 
 
 The women of the South were not one of the Con 
 federacy s handicaps. Their tireless hands and those 
 of the slaves they directed went far toward supplying 
 the lack of cotton and woolen mills, saving in no 
 small measure both the army and the population from 
 the rags and tatters that threatened them. They con 
 trived to dress their daughters in " a kind of gray 
 poplin " woven from cotton mixed with old black silk 
 that had been raveled into lint, yet the time came at 
 last when it was necessary to pay $25 for a single spool 
 of cotton thread. 1 J. B. Jones no ted, August 14, 1863, 
 that " every where the ladies and children " includ 
 ing "Mrs. Davis and the ladies of her household" 
 "may be seen plaiting straw and making bonnets 
 and hats." 3 Delicate women, reared in luxury, were 
 hardened to the sight of blood and nursed wounded 
 soldiers day and night, with coffee of parched potatoes 
 and tea of strawberry leaves as their only stimulants. 5 
 " No house had an idler," wrote Dr. Curry. "Hands 
 of the aged and of children were busy in the field, in 
 the garden, in the kitchen, at the spinning wheel and 
 the loom, and all were helping in works of charity and 
 of patriotism" ; women of the highest class were en 
 gaged in "the management of households and planta- 
 
 1 Charleston News and Courier, " Our Women in War " edition, 
 January 17, 1905. 
 
 2 Diary, Vol. II, p. 16. 
 
 8 Charleston News and Courier, January 17, 1905. 
 
282 ALEXATOEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 tions and servants, leaving the men free for war and 
 civil government." l 
 
 But more than all else were these resolute and un 
 tiring women a tower of strength in their sustained 
 enthusiasm. They rewarded the brave, punished the 
 craven, and fanned the flame of patriotism, regardless 
 that the land was made full of widows and maidens 
 bereft of their lovers. They suffered and feared more 
 than the men in battle and did not ask for peace. 
 They knew the terrible risks incurred in an invaded 
 country, 2 yet war to the end was their desire. It was 
 God s mercy to them that the sleeping tiger was not 
 yet aroused in the submissive alien from Africa. The 
 "Women in War" editions of Southern newspapers 
 have overflowed with accounts of their bravery, quick 
 ness of wit, and invincible determination. A youug 
 Confederate officer, recovered from his wound and 
 about to return to the front, was saved from a search 
 ing party of Federals by a Tennessee girl, who, " with 
 out waiting for his decision, pushed him back into an 
 adjoining room where there was a piano and bade him 
 crouch by the piano stool, upon which she promptly 
 sat, literally extinguishing him with her balloon- 
 like crinoline skirt." Not being required to change 
 her position until the room had been searched, the 
 desperate measure succeeded. The only reward she 
 claimed for thus saving a soldier for the Confederacy 
 was that soldier s silence. 3 " We mean to destroy all 
 
 1 J. L. M. Curry, Civil History of the Confederate States, pp. 169- 
 171. 
 
 2 On the approach of the invaders all citizens who could afford to 
 do so sent their families to distant points. Unexposed sections of 
 the South were full of such homeless " refugees " during the en 
 tire war. 3 Charleston News and Courier, January 17, 1905. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 283 
 
 your food," l said certain young Federals to several 
 Carolina girls who treated them with scorn even in 
 sight of burned and looted Columbia. Yery well ; 
 we will live on acorns," was the answer. "But we 
 will kill all your men, and what will become of you 
 then?" " Then we will die or form an army of 
 women" a reply that brought into the faces of the 
 foe "mingled expressions of scorn, tenderness and 
 humor." The girl writer of the diary adds that the 
 Federal officers with whom she and her friends were 
 engaged in this passage at arms i i received the most 
 nauseous doses of truth gilded with smiles." "We 
 knew that our churches, the graves of our dead, our 
 beloved homes, our future, were in the hands of our 
 enemies, but we were determined that they should see 
 no sign of regret or faltering." The women of the 
 Confederacy were invincible. To a lady whose con 
 duct had excited his admiration, one of Sherman s 
 officers said: "Madam, the men of the South are 
 brave, but the women are heroic." 
 
 To the brief outline given in this chapter of the pri 
 vations endured by the people of the South must be 
 added some mention of the damage done by the in 
 vading armies aside from the costs of battle. In 1864, 
 although he announced that the Confederates had in 
 their ranks "their last man," having "robbed the 
 cradle and the grave equally to get their present force," 
 Grant urged that the Union troops "eat out Yirginia 
 clear and clean so that crows flying over it would have 
 to carry their provender with them. J How this policy 
 was carried out may be gathered from Sheridan s re 
 port to Grant from Woodstock, Va., October 7, 1864, 
 1 Charleston News and Courier, January 17, 1905. 
 
284 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 as follows : "In moving back to this point, the whole 
 country from the Blue Eidge to the North Mountains 
 has been made untenable for a rebel army. I have 
 destroyed over 2,000 barns filled with wheat, hay and 
 farming implements ; over seventy mills filled with flour 
 and wheat j have driven in front of the army over 
 4,000 head of stock, and have killed and issued to the 
 troops not less than 3,000 sheep. A large number of 
 horses have been obtained, a proper estimate of which 
 I cannot now make. Lieut. John E. Meigs, my engi 
 neer officer, was murdered beyond Harrisonburg, near 
 Dayton. For this atrocious act all the houses within an 
 area of five miles were burned." l 
 
 Sherman s policy in Georgia and the Carolinas was 
 the same. In his report to Major-General Halleck 
 from Savannah, January 1, 1865, describing his seizure 
 and destruction of property on the march from Atlanta, 
 he said he had carried away "more than 10,000 horses 
 and mules as well as a countless number of slaves," 
 and added, "I estimate the damages done to the 
 State of Georgia and its military resources at $100, 000,- 
 000, at least $20,000,000 of which has inured to our ad 
 vantage, and the remainder is simple waste and de 
 struction." 2 Writing to Major-General Terry from 
 Payetteville, N. C., March 12, 1865, Sherman said : 
 "We have swept the country well from Savannah 
 here. . . . The people of South Carolina, instead 
 of feeding Lee s army, will now call on Lee to feed 
 them." 3 Sherman to Grant, December 16, 1864: "I 
 
 1 Official Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. XL VII, Part II, pp. 
 307-308. 
 
 2 Official Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. XLIV, p. 13. 
 8 Ibid., Vol. XLVII, p. 803. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAR 285 
 
 have no doubt the State of Georgia has lost by our op 
 erations 15,000 first-rate mules. . . . Great num 
 bers of horses were shot by my orders." l Sherman to 
 Halleck : "We must make old and young, rich and 
 poor, feel the hard hand of war. 2 Sherman disclaimed 
 responsibility for the burning of Columbia, but that he 
 expected it is clear from his letter to General Halleck, 
 December 24, 1864, in which he said : "I doubt if we 
 shall spare the buildings there as we did at Milledge- 
 ville [the old capital of Georgia]. . . . The whole 
 army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak 
 vengeance on South Carolina. I almost tremble at her 
 fate, but feel that she deserves all that is in store for 
 her." 3 This is sufficient confirmation of the belief of 
 a Northern soldier that Columbia was " deliberately set 
 on fire in more than a hundred places." * Southern 
 eye-witnesses have repeatedly testified to the firing of 
 the city by Union soldiers, and also that country dwell 
 ing-houses all along Sherman s route were reduced to 
 ashes. A startling account of the scenes at Columbia, 
 written by William Gilmore Simms, appears in Ap 
 pendix M, Vol. II, of Stephens s Constitutional View 
 of the War, but there is sufficient testimony in the gov 
 ernment s own Records, wherein the discreet excisions 
 marked by asterisks are sometimes more eloquent than 
 the actual statements. 
 
 Discussing " the most monstrous barbarity of the 
 barbarous march" the burning of Columbia and 
 Sherman s devastation of South Carolina generally, 
 
 1 Official Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. XLIV, pp. 726-7. 
 
 8 Ibid., Vol. XLIV, p. 799. 
 
 3 Ibid., Vol. XLIV, p. 799: 
 
 4 W. B. Hazen, Narrative of Military Service, Chaps. 23-25. 
 
286 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Mr. Whitelaw Eeid has said : i The last morsel of food 
 was taken from hundreds of destitute families that his 
 soldiers might feast in needless and riotous abundance. 
 Before his eyes rose, day after day, the mournful 
 clouds of smoke on every hand, that told of old people 
 and their grandchildren driven, in midwinter, from the 
 only roofs there were to shelter them, by the flames 
 which the wantonness of his soldiers had kindled. With 
 his full knowledge and tacit approval, too great a por 
 tion of his advance resolved itself into bands of jewelry 
 thieves and plate- closet burglars. 1 The government s 
 Records contain all the confirmation of this showing 
 that any one can desire. Major-General O. O. Howard, 
 writing from Rice Creek Springs, S. C., February 20, 
 1865, to Major-General F. P. Blair, Jr., calls attention 
 to " the most outrageous robberies of watches and jew 
 elry, etc.," and adds: "A case has come to my 
 notice where a watch and several articles of jewelry 
 were stolen by a foraging party under the eye of the 
 commissioned officer in charge. Another where a 
 brute had violently assaulted a lady by striking her, 
 and had then robbed her of a valuable gold watch. 2 
 In one instance ... an officer with a foraging 
 party had allowed his men to take rings from the fin 
 gers of ladies in his presence. 7 3 Two such Union for- 
 
 1 Whitelaw Eeid, Ohio in the War, Vol. I, pp. 475-479. 
 
 2 Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. XLVII, Part II, p. 505. 
 
 3 A letter dated February 26, 1865, from a lieutenant in Sher 
 man s army to his wife in Boston, which fell into Confederate 
 hands and was published in the Macon Telegraph, February 17, 
 1907, reads in part as follows : " We have had a glorious time in 
 this State. Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order 
 of the day. ... I have at least a quart of jewelry for you and 
 all the girls and some No. 1 diamond rings and pins among them. 
 . . . Tell Sallie I am saving a pearl bracelet and earrings for 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 287 
 
 agers being shot by Confederates and " labeled" as a 
 warning to their kind, Sherman in retaliation ordered 
 that Confederate prisoners be selected, shot, and left 
 along the roadside also " labeled" in warning. 1 
 Brevet-Major C. E. Woods, reporting to his superior 
 from Columbia, February 17, 1865, refers to "the 
 countless villains of every command that were 
 roaming the streets" of that hapless city on the night 
 of the conflagration. 2 Doubtless it was the same 
 " countless villains" who on the march through 
 Georgia slashed their swords through old family por 
 traits, smashed fine china, split open pianos and organs 
 with axes, loaded themselves with silver, robbed citi 
 zens of their watches, violently pulled earrings from 
 the ears of unprotected women, and who at Greenville, 
 in order to force the surrender of supposed hidden 
 treasure, twice hanged Judge Hiram Warner, of the 
 State Supreme Court, leaving him for dead. 3 
 
 her. But Lambert got the necklace and breastpin of the same 
 set. I am trying to trade him out of them. These were taken 
 from the Misses Jamisons, daughters of the president of the South 
 Carolina secession convention." The writer, whose full name is 
 given, stated that officers disguised as privates took part in the 
 looting expeditions, and that all officers from the highest to the 
 lowest received a share of the spoil more or less bountiful accord 
 ing to their rank, there being fixed and definite rules of division. 
 The share of a single officer of the highest rank " in gold watches 
 and chains alone at Columbia was two hundred and seventy-five 
 (275)." This charge, as will be observed, is not supported by the 
 emphatic protest of Major-General O. O. Howard quoted above. 
 
 1 Rebellion Records, Vol. XLVII, Part II, p. 537. 
 
 2 Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. XLVII, Part II, p. 547- 
 
 3 His grandson, Mr. H. Warner Hill, of Atlanta, in a letter 
 dated January 19, 1907, says: "They took a long leather halter, 
 tied one end around his neck and the other to a sapling and let it 
 go. With a jerk he was swung up and rendered unconscious, and 
 was cut down in that condition." When he revived they repeated 
 their demands, he was again swung up, "and this time they low 
 ered him and left him on the ground for dead. " They then set 
 
288 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 The American who would like to believe in native 
 stock from the Canada line to the Eio Grande is em 
 barrassed to know where to place Sherman s " bum 
 mers/ and finds himself hoping that most of them 
 were of the European scum enlisted in the Northern 
 armies. Sherman himself, though he fully lived up to 
 his own theory that war is hell, was in one particular 
 far more considerate than the harpies that flocked into 
 the conquered country after the fighting was done. In 
 his letter to General Halleck, December 31, 1864, he 
 said : "I would deem it wise so far to respect the prej - 
 udices of the people of Savannah as not to garrison 
 the place with negro troops. It seems a perfect bug 
 bear to them." * And to General Grant on the same 
 date he wrote: "Five thousand men will be plenty 
 and white troops will be best, as the people are dread 
 fully alarmed lest we garrison the place with negroes. 
 You know that people have prejudices that must be 
 regarded. Prejudice, like religion, cannot be dis 
 cussed." a 
 
 On June 23, 1864, Stephens wrote hopefully : 
 "Temporary invasion is not conquest. The loss of 
 property may be great, the devastation appalling ; 
 still, so long as our army is preserved the work of the 
 enemy is unaccomplished. We may all be subjected 
 to privations and sacrifices ; these can be borne, not 
 only for six months, but for years, if the right spirit is 
 
 fire to their victim s buggy, says Mr. Hill, and the flames " caught 
 the dry leaves which burned up to where my grandfather lay, and 
 the heat, as I have often heard him say, revived him." With a 
 great effort he saved himself from the flames and reached his 
 house, where he lay seriously ill for days. 
 
 1 Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol, XLIV, p. 842. 
 . 841. 
 
THE SOUTH S HANDICAPS IN THE WAE 289 
 
 kept alive with our people." This is true enough 
 with certain reservations. Stephens forgot that even 
 the most patriotic citizens and the bravest soldiers 
 particularly the latter must eat. Nor had he then 
 heard of Sheridan s work in Virginia, or of Sherman s 
 in his own State, and he could not realize how exten 
 sive and absolutely " appalling " would be the " dev 
 astation" of Georgia and the Carolinas during the 
 following autumn and winter of 1864-5. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 STEPHENS OPPOSES DAVIS S POLICIES 
 
 WITH Alexander H. Stephens State sovereignty 
 and the protection of the liberties of the people were 
 ingrained principles, and these, together with a lively 
 fear that the Confederate government might exercise 
 larger powers than those granted it by the seceding 
 States, were^ chiefly responsible for his too open and 
 therefore damaging opposition to certain policies of 
 that government. It seemed to be impossible for him 
 to sink the question of the rights of Georgia and of 
 the people even temporarily in the larger question of 
 the needs of the Confederacy in time of war when or 
 dinarily doubtful expedients might be legitimate be 
 cause of imperative necessity. 
 
 Dissatisfied from the outset with the Confederate 
 President s exercise of the appointing power, he was 
 soon disturbed over the administration s failure to 
 make what he regarded as a judicious use of available 
 resources, particularly in the matter of cotton, and he 
 promptly opposed the policy of conscription as danger 
 ous and possibly fatal, as tending to check the ardor 
 of the people, and as hostile to the rights of the States 
 individually. He was further alarmed by the suspen 
 sion of the privilege of habeas corpus and the subordi 
 nation of the civil to the military power in some sections 
 of the country. To his mind under no circumstances 
 could the exigencies of war justify these conditions 
 which he unconsciously magnified and it was in vain 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 291 
 
 that the supporters of the administration urged, with 
 force, that the immediate object of the struggle was in 
 dependence, not civil liberty, that liberty might well 
 be sacrificed to independence temporarily, and that 
 after the one was secured the other could readily be 
 restored. 
 
 It may be that the policy of conscription was 
 resorted to too soon, for never was a response to a call 
 for volunteers more prompt and enthusiastic than in 
 the Southern States during 1861, but the facts brought 
 to notice in the preceding chapter clearly indicate that 
 the policy was necessary later. Aside from the ques 
 tion of necessity, conscription is entirely defensible on 
 the ground that it distributes the burdens of war 
 among the unwilling as well as among the patriotic 
 and responsive. Stephens, however, was confident 
 that volunteers in plenty would have come forward, 
 and while at home in Georgia in the spring of 1862, he 
 pronounced the conscription act very bad policy. 
 " Conscripts will go into battle as a horse goes from 
 home," he said ; " volunteers as a horse goes toward 
 home." Among his friends he also described the Con 
 federate Congress as a " very poor one. i There are 
 few men of ability in the House ; in the Senate not 
 more than two or three." The only real energy he 
 could discover in the Confederate government " re 
 sembled that of a turtle after fire has been put on his 
 back." His discouragement led him to extreme state 
 ments. " The day for a vigorous policy is past," he 
 lamented. * * It is too late to do anything. I fear we 
 are ruined irretrievably." On February 26, 1862, 
 he wrote to Linton Stephens : l i The message of the 
 President, sent into Congress yesterday, surprised me. 
 
292 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 It is not such a paper as I or the country expected. 
 But we have to bear what we cannot mend." He com 
 plained often of Congress in a similar way. 
 
 "I am unremitting," he wrote, August 27, 1862, 
 1 1 in my efforts to get Congress to awaken to the heavy 
 responsibility resting upon them at this crisis to save 
 our constitutional liberties." A few days later he 
 complained of " the readiness with which our people 
 surrender most important and essential constitutional 
 rights to what for the moment they consider the 
 necessity of the case," as, for example, the " sub 
 mission, without a murmur, to the usurpations of 
 commanding generals in their orders of impressment, 
 establishing martial law, appointing provost marshals 
 and governors in certain localities," etc. "All such 
 orders," he declared, " are palpable and dangerous 
 usurpations, and if permitted to continue will end in 
 military despotism. There is nothing that has given 
 me half so much concern lately as these same military 
 orders and usurpations. Not even the fall of New 
 Orleans or the loss of the Virginia. Better in my 
 judgment that Eichmond should fall, and that the 
 enemy s armies should sweep our whole country from 
 the Potomac to the Gulf than that our people should 
 submissively yield obedience to one of these edicts of 
 our own generals. I do not question the patriotism 
 [in such acts] . . . but it is the principle in 
 volved." Yet in the same paragraph he inconsist 
 ently speaks with horror of worse conditions under 
 Lincoln s government. " It requires no statesmanship 
 to see that the North is already a despotism complete 
 and fearful. There will never, I apprehend, be any- 
 1 Johnston and Browne, pp. 419-20. 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 293 
 
 thing like constitutional liberty in that country 
 again." 
 
 It is plain from these utterances how far apart were 
 the Vice-President of the Confederacy and those of its 
 representatives who desired first of all to win the war 
 by vigorous measures and every possible means, 
 leaving constitutional liberty and ideal civil govern 
 ment to be secured afterward. It pained him that the 
 people "seem willingly and even patriotically to be 
 yielding to usurpations," and no thought apparently 
 occurred to him that his own unquestioned patriotism 
 might be unwisely directed in this matter. Again and 
 again he points to Lincoln s extra- constitutional acts 
 and the methods of the Washington government as a 
 frightful example. "The North to-day presents the 
 spectacle of a free people having gone to war to make 
 freemen of slaves, while all they have as yet attained 
 is to make slaves of themselves." It is true that the 
 North as well as the South passed through a revolution 
 during the seventh decade of the nineteenth century, 
 and that the government of the United States was 
 never quite the same afterward, but it is no less true 
 that those who would win a war cannot afford to stop 
 too often in the midst of hurrying events and debate 
 the question of constitutional powers and limitations. 
 Stephens really seems to have been half-hearted 
 without knowing it as a result of the scruples noted. 
 Certainly his utterances would appear to show that he 
 was more concerned about maintaining the constitu 
 tional rights of the Southern people than about winning 
 the war. 
 
 While at home in Georgia in the spring of 1862 he 
 told his friends that he would not soon return to 
 
294 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Eichmond. "I can do no good there," he said. 
 "The policy of the government is far against my 
 judgment, and I am frequently embarrassed on account 
 of this difference." For this reason, and because of 
 his feeble health and the difficulties of travel during 
 the war, he was absent from the Confederate capital 
 much of the time. At one period he was not seen 
 there for nearly a year and a half. He remained at 
 home from February 1, 1862, to August of that year, 
 from October, 1862, to May, 1863, and from July 10, 
 1863, to December 5, 1864. During this last long 
 interval he made one effort to reach Eichmond in 
 May, 1864 but, discouraged by the delays and hard 
 ships of travel, he abandoned the attempt in North 
 Carolina and returned to Georgia. He finally reached 
 the capital in December, 1864, and extended his last 
 visit there about two months, until after the Hampton 
 Eoads Conference, when, on February 9, 1865, he 
 started on his homeward journey. " The opposition 
 of Mr. Stephens to the policies most in favor at Eich 
 mond," explains his biographer and friend, Eichard 
 Malcolm Johnston, l left him no choice but to remain, 
 as far as possible retired from public affairs, except 
 when imperative duty summoned him." l 
 
 The relations of Stephens and Davis were at first 
 agreeable and confidential. "We are all here har 
 monious and united," the former wrote from Mont 
 gomery, May 14, 1861. i i Every one feels the dangers 
 that surround us, and every one seems determined to 
 do his whole duty. Private considerations have all 
 merged in the public safety." But such harmony 
 did not last. In January, 1863, Stephens stated that 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 430. 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 295 
 
 lie was ou good terms with Davis personally and 
 added : " He used to send for me often to consult with 
 me ; but since the government has been removed to 
 Eichmoud he has done so but once. . . . This was 
 in November, 1861. " * Stephens expressed ignorance 
 of the cause of the " change " in Davis, but the reader 
 of the former s letters and speeches finds no difficulty 
 in arriving at a satisfactory explanation. It was inev 
 itable almost from the beginning that the Confederacy s 
 President should have asked the confidential advice of 
 his associate only when that course seemed imperative. 
 Stephens undoubtedly chafed in his inactive role of 
 Vice-President, such an officer being little more than 
 a mere chairman of the Senate unless his chief should 
 will otherwise. * I have strong inclinations to 
 resign my position," he wrote on December 23, 1864, 
 giving as his reason that he could "never approve 
 doctrines and principles which are likely to become 
 
 /xed in this country." 
 He, however, was no figurehead when he was pres- 
 ^nt in Eichmond ; he seems virtually to have been a 
 leader of the opposition to the administration of which 
 he was a member. He inspired action in the Confeder 
 ate Congress by private discussion with its members, 
 and once he even demanded the right to speak on the 
 floor of the Senate, as will later appear/ Writing 
 from the capital, August 27, 1862, on the subject of 
 the declaration of martial law and the subordination of 
 civil to military authority in certain localities, he said : 
 
 " I have not been idle in attempting to arouse our 
 members of Congress, both in the Senate and the 
 1 Johnston and Browne, pp. 426-7- 
 
296 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 House, to the importance of arresting these proceed 
 ings. ... I got Mr. Semmes, the most sensible 
 man in the Senate, to introduce resolutions there re 
 quiring the Judiciary Committee to report on these 
 questions. That Committee is now at work, and 
 matters are progressing favorably. I have got Semmes 
 to agree with me that no power in this country can 
 establish martial law j neither the President nor 
 Congress, much less a general in the field. Congress 
 may suspend the writ of habeas corpus ; but that is the 
 utmost extent to which they can go. ... I have 
 pointed out six plain and palpable violations of the 
 Constitution in these military orders. I am unremit 
 ting in my efforts, in a calm and dispassionate manner, 
 to get Congress to awaken to the heavy responsibilities 
 resting upon them in this crisis to save our constitu 
 tional liberties ; and I am glad to say that my efforts 
 have thus far met with more success than I antici 
 pated when I saw the general apathy prevailing at 
 first. . . . The President, I am informed, has 
 written to all the generals revoking these orders of 
 martial law, and telling them they have no power to 
 assume such authority/ 7 
 
 When, in December, 1864, Stephens wrote to his 
 brother in Georgia of his " strong inclination " to resign 
 his position as Vice- President because of his disap 
 proval of his government s policies, he referred to a 
 movement in the House again to suspend the writ of 
 habeas corpus, and to his effort (an offer of $220) to 
 induce the Eichmond Whig to republish Judge Taney s 
 decision against such a policy. adding : "If this bill 
 passes in such form as it is most likely to pass, I do 
 trust Governor Brown will issue his proclamation ad- 
 \ vising the justices of the inferior courts in the State to 
 ^disregard it until the matter may be adjudicated by 
 our own Supreme Court. If that court shall decide 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 297 
 
 the act to be constitutional, I shall feel very little further 
 interest in the result of the conflict. It will simply be 
 a contest between dynasties a struggle between two 
 powers not for rights or constitutional liberty, but 
 for despotism." There could scarcely be harmonious 
 relations between the Confederate President and Vice- 
 President after the latter had reached such a frame of 
 mind as this. 
 
 Stephens did not share in the delusive hope of rec 
 ognition by England and France, taking the view 
 that there was no real sympathy in Europe for either 
 the Union or the Confederacy. "Were I the Presi 
 dent," he wrote in September, 1862, " I should forth 
 with recall all my ministers or commissioners abroad. 
 European powers look upon this war with a complica 
 tion of views. Their interests prompt them to side 
 with us, but the feelings prompted by these interests 
 are about equally balanced by their aversion to 
 slavery. They had become very jealous of the United 
 States as a great and growing power. Its example as 
 a republican government was becoming dangerous to 
 them. They therefore rejoice to see that strife now 
 raging here which, if left alone, will, in their judg 
 ment, end in the destruction of republicanism on both 
 sides of the line. England and France do not intend 
 to recognize us, I think, so long as we show ability 
 to weaken, cripple, and injure the Northern govern 
 ment."/ 
 
 Practically the same view was expressed by others a 
 few months later. In January, 1863, the recall of the 
 commissioners from Europe was urged in the Confed 
 erate Congress, and the belief was expressed in the 
 Richmond newspapers that the English policy was to 
 
298 ALEXAKDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 let the war continue long enough to destroy the 
 strength of both North and South. In favoring 
 the return of the envoys, the Examiner, greatly exas 
 perated, referred to them as "now waiting in the 
 servants halls and on the back stairs. 77 Their reports 
 were mostly discouraging, but Congress did not vote 
 for their recall and they remained at their posts. 
 After long residence in London and anxious observa 
 tions of all phases of the conditions, Mason reported to 
 Secretary Benjamin that what influenced both parties 
 in England against recognizing the Confederacy was 
 not so much the slavery question as l i the fear of war 
 with the United States, 77 and "a tacit conviction in 
 the English mind that the longer the war lasted the 
 better for them, because of the consequent exhaustion 
 of both parties. 77 1 French diplomacy was even more 
 inherently selfish, the breaking up of the United States 
 being regarded by the Emperor as favorable to his 
 schemes of colonial expansion. Louis Napoleon 
 dreamed of " a pied-a-terre on the Florida coast, 77 and 
 even of recovering a foothold in Louisiana. 2 The Con 
 federate government was informed as to this, but Sec 
 retary Benjamin caused it to be clearly understood that 
 "we do not intend to allow ourselves to be made a 
 convenient instrument for the accomplishment of the 
 designs of others. 7 7 The reluctant decision to sacrifice 
 slavery as the price of recognition and of success came 
 too late. 4 The London Times found it convenient in 
 
 1 Messages and Papers of the Confederacy (Richardson, 1905), Vol. 
 II, p. 710. 
 
 2 Confederate Archives (MSS. Vol. 80 Benjamin to Slidell, Feb. 
 7, 1863), in the Treasury Department, Washington. 
 
 3 Ibid. (MSS. Vol. 80 Benjamin to Slidell. June 23, 1864). 
 
 4 Journal of the Confederate Congress, Vol. VII, p. 786. 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 299 
 
 January, 1865 when the exhaustion of the Confeder 
 acy was apparent to European observers to announce 
 that an offer to abandon slavery would be useless, as 
 recognition was withheld for many other reasons ; and 
 when, in the following March, Mason proposed to the 
 Earl of Donoughmore (a warm friend of the Confeder 
 acy) to go to Lord Palmerston and offer abolition for 
 recognition, it was " replied that the time had gone by 
 now, especially as our fortunes seemed more adverse 
 than ever " (after Sherman s devastating march). 1 It 
 was at last clear to the authorities at Eichmond, as it 
 seems to have been clear to Stephens as far back as 
 September, 1862, that all efforts to obtain recognition 
 from Europe were more than vain. 
 
 As early as January, 1863, Stephens had noted an 
 ominous change in the attitude of the British press. 
 In a letter written on the eighteenth of that month, 
 discussing a recent message of President Davis, which 
 barring the " recommendation of the States guaran 
 teeing a portion of the Confederate debt," and the 
 " boast about the working of the conscript laws" he 
 pronounced " decidedly the best on the whole, that has 
 yet emanated from him," Stephens went on to say : 
 " I have been wondering with myself for some time as 
 to what it is that has caused the change in the leading 
 British press toward us and our cause. There evi 
 dently has been such a change. This time last year, 
 before that and up to midsummer, the London Times 
 and other papers were more friendly to us than 
 they have been since." He attributed this to the 
 influence of Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador at 
 Washington, "an Abolitionist of the Palmerston and 
 
 1 Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Vol. II, p. 717. 
 
300 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 Seward school, 7 during his visit to England in the 
 summer of 1862. The indications are that it was due 
 to the fact that even then shrewd British observers 
 were arriving at the conclusion and the representa 
 tions of Lord Lyons may have hastened the process 
 that the Confederacy would eventually be overcome. 
 
 Financial embarrassments were among the Con 
 federacy s gravest. The States of the Union, retain 
 ing control of all the machinery of government at 
 Washington, began the war with a full treasury, un 
 limited credit, and other advantages of incalculable 
 value. The new Confederate government was hardly 
 born when it became involved in an exhausting war 
 for which it was in no way prepared, except in the 
 rare good quality of the enthusiastic volunteers who 
 took the field. It had to break new ground in every 
 direction and began with an empty treasury. To 
 raise an army was easy, but the problem of securing 
 guns, ammunition and a navy was one that could 
 never be more than partially solved, in view of the 
 blockade excluding munitions of war from an agricul 
 tural section practically without means for their manu 
 facture. The question of revenue pressed from the 
 first. In a private letter written May 14, 1861, 
 Stephens said : 
 
 "One of the great pressures now upon us is the 
 want of money. Our expenditures are upon a basis 
 of not less, I suppose, than forty millions per annum. 
 How are we to get the money f Loans, treasury notes, 
 and direct taxes are our only expedients. Taxes to 
 meet interest on bonds and treasury-notes must be 
 raised. It is thought that one-quarter of one per cent. 
 on the property of the Confederate States will be 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 301 
 
 sufficient. This will make the Confederate tax in 
 Georgia about four times what our State tax has been 
 for several years. Independence and liberty will re 
 quire money as well as blood. The people must meet 
 both with promptness and firmness." 
 
 Customs duties were a slender reliance when every 
 incoming vessel had to run the blockade, and a 
 burdensome war tax on the people became imperative. 
 This, in part, took the form of a tax in kind on all 
 farm products, the farmer being * allowed to retain 
 fifty bushels of sweet and Irish potatoes, one hundred 
 bushels of corn, or fifty bushels of wheat, twenty 
 bushels of peas or beans, and a certain amount for 
 raising hogs." l Horses and mules and also slaves 
 were impressed for working on fortifications. But no 
 expedients could prevent the ruinous depreciation of 
 the Confederate currency. By October 1, 1864, six 
 months before the collapse, the public debt had risen to 
 $1,126,381,025. Naturally the value of cotton as an 
 available asset, the Southern States having a virtual 
 monopoly of this great staple, was much discussed. 
 Many in the South were disposed to rely on it as a 
 political as well as a commercial power, that would 
 force recognition from Great Britain at the demand of 
 her suffering cotton-manufacturing population ; but 
 difference of opinion was wide and no settled policy 
 developed until it was too late to attempt any such plan 
 of export as was from the first advised by Stephens. 
 On this subject he said in a speech in October, 1862 : 
 
 "I was in favor of the government taking all the 
 cotton that would be subscribed for eight per cent. 
 
 1 Carry, Civil History of the Confederate States, p. 110. 
 
302 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 bonds at a rate as high as ten cents a pound. Two 
 millions of bales of the last year s crop might have 
 been counted on as certain on this plan. This at ten 
 cents, with bales of average weight, would have cost 
 the government one hundred millions of bonds. With 
 this amount of cotton on hand and pledged, any num 
 ber, short of fifty, of the best iron-clad steamers 
 could have been contracted for and built in Europe, 
 steamers at the cost of two millions each could be 
 procured. Thirty millions would have got fifteen of 
 these, which might have been enough for our purpose. 
 Five might have been ready by the first of January last 
 (1862) to open some one of the ports blockaded on our 
 coast. Three of these could have been left to keep the 
 port open, and two could have conveyed the cotton 
 across the water, if necessary. Thus the debt could 
 have been promptly paid with cotton at a much higher 
 price than it cost, and a channel of trade kept open 
 till others, and as many more as necessary, might have 
 been built and paid for in the same way. At a cost of 
 less than one month s present expenditures of our 
 army, our coasts might have been cleared. Besides 
 this, at least two more millions of bales of the old 
 crop on hand might have been counted on ; this, with 
 the other, making a debt in round numbers to the 
 planters of two hundred million dollars. But this 
 cotton held in Europe until its price shall be fifty 
 cents a pound, would constitute a fund of at least one 
 billion dollars, which would not only have kept our 
 finances in sound condition, but the clear profit of 
 eight hundred million dollars would have met the en 
 tire expenses of the war for years to come." 
 
 At this time, October, 1862, Stephens still advocated 
 a determined effort to cariy out his idea, although it 
 was no doubt then too late to do so with any consider 
 able success. General Joseph E. Johnston has been 
 quoted as saying that as the blockade was not fully 
 
OPPOSES D AVIS S POLICIES 303 
 
 effective for nearly a year after it was instituted, the 
 Confederate government could have shipped 4,000,000 
 bales of cotton to England and sold it to advantage. 
 On the other hand, Secretary Memminger pronounced 
 such a scheme impracticable, declaring that, as the 
 blockade had been instituted in May, 1861, it would 
 have required four thousand ships to get the cotton 
 out before that time. He pointedly argued that 
 private enterprise shipped as much as a government 
 without a navy could have exported. 
 
 The " cotton famine" policy, which Davis and 
 others favored as a means of compelling the recogni 
 tion of England, was at first partially successful owing 
 to the blockade, the price of the staple rising to fifty 
 cents in England and falling to eight cents in the 
 South ; but in the end it failed completely, as a 
 result of the cotton " leaks." Thus it would appear 
 that the plan of making cotton a purely commercial 
 asset, if promptly adopted, might have had a con 
 siderable measure of success and strengthened the 
 Confederacy s slim chances of securing a navy. Even 
 as it was, cotton was finally made the basis of a loan 
 negotiated through agents in London and Paris in 
 1863. The bonds for this loan bore interest at seven per 
 cent, and were exchangeable for cotton or redeemable 
 at par. The security was the Confederacy s engagement 
 to deliver the cotton not later than six months after 
 peace between the belligerents. l With this end in view 
 the Confederate government collected about 250,000 
 bales, the whole of which vast store was later seized 
 and appropriated by the United States government. 2 
 
 1 Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, Vol. I, p. 496. 
 
 2 Curry, p. 128. 
 
304 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 Stephens was earnestly opposed, and apparently with 
 good reason, to the plan of those who urged a complete 
 cessation of cotton culture and the destruction of the 
 stock on hand in the belief that England would thus be 
 forced to raise the blockade. In his speech of October, 
 1862, quoted from above, he said : "The great error 
 of those who supposed that King Cotton would compel 
 the English ministry to recognize our government and 
 break the blockade, and who will look for the same 
 result from the total abandonment of its culture, con 
 sists in mistaking the nature of the kingdom of the 
 potentate. His power is commercial and financial, not 
 political." As late as 1864 it was contended in the 
 South that if the cotton were withheld from abroad, if 
 the l i leak > were stopped, a cotton crisis in England 
 would follow and Manchester would force the ministry 
 to recognize the Confederacy. But the cotton " leak " 
 was never, and probably could never have been, 
 closed. The enterprise of private speculators, to 
 whom personal gain was everything, kept it continually 
 flowing. It was to the interest of the United States 
 government to make the leak as large as possible, and 
 the purchase of the products of the Confederate States 
 was therefore authorized. The result, according to 
 George McHenry s Cotton Crisis, published at Eich- 
 mond in December, 1864, was a constant outflow of 
 cotton from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Neces 
 sity at last compelled the Eichmond government itself to 
 widen the leak, the Confederate cotton agent in Missis 
 sippi, for example, being authorized in September, 1864, 
 to sell cotton in exposed districts to United States 
 agents for gold. It was also traded for salt by per 
 mission of the government. 
 
OPPOSES DA VIS S POLICIES 305 
 
 Eventually there was a steady flow of the staple to 
 both England and the Northern States. It has been 
 estimated that after September, 1863, England received 
 indirectly from the Confederacy an average of 4,000 
 bales a week. This cotton went out through Mexico 
 as well as across the Northern boundary line and 
 through the ships of blockade runners. G. B. Lamar, 
 of Savannah, who had five ships at his disposal, 
 wrote Secretary Memminger in March, 1864, that he 
 could readily arrange with the Federal commander of 
 Fort Pulaski to permit his ships to pass, and he pro 
 posed taking out cotton and bringing in munitions of 
 war, charging one-half for freight. l The latter part of 
 the programme was the only difficulty. In April, 
 1864, General Lee put in force regulations to prevent 
 cotton passing across the lines to the North except 
 when permitted by the Confederate government. The 
 "leak" was not a trickling stream, but a river, and 
 the " famine " policy was a dream. The export plan 
 might have had better success in the beginning. If 
 the Eichmond authorities in 1861 had immediately 
 seized all the cotton (paying for it when able) and had 
 shipped as much of it abroad as possible before inter 
 rupted, the results would have been materially differ 
 ent. But undoubtedly the obstacles in the path of this 
 bold and prompt action were very serious. The Con 
 federate government was new and inexperienced, feeling 
 its way, and conscientiously questioning its own con 
 stitutional right to do this or that ; it was essentially 
 weak, and, with good reason, feared to offend the 
 single States by which and out of which it had been 
 formed ; the sudden blockade of Southern ports had not 
 1 Diary of J. B. Jones, Vol. II, p. 178. 
 
306 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 been expected, and, moreover, the ships to carry out 
 the cotton on short notice were not to be had. 
 
 In the study of every phase of the conditions, the 
 suggestion forces itself upon the mind of the enquirer 
 that the Southern Confederacy fought against fate as 
 well as against physical odds. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 DISASTROUS INTERNAL DISSENSION 
 
 / 
 
 BOTH before and after the war Alexander H. Ste 
 phens was of great use to his section, but during that 
 struggle, when he had finished rendering valuable as 
 sistance in the formation of the Confederate govern 
 ment and the drafting of its Constitution, his services 
 were negative rather than positive, and were more than 
 offset by the damage done through his open opposition 
 to that government s chosen policies. Doubtless there 
 was always much to criticise, but judicious criticism 
 would have been more constructive in character and 
 would have been uttered in private councils. The ob 
 jections of Stephens, too often founded on an academic 
 ideal of model civil government in time of peace, at 
 first reached the public through conversations with and 
 letters to friends, and finally from the platform itself, 
 becoming an important factor in the growth of a more 
 or less disaffected element in Georgia and elsewhere. 
 Speaking from the standpoint of the Confederate 
 government, still determined to struggle on and hop 
 ing to win, Stephens and his friends must be said to 
 have wearied of the war and to have shown an open 
 and damaging willingness to consider the question of 
 asking for peace too soon, j 
 
 It seems to have been in his mind as early as Janu- 
 ary r 1863, when, in a private letter, he discussed the 
 possibility of the return of the Southern States to the 
 
308 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 Union with slavery, and concluded that after the 
 Emancipation Proclamation this could never be accom 
 plished. Under his influence about this time, Lintou 
 Stephens proposed to introduce resolutions into the 
 Georgia legislature, the Vice-President of the Con 
 federacy assisting in their formulation, one paragraph 
 of which reads : i l Kesolved, that while we regard the 
 said Conscript Acts as thus violating the Constitution 
 of the Confederate States, and involving principles 
 dangerous to liberty as well as subversive of the 
 sovereignty of the States . . . yet, under existing 
 circumstances, we waive all opposition to their pres 
 ent execution, reserving to ourselves the use of such 
 remedies as may be demanded by any future emer 
 gency." 
 
 Apparently unaware that, through such activities as 
 these, seeds of State and individual disaffection were 
 being sown, Stephens about the same time comments 
 skeptically on reports of a serious resistance to the 
 Lincoln administration in the Northwest. " It is very 
 much like accounts heralded in Northern papers of the 
 disaffection among us," he says, and adds truly 
 enough: "The great majority of the masses, both 
 North and South, are true to the cause of their side." 
 In March, 1863, he wrote deploring the conscript law 
 even in the North and declaring that Lincoln had been 
 a dictator from the first. 
 
 In a letter of the same date he urged that the Con 
 federate Congress ought to do something to " sustain 
 our finances," already on the verge of collapse, yet 
 .within a month he wrote : " I do hope our State will 
 I not endorse the Confederate bonds ; but I see A. ex- 
 [jsresses the opinion that the bill for this purpose will 
 
DISASTEOUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 309 
 
 pass by a large majority. . . . Those who vote for 
 it will rue it if they live. The whole scheme is radi 
 cally wrong in purpose. The responsibility of creating 
 debt and providing for its payment ought to rest on the 
 same shoulders. . . . State endorsement cannot 
 add a particle to the credit of the bonds in case of suc 
 cess in establishing independence. " But the establish 
 ment of independence already permitted of doubt in 
 the minds of millions, including Stephens himself who 
 had so expressed himself in a private letter a few weeks 
 earlier. The Confederacy might fall to pieces, but the 
 States would endure, and without their endorsement of 
 the bonds there would seem to have been scant hope of 
 sustaining its tottering finances, a need which Stephens 
 recognized as urgent. Was he already thinking more 
 of Georgia s than of the interests of the ill-fated con 
 federation of which that State was a part ? 
 
 On June 28, 1863, Stephens wrote from Eichmond : 
 "The state of the controversy on the condition of af 
 fairs between the two governments in regard to the 
 exchange of prisoners is in a very unsatisfactory con 
 dition. We are upon the eve of the bloodiest and 
 most barbarous system of retaliation. The enemy 
 refuses to exchange any prisoner; they hold all our 
 prisoners to retaliate upon if we execute such officers 
 as may be captured leading negro troops. Whether 
 anything can be done to avert this result I do not 
 know. I am willing to do all I can, but am not 
 hopeful. " 
 
 His letter of June 30th announced that the Confed 
 erate government had agreed for him to attempt to 
 open negotiations with Lincoln. He had written to 
 Davis on June 12th, proposing such a mission, not 
 
310 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 only to discuss a settlement of the prisoner question, 
 but possibly to lead to "a general adjustment ac 
 ceptable to both parties, and stop the further effusion 
 of blood." It was not intended as a peace mission at 
 all, Stephens explained afterward not contemplating 
 " any overture or direct offer of terms of any sort " 
 and he saw no reason for any disposition to look upon 
 it in that light at Washington. " With less than five 
 hundred thousand men in all, from the beginning up 
 to this time, the Confederate armies had brought the 
 enemy, numbering more than a million, during the 
 same period, almost to a standstill, he said, and there 
 fore he thought the Confederate government was in a 
 position to take the lead in an effort i at least to ad 
 just the vexing prisoner question and mitigate the 
 horrors of war. 7 He could not foresee that before the 
 mission could be accomplished events at Gettysburg 
 and Yicksburg would materially alter the situation. 
 When he reached Eichmond and learned that Grant 
 was pressing Vicksburg and that Lee was invading 
 Pennsylvania he changed his mind about the propriety 
 of the undertaking at that time, but Davis and his 
 cabinet saw no reason for deferring a conference on 
 the prisoner question and the conduct of the war. 
 
 With this understanding Stephens started north 
 ward. The battles at Gettysburg were fought be 
 fore he reached Newport News. There he and 
 his party were detained two days while the propo 
 sition for the conference was held under consid 
 eration at Washington. Meanwhile Vicksburg sur 
 rendered. After this second disaster to the Confed 
 eracy the reply came from Lincoln that no com- 
 
 1 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. II, pp. 559-566. 
 
DISASTROUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 311 
 
 missioners sent to discuss the subjects named in the 
 correspondence would be received, or as Stephens 
 wrote home on July 10th, a the proposition was re 
 jected by the enemy after deliberating on it two days." 
 A peace conference was not the object, he having 
 merely suggested it as a possible outcome ; but in 
 view of the ubiquitous Northern spies in Confederate 
 territory and the freedom with which Stephens was in 
 the habit of speaking and writing to his friends, it was 
 inevitable that it should be promptly concluded at 
 Washington that thoughts of peace were behind the 
 proposal, that it should have been looked upon there 
 as a confession of weakness, and that action should be 
 taken accordingly. It was probably a greater mis 
 take than the Hampton Eoads Conference, because it 
 was not due, like the latter, to the counsel of ne 
 cessity. 
 
 In the continuance of his now favorite occupation of 
 criticism, Stephens wrote on January 1, 1864, that 
 " those at the head of our affairs " seem to " have had 
 no policy," and that they have been "all along like 
 the Tennessee lawyer, l trusting to the sublimity of luck 
 and floating upon the surface of the occasion. " He 
 adds : l But I will not croak or grumble ; I am a 
 patient looker-on, that is all" an utterance as 
 unconsciously humorous as that of the Tennessee 
 lawyer. 
 
 On March 16, 1864, Stephens accepted an invitation 
 to address the legislature of Georgia on the state of 
 public affairs. In this speech he sought to inspire his 
 hearers with hope and courage in spite of accumu 
 lating misfortunes, and then proceeded to attack the 
 conscription and habeas corpus acts as dangerous to the 
 
312 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 liberties of the Southern people. "War is being 
 waged against us by a strong, unscrupulous and vin 
 dictive foe," he said. "From this quarter threaten 
 the perils without. Those within arise from ques 
 tions of policy." It was these latter which seemed to 
 trouble him most and to which he now devoted nearly 
 the whole of his speech before the legislature. 
 
 Of "the Tax Act and Funding Act, known together 
 as the Financial and Currency Measures," he wished 
 only to say that in his judgment they were neither 
 proper nor just ; a much graver question, he thought, 
 was "the military act by which conscription is ex 
 tended so as to embrace all between the ages of seven 
 teen and fifty, and by which the State is to be deprived 
 of so much of its labor, and stripped of the most ef 
 ficient portion of her enrolled militia." By this sys 
 tem, he declared, "almost all the useful and necessary 
 occupations of life will be completely under the control 
 of one man. No one between the ages of seventeen and 
 fifty can tan your leather, make your shoes, grind your 
 grain, shoe your horse, lay your plough, make your 
 wagon, repair your harness, superintend your farm, 
 procure your salt, or perform any other of the neces 
 sary vocations of life (except teachers, preachers and 
 physicians, and a very few others) l without permission 
 from the President. This is certainly an extraordinary 
 and dangerous power." The advocates of the policy 
 would have promptly answered that the time had 
 come when extraordinary efforts were necessary to 
 
 lr The "other" exceptions included men who owned twenty 
 or more slaves, and the slaves themselves to the number of nearly 
 four millions, who were trained in the industrial arts as well as in 
 agriculture. 
 
DISASTEOUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 313 
 
 replenish a depleted army, and that without them 
 defeat was certain in the near future. 
 
 Of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, Ste 
 phens said that it does affect others, and large classes 
 of others, than spies, traitors, bridge-burners, and 
 disloyal persons," and that it threatened every citizen 
 with the malignant accusations of personal enemies. 
 "If there be traitors," said he, "let them be consti 
 tutionally arrested and punished" a plan perfectly 
 correct in itself, but which took no account of the 
 exigencies of war. He said he had heard that one 
 object of the act was "to control certain elections and 
 certain expected assemblages in North Carolina, to put 
 a muzzle upon certain presses, and a bit in the mouth 
 of certain speakers of that State. If this be so, I 
 regard it as the more dangerous to public liberty. 
 The surest way to check any inclination in North Car 
 olina to quit our sisterhood, if any such really exist, is to 
 show her people that the struggle is continued as it was 
 begun for the maintenance of constitutional liberty." l 
 
 He said that some doubtless thought it for the best 
 interests of the country to have a dictator," but that in 
 his opinion the most dangerous and delusive arguments 
 were taking this form : i Can you not trust the Pres 
 ident 1 " "To the question of whether I would not or 
 cannot trust him with these high powers not conferred 
 by the Constitution, my answer is : I am utterly op 
 posed to everything looking to or tending toward dic 
 tatorship in this country. There is no man living and 
 not one of the illustrious dead, whom, if now living, I 
 would so trust. " He concluded this remarkable ad 
 dress as follows : 
 
 1 Cleveland, Letters and Speeches, pp. 761-786. 
 
314 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 i i I would not turn on my heel to choose between 
 masters. I was not born to acknowledge a master from 
 either the North or the South. I shall never choose 
 between candidates for that office. I have no wish or 
 desire to live after the degradation of my country, and 
 have no intention to survive its liberties, if life be the 
 necessary sacrifice of their maintenance to the utmost 
 of my ability. As for myself, give me liberty as 
 secured in the Constitution with all its guaranties, 
 amongst which is the sovereignty of Georgia, or give 
 me death. 
 
 " Senators and representatives! the honor, the 
 rights, the dignity, the glory of Georgia are in your 
 hands ! See to it, as faithful sentinels upon the watch- 
 tower, that no harm or detriment come to any of those 
 high and sacred trusts, while committed to your 
 charge." 
 
 Cleveland s bracketed note declares that this utter 
 ance was received with " immense cheers and ap 
 plause." No doubt there was also prodigious satisfac 
 tion at Washington when the reports were read of this 
 speech with its sensational rhetoric, its attack on the 
 adopted policies of the Confederate government, its 
 implied assault on the Confederacy s chief, its hint of 
 the possible secession of North Carolina, and its sug 
 gested threat of the secession of Georgia as a more hon 
 orable course than to bow the knee to an alleged new 
 " master." 
 
 The prompt results in Georgia were the "Habeas 
 Corpus" and the "Peace" Eesolutions, presented in 
 the legislature by Lin ton Stephens, and adopted by that 
 body. The former set forth that "all seizures of the 
 persons of the people by any officer of the Confederate 
 government without warrant, and all warrants for that 
 purpose from any but a judicial source" are "unrea- 
 
DISASTROUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 315 
 
 sonable and unconstitutional" j that " cases of arrest 
 ordered by the President, Secretary of "War, or general 
 officer commanding the Trans-Mississippi Military 
 Department . . . and the whole [Habeas Corpus] 
 act itself . . . are unconstitutional ; that in the 
 judgment of this General Assembly the said act is a 
 dangerous assault on the constitutional power of the 
 courts, and upon the liberty of the people ; . . . and 
 
 "5th. That as constitutional liberty is the sole 
 object which our people and our noble army have, in 
 our present terrible struggle with the government of 
 Mr. Lincoln, so also is a faithful adherence to it on the 
 part of our own government, through good fortune in 
 arms and through bad, one of the great elements of 
 our strength and our final success ; because the con 
 stant contrast of constitutional government on our part 
 with the usurpations and tyrannies which characterize 
 the government of our enemy, under the ever-recur 
 ring and ever false plea of the necessities of war, will 
 have the double effect of animating our people with an 
 unconquerable zeal, and of inspiring the people of the 
 North more and more with a desire and determination 
 to put an end to a contest which is waged by their gov 
 ernment openly against our liberty, and as truly but 
 more covertly against their own. 
 
 The Georgia " Peace Eesolutions" of March, 1864, 
 began with a quotation from the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence on the subject of the derivation of a govern 
 ment s "just powers from the consent of the 
 governed," and the people s right to abolish the old 
 and institute a new government when their safety and 
 happiness required such action. The resolutions pro 
 ceeded to argue the "perfect" right to separate from 
 
316 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 the Union inalienably belonging to * l each of the States, 
 to be exercised by her at her own pleasure, without 
 challenge or resistance from any other power whatso 
 ever. ? The wrongs of the Southern States were recited, 
 and the Northern State governments upbraided for their 
 Constitution-nullifying enactments, termed u personal 
 liberty" laws. Then followed this highly interesting 
 paragraph : 
 
 "5th. That the reasons which justified the separa 
 tion when it took place have been vindicated and en 
 hanced in force by the subsequent course of the 
 government of Mr. Lincoln, by his contemptuous re 
 jection of the Confederate commissioners who were 
 sent to Washington before the war, to settle all matters 
 of difference without a resort to arms ; thus evincing 
 his determination to have war, by his armed occupa 
 tion of the territory of the Confederate States, and es 
 pecially by his treacherous attempt to reinforce his 
 garrisons in their midst, after they had, in pursuance 
 of their right, withdrawn their people and territory 
 from the jurisdiction of his government ; thus render 
 ing war a necessity, and actually inaugurating the 
 present lamentable war by his official denunciation 
 of the Confederate States as rebels and disloyal 
 States for their rightful withdrawal from their faithless 
 associate States, while no word of censure has ever 
 fallen from him against those faithless States who were 
 truly ( disloyal to the Union and the Constitution, 
 which was the only cement to the Union, and who were 
 the true authors of all the wrong and the mischief of the 
 separation ; thus insulting the innocent by charging 
 upon them the crimes of his own guilty allies, and 
 finally by his monstrous usurpations of power and un 
 disguised repudiation of the Constitution, and his 
 mocking scheme of securing a republican ? form of 
 government to sovereign States by putting nine-tenths 
 of the people under the dominion of one-tenth who 
 
DISASTEOUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 317 
 
 may be abject enough to swear allegiance to his usur 
 pation, thus betraying his design to subvert true con 
 stitutionalism in the North as well as in the South." * 
 
 The resolutions went on to say that the war was a 
 a huge crime" justly chargeable upon the North, but 
 that nevertheless it was the duty of both sections to 
 seek by all possible means to avoid further i( participa 
 tion in the guilt of its continuance " and to " use their 
 earnest efforts to put an end to this unnatural, un- 
 Christian and savage work of carnage." Therefore 
 the Confederate government was recommended, * t im 
 mediately after signal successes to our arms, when 
 none can impute its action to alarm," to make the 
 United States government " an official offer of peace 
 on the basis of the great principle declared by our 
 fathers in 1776," with the further understanding that 
 the border States be left free to join the Northern 
 Union or the Southern Confederacy as they might see 
 fit. 
 
 The opinion was expressed that this course on the 
 part of the Confederate government would 1 1 weaken 
 and sooner or later break down the war power of our 
 enemy, by showing to his people the justice of our 
 cause." The idea seemed to be that if the Northern 
 masses could be once convinced that the Lincoln ad 
 ministration had abandoned constitutional government 
 
 1 Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus as early as April 
 27, 1861, but did not bring about a conscription act until March, 
 1863, having more than four times as large a population to draw 
 from as Davis had. The extent of Lincoln s hold on the Northern 
 public seems not to have been realized in the South and the strength 
 of the Northern anti-war party to have been extravagantly over 
 estimated. 
 
318 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 and that the South was consistently upholding that 
 principle^ they would repudiate the former, and a peace 
 honorable to both sections, leaving both in freedom, 
 would result. Only impractical doctrinaires could 
 have entertained such a hope, for it was manifest that 
 neither the Northern nor the Southern masses cared 
 anything about constitutional government for the 
 moment, and were interested only in seeing the war 
 brought to an issue favorable to their respective sides. 
 It was significantly added and here the attack on the 
 Davis administration was but thinly disguised that 
 such a proposal of peace by the Confederate govern 
 ment "would be regretted by nobody on either side, 
 except men whose importance or whose gains would be 
 diminished by peace, and men whose ambitious designs 
 would need cover under the ever-recurring plea of the 
 necessities of war." 
 
 The resolutions prepared and offered by Linton 
 Stephens ended here, but, the majority of the legisla 
 ture being unwilling to go as far as the Stephens party 
 (who not without plausible ground were charged with 
 disloyalty to the Confederacy), an amendment was of 
 fered and adopted in the form of an added paragraph 
 to the resolutions, as follows : 
 
 " 8th. That while the foregoing is an expression of 
 the sentiments of this General Assembly respecting the 
 manner in which peace should be sought, we renew our 
 pledges of the resources and power of this State to the 
 prosecution of the war, defensive on our part, until 
 peace is obtained upon just and honorable terms, and 
 until the independence and nationality of the Confede 
 rate States are established upon a permanent and en 
 during basis." 
 
DISASTEOUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 319 
 
 As they would naturally be expected to do, most of 
 the Southern newspapers severely criticised Stephens s 
 address before the Georgia legislature, and the resolu 
 tions which followed it, as damaging to the Confeder 
 acy s cause. Looking back in 1870, Stephens declared 
 that he could see no just reasons for these criticisms. 
 He believed the resolutions i would make a deep im 
 pression upon the minds of all true friends of constitu 
 tional liberty" in the North and have an influence 
 upon the presidential election of that year. " I then 
 thought," he explained, " and still think that if the 
 Southern press had given these resolutions a cordial 
 endorsement instead of censuring them, if all the 
 Southern States had passed the same or similar resolves, 
 and if the Confederate administration at Eichmond 
 could have been brought into cordial approval and co 
 operation, the result of the presidential election in the 
 Northern States that year [1864], would have been the 
 displacement of the Centralists from power at Wash 
 ington, and with that the final results of the war would 
 have been far different and, in my judgment, far better 
 for the Northern States as well as for the Southern 
 States." 
 
 It may justly be observed that these results depended 
 on a formidable "if," and that it might have been 
 wiser first to ascertain through agitation in secret con 
 ference whether all this cooperation could be obtained, 
 and to await the possibility of concerted action. As it 
 was, undoubtedly the effect on the friends of State 
 rights and of peace in the North took the form of dis 
 couragement rather than encouragement ; for it 
 evidently led the war party there to the perfectly reason- 
 
 1 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. II, p. 537. 
 
320 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 able belief that the seeds of disintegration had already 
 sprung to vigorous life in the Southern Confederacy 
 and that that ill-starred government was tottering to 
 its fall. Instead of leading toward such peace (with 
 independence) as the South wanted, it showed that such 
 peace as the North wanted was nearer even than there 
 had been good reason to hope, and caused a more ener 
 getic and confident prosecution of the war toward that 
 end. The effect on the Southern soldiery and people 
 was also the opposite of that intended. Instead of en 
 couraging the troops to " enter the fight with renewed 
 vigor," and assuring the people that their sufferings 
 and privations would not be in vain, as Stephens sup 
 posed, it led them to fear that already their cause was 
 lost, and it put into their minds the distressing sugges 
 tion that, after all, their reward, if successful, might be 
 no more than a change of " masters." 
 
 If Stephens had traitorously desired the success of 
 the Union cause, while pretending to labor in the 
 interests of the Confederate, he could not have hit 
 upon a scheme better adapted to the forwarding of his 
 secret purpose, and the indirect accusation of Ben 
 jamin H. Hill after the war that such was his real 
 object, though it cruelly wronged the Yice-President, 
 is not to be wondered at altogether. It would appear 
 that in this matter Stephens was rendered insensible 
 to actual conditions by the intensity of his devotion to 
 his chosen political theories. His love of State rights, 
 home rule, and strictly constitutional government, and 
 his passion for individual liberty (for all except negro 
 slaves) blinded his eyes both to the necessities of war 
 and to the inevitable consequences of his chosen course. 
 It is due to him to add in this connection that the 
 
DISASTROUS INTERNAL DISSENSION 321 
 
 independence of the eleven States of the Confederacy 
 was not all he had in view. He dreamed of a greater 
 confederation founded on the Montgomery constitu 
 tion, which many more of the States, perhaps a large 
 majority, after the " Centralists " were displaced at 
 Washington might join, with the result of a purged, 
 perfected and happier Union than had yet been known. 
 This "higher and grander" object he discusses with 
 some plausibility and much force in his Constitutional 
 View of the War. 1 That he could seriously have hoped 
 for the accession of any Northern or Northwestern 
 State to a Confederacy pledged to the perpetuation 
 of slavery is further evidence of the curious myopia 
 restricting his otherwise extended intellectual view 
 wherever this subject was concerned. It is also evi 
 dence, strange as this may sound to some ears, of his 
 reverence for and faith in the Constitution of the 
 fathers, a reverence so unbounded and a faith so com 
 plete that he still dreamed of successfully calling the 
 Northern tier of States from Maine to California to a 
 repentant allegiance to that repudiated section of it 
 which recognized the institution of slavery and pro 
 vided for the inter-State recovery of escaped bondmen. 
 A significant result of Stephens s speech before the 
 Georgia legislature and the resolutions of that body in 
 March was Sherman s message to the Confederacy s 
 Vice-President and to Georgia s governor in Sep 
 tember. After the invader had taken Atlanta on 
 September 2, 1864, and while preparing to continue 
 his march across the State to Savannah, he sent "a 
 hearty invitation " (as he himself said in his dispatch 
 to General Halleck on September 15th) to both the 
 
 1 Vol. II, pp. 524-531. 
 
322 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 dignitaries named to visit him and discuss the ques 
 tion of a plan of peace, apparently supposing that 
 both, judging from all that he had heard, would be 
 ready to consider the terms of a separate peace for their 
 State. Governor Brown, of Georgia, as well as Gov 
 ernor Yance, of North Carolina, had come into con 
 flict with the authority of the Confederate government, 
 and the former s critical attitude as well as that of 
 Stephens had influenced sentiment in the State. In 
 the course of his message to the legislature in the 
 previous March, Brown had said : 
 
 " Those who are unfriendly to State sovereignty and 
 desire to consolidate all power in the hands of the 
 Confederate government, hoping to promote their un 
 dertakings by operating on the fears of the timid, 
 after each new aggression upon the constitutional 
 rights of the States, fill the newspaper presses with 
 the cry of conflict, and warn the people to beware of 
 those who seek to maintain their constitutional rights 
 as agitators or partisans who may embarrass the Con 
 federate government in the prosecution of the war. 
 Let not the people be deceived by this false clamor. 
 It is the same cry . . . which the usurpers of 
 power have ever raised against those who rebuke their 
 encroachments and refuse to yield to their aggressions. 
 . . . Georgia stands ready at all times to do her 
 whole duty to the cause and to the Confederacy ; but 
 while she does this, she will never cease to require 
 that her constitutional rights be respected and the 
 liberties of her people preserved." l 
 
 In other words, Georgia, under Governor Brown, 
 would bow to the decrees of the Confederate govern- 
 
 1 Fielder, Life of Joseph E. Brown, p. 309. 
 
DISASTBOUS INTEENAL DISSENSION 323 
 
 ment even in the midst of a great crisis only so far 
 as she saw fit. Put to the real test, all the other 
 Southern States would no doubt have asserted as em 
 phatically the individual sovereignty which all claimed. 
 The Southern Confederacy died of many diseases, and^\ 
 not the least of these was the very principle of State/ 
 sovereignty which caused it to come into existence. - 
 
 Stephens s written answer to the agent, Mr. William 
 King, who brought Sherman s message, was charac 
 teristic. He said that there was no sacrifice " short of 
 principle and honor" he would not be willing to make 
 in order to end this " fratricidal war" ; but that the 
 entire absence of any power on his part to enter into 
 negotiations, and the like absence of any such power 
 on the part of the invader himself, so far as appeared 
 from his message, necessarily rendered an acceptance 
 of the invitation impossible. In communicating this 
 to General Sherman," Stephens wrote further, "you 
 may also say to him that if he is of opinion that there 
 is any prospect of our agreeing upon terms of adjust 
 ment to be submitted to the action of our respective 
 governments, even though he has no power to act in 
 advance in the premises, and will make this known to 
 me in some formal and authoritative manner, I would 
 most cheerfully and willingly, with consent of our 
 authorities, accede to his request thus manifested, and 
 enter with all earnestness upon the responsible and 
 arduous task of restoring peace and harmony to the 
 country, upon principles of honor, right and justice to 
 all parties." 
 
 Governor Brown s reply was brief and to the point, 
 vindicating the honor of Georgia as a confederate of the 
 seceded States : 
 
324 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 "Say to General Sherman that Georgia has entered 
 into a confederation with her Southern sisters for the 
 maintenance of the same sovereignty of each, sever 
 ally, which she claims for herself, and her public faith 
 thus pledged will never be violated by me. Come 
 weal or come woe, the State of Georgia shall never, by 
 my consent, withdraw from the confederation in dis 
 honor. She will never make separate terms with the 
 enemy which may free her territory from invasion and 
 leave her confederates in the lurch. " 1 
 
 So Sherman marched on to the sea (practically with 
 out opposition), devastating a path from forty to sixty 
 miles wide and inflicting damage, according to his own 
 account, to the amount of $100,000,000, four-fifths of 
 which, as he declared, was " simple waste and destruc 
 tion. Could Governor Brown have saved the country 
 below Atlanta from all this by agreeing to a separate 
 peace f At any rate, he thought so, and he disdained 
 the temptation, as the united sentiment of the State 
 would have demanded that he should do. 
 
 1 Fielder, Life of Joseph E. Brown, p. 311. 
 
CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 
 
 WITH the beginning of the year 1865 the collapse of 
 the Confederacy was clearly in sight. Sherman had 
 virtually crushed opposition in the far South and 
 Lee V army in Virginia was weak and staggering, like 
 a starved and wounded man, as a result of masterly 
 but prolonged and ceaseless efforts to protect Rich 
 mond from seizure by the overwhelming forces under 
 Grant. All attempts to obtain foreign recognition had 
 failed. The Confederacy s financial resources were 
 exhausted. Semi-starvation faced the army, and even 
 the citizens at many points. The people were dis 
 couraged, and many soldiers were deserting a hopeless 
 cause. Yet Stephens still urged a return to constitu 
 tional government within the Confederacy s limits as 
 the one and complete panacea for all these ills. He 
 " still believed that by an entire change in the policy 
 of the administration the success of the cause might 
 yet be secured. 
 
 This led to his speech in January before the Con 
 federate Senate, in which he consistently argued his 
 position and produced a visible effect upon that body, 
 so long out of accord with the Davis administra 
 tion, the accumulation of disasters inevitably lead 
 ing to accusations, charges and counter charges be 
 tween the different branches of the government. A 
 bill still further to suspend the writ of habeas corpus 
 
326 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 having passed the House and come before the Senate, 
 the vote on it was a tie. Announcing this result from 
 the chair, Stephens stated that it was his duty to cast 
 the deciding vote, but before doing so he desired to 
 give his reasons for opposing the measure. 1 The ques 
 tion of his right to do this was raised, and a senator 
 proposed to change his ballot so as to settle the matter 
 without any vote or expression from the presiding 
 officer. Stephens ruled that a vote could not be changed 
 after the result was announced. An appeal was taken, 
 the decision of the chair set aside, and the Senate ad 
 journed. The object of this action, which greatly in 
 censed the Yice-President, was to cut off a speech 
 which many no doubt believed would be damaging to 
 the interests of the Confederacy. Stephens caused the 
 retiring senators to be informed that he would at once 
 resign, and he then "left the Senate chamber never 
 intending to reenter it." The next day he received a 
 resolution unanimously passed by the Senate request 
 ing him to address that body in secret session on 
 the condition of affairs. Not his right to speak, 
 but the propriety of a public speech from him that 
 would be reported in the newspapers was what had 
 been questioned. 
 
 Yielding to urgent solicitation, Stephens returned to 
 the Senate chamber and, without resuming the chair, 
 addressed the assembly from the floor. The burden 
 of this speech, which was not reported, was that 
 the Confederacy s policy should be " speedily and 
 thoroughly changed," 2 in the matter of conscription, 
 impressments, the suspension of the writ of habeas 
 
 1 Journal of the Confederate Congress, Vol, IV, pp. 385-7. 
 
 2 Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War, Vol. II, p. 587. 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 327 
 
 corpus, etc. It was advised that proclamation be 
 made putting an end to all compulsory methods, and 
 it was confidently predicted that such a course would 
 in thirty days bring more recruits to the army than 
 conscription had brought from the beginning. Ste 
 phens also objected to the policy of holding posts 
 against besieging armies, and of engaging in pitched 
 battles, since it was impossible to match the enemy 
 in outfit and numbers, and therefore, "by attrition 
 alone " the latter could ultimately prevail a result that 
 had virtually been accomplished already. There was 
 point in his contention that the leading object now 
 should be "to keep an army in the field, to keep the 
 standard up" wherever possible, while avoiding the 
 exhaustion of direct battle, except when there were 
 decided advantages in favor of the Confederates. This 
 very policy, however, the Southern generals, driven by 
 necessity, had long followed to a large extent. The case 
 of the capital city was chiefly in Stephens s thought, 
 but he states that he left his hearers to draw their 
 inferences. To Davis alone he spoke fully on this 
 point, and the response was that "the abandonment 
 of Eichmond would be a virtual abandonment of the 
 cause. " 
 
 Being requested to put his views in the form of 
 resolutions, Stephens produced what amounted to an 
 other series of futile propositions suggesting peace but 
 not offering the concessions without which it was now 
 clear that it would never be granted. It was re 
 solved that the President of the Confederate States be 
 requested to permit three persons appointed by the 
 House of Eepresentatives to pass through the lines 
 and obtain an informal interview with the Washing- 
 
328 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 ton authorities, or their representatives, with a view 
 of inaugurating negotiations for peace on the basis of 
 the sovereignty and independence of the States at war. 
 " Should this effort fail," concluded the resolutions, 
 " we shall have the consolation of knowing that we, 
 in our high and responsible trusts, have done our 
 duty . . . and the rejection of this overture by 
 the President of the United States will afford addi 
 tional evidence that he is waging this unnatural war 
 not for the good of his country but for purposes of 
 the most unholy ambition." Writing to his brother, 
 Stephens said that, in urging on the Senate the 
 propriety of such an overture, he asserted that we 
 had ten friends in the North to one in any other part 
 of the world." He explained that he did not mean 
 "men who were in favor of disunion, but men who 
 really had the same interests at stake in the contest 
 that we have the preservation of State rights and 
 Constitutional liberty." 
 
 It was at this stage of affairs that a distinguished 
 supporter of the Washington government appeared in 
 Eichmond. This was Francis P. Blair, Sr., who had 
 previously been on friendly terms with Davis, and 
 whose son, Montgomery Blair, was now in Lincoln s 
 cabinet. He came to the Confederate capital "with 
 the consent, though not by the request " l of Lincoln, 
 sought a consultation with Davis, returned to Wash 
 ington, again appeared in Eichmond, again talked pri 
 vately with Davis, and departed for Washington. 3 On 
 
 1 Greeley s American Conflict, Vol. II, Chap. 30. 
 
 2 Blair stated in his report th?,t the first question he asked, on 
 the answer to which he believed everything depended, was 
 "whether he [Davis] had any commitments with European pow- 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 329 
 
 the day after Blair s final departure Davis invited 
 Stephens to a private interview and told him that the 
 unofficial commissioner from Washington had sug 
 gested a course by which a suspension of hostilities 
 might be effected. l i This was to be done by a secret 
 military convention between the belligerents," wrote 
 Stephens five years later, 1 "embracing another object 
 which was the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, in 
 the prevention of the establishment of the then pro 
 jected empire in Mexico by France." Nicolay and 
 Hay unjustly describe it as a proposal for " a joint fili 
 bustering foray," and declare that it could never have 
 been endorsed by Lincoln, whose " whole interest in 
 Mr. Blair s mission was in the despondency of the rebel 
 leaders which it disclosed." 2 It is surprising that the 
 Confederate authorities did not promptly realize that 
 this alone was the real object in view at Washington. 
 Blair s report indicates that there was reserve 
 on the part of Davis and that it was necessary to 
 promise him that this time he would not suffer from 
 the crooked diplomacy of Seward, but would deal with 
 the President himself. "Mr. Seward," said Blair, 
 "would betray any man, no matter what his obligations 
 to him, if he stood in the way of his selfish and ambi 
 tious schemes" ; but "this matter, if entered into at 
 all, must be with Mr. Lincoln himself." s Doubtless 
 it was partly this promise, thus made by Blair, that 
 
 era which wonld control his conduct in making arrangements with 
 the United States," and that Davis answered "in the most de 
 cisive manner that there were none, that he had no commitments." 
 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. X, p. 96. 
 
 1 A Constitutional View, Vol. II, p. 591. 
 
 2 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. X, p. 108. 
 *Ibid., Vol. X, p. 105. 
 
330 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 induced Lincoln to attend the Hampton Roads Con 
 ference in person. 
 
 When called into consultation with Davis, Stephens 
 asked if Blair really represented the government at 
 Washington, and was told that he had disclaimed 
 speaking by authority, but had declared his belief that 
 the administration would be willing to enter into 
 the arrangement proposed. The attempt of the Con 
 federate States to establish a separate independence 
 would certainly fail, urged Blair, and the proposed 
 joint expedition into Mexico would be the means of 
 the ultimate and amicable restoration of the Union. 
 The Confederate leaders might have doubts as they 
 listened to so extraordinary a suggestion, but their 
 position was similar to that of drowning. men catching 
 at straws. The fact that they listened at all was a 
 confession of hopelessness, and it seems not to have 
 occurred to them that to make sure of such a confession 
 was Lincoln s object in permitting the mission. In 
 the consultation with Stephens, Davis submitted two 
 letters that had passed between Lincoln and himself 
 through the medium of Blair (the same that appear in 
 Lincoln s message on the Hampton Roads Conference), 
 his own expressing a desire for peace between " the 
 two countries " and Lincoln s a desire for the restora 
 tion of peace to "our common country." Stephens 
 states that he advised that the Confederate government 
 go at least as far as to enter into a conference, and that 
 it be between Davis and Lincoln personally. But 
 Davis was opposed to this, preferring to send three 
 commissioners. When Stephens found later that he 
 had been appointed as one of these, with Judge 
 Campbell and R. M. T. Hunter, he objected on the 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 331 
 
 ground that, being the presiding officer of the Senate, 
 his absence would be noticed and a secret mission 
 would thus receive too much publicity ; but he yielded 
 to argument and agreed to undertake the journey. 
 
 This interview between Davis and Stephens was the 
 first that had occurred for a long while, owing to the 
 strained relations following the Vice-President s at 
 tacks on the administration. Davis was with difficulty 
 prevailed on to appoint Stephens, and he finally 
 agreed to do so only because he was persuaded that 
 it would be good policy. Such is the testimony of 
 Benjamin H. Hill, who in the spring of 1874 read a 
 paper before the Atlanta branch of the Southern His 
 torical Society on the "Unwritten History of the 
 Hampton Eoads Commission. Hill states that he and 
 the other advisers of Davis urged that Stephens be sent 
 on the mission because he was the recognized head of 
 the peace party, and the effect within the Confederacy 
 would be useful even if the conference failed. As to 
 the advisability of the meeting itself, Hill urged that 
 the enemies of Davis * were clamorous in making the 
 people believe that he was actually opposed to it [any 
 movement toward an honorable peace] and were by 
 such means causing desertions from the army and di 
 visions among our people, and something must be done 
 to silence these clamors ; that, while there was danger 
 in the impression made on the minds of the enemy, 
 yet to make no effort, and especially to oppose an effort 
 when proposed by the malcontents in our midst, would 
 continue to weaken our army and divide our people, 
 and this would be by far the greater evil of the 
 two." 
 
 It appears from Hill s paper, and other indications 
 
332 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 bear him out, that Davis consented to the Hampton 
 Eoads Conference partly in order to silence opposition 
 within Confederate boundaries and partly because he 
 ".had some expectation that an armistice, at least, 
 might be secured, during which discussion might 
 spring up that would result in a final termination of 
 the struggle." There is no evidence that he seriously 
 entertained the Blair suggestion of the possibility of a 
 joint expedition of the belligerents into Mexico. 
 
 The Hampton Eoads Conference, at which the North 
 was represented by Lincoln and Seward and the South 
 by Stephens, Campbell and Hunter, took place on 
 February 3, 1865, in the saloon of the steamer which had 
 brought the President of the United States to Fortress 
 Monroe. The discussion was preceded by friendly 
 reminiscences of former acquaintance and association, 
 Lincoln responding to Stephens s remarks in a " cheer 
 ful and cordial manner." It is even related that 
 Lincoln was ready with his inevitable joke. Observ 
 ing the slender Stephens removing his great coat and 
 muffler, he remarked that the Georgian was the 
 u smallest nubbin to come out of so much husk " that 
 he had ever beheld. Stephens does not mention this 
 in his own account, but he refers to a characteristic 
 anecdote told by Lincoln during the conference. 
 When the evils of immediate emancipation were 
 adverted to in case that policy should be pressed 
 especially the sufferings of the women and children 
 and the old and infirm slaves who would not be able to 
 support themselves, Lincoln admitted the difficulty, 
 but, in order not to commit himself directly while yet 
 suggesting his individual view, he said that at the 
 moment he felt at liberty only to tell the story of the 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 333 
 
 Illinois farmer and his hogs. 1 The successful policy of 
 this farmer, as the story revealed, was not to pen his 
 hogs and provide food for them, but to turn them out 
 and "let em root!" This was precisely the policy 
 that finally prevailed, although great numbers of 
 idling negroes long waited in vain for the " forty acres 
 and a mule" that had been promised them by irre 
 sponsible carpetbaggers. 
 
 A full report of this historic conference is given by 
 Stephens in his Constitutional View of the War,* an out 
 line of which may appropriately be presented here. 
 After the references to former friendly association, 
 Stephens asked : " Well, Mr. President, is there no 
 way of putting an end to the present trouble and 
 bringing about a restoration of the general good feel 
 ing then existing between the different States and 
 sections of the country ? " Seward here interposed to 
 remind the Confederates that the conference was to be 
 informal, verbal, with no written report of what was 
 said (an obligation from which Stephens was of 
 course released when he wrote his history five years 
 after the war). This being agreed to, Lincoln replied, 
 in substance, that there was but one way he knew of 
 and that was for those who "were resisting the laws 
 of the Union" to cease that resistance. "But," said 
 Stephens, "is there no other question that might 
 divert the attention of both parties . . . until the 
 passions on both sides might cool, when they would be 
 in a better temper to come to an amicable adjustment, 
 . . . no Continental question which might thus 
 temporarily engage their attention?" 
 
 1 Vol. n, p. 615. 
 
 2 Vol. II, pp. 599-619. 
 
334 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 Comprehending the allusion at once, Lincoln 
 replied : " I suppose you refer to something that Mr. 
 Blair has said. Now, it is proper to state at the be 
 ginning that whatever he said was of his own accord 
 and without the least authority from me." 1 He 
 added that he had always been ready to listen to any 
 proposition looking toward peace, but that with him 
 the restoration of the Union was a sine qua non. 
 Stephens understood this statement to mean that 
 Lincoln was unwilling to enter into any arrangement 
 on the line suggested " without a previous pledge that 
 the Union was to be ultimately restored," and pro 
 ceeded to reply: "But, suppose, Mr. President, a 
 line of policy should be suggested, which, if adopted, 
 would most probably lead to a restoration of the Union 
 without further bloodshed, would it not be highly ad 
 visable to act on it, even without the absolute pledge 
 of ultimate restoration being required to be first 
 given? Is there not now such a Continental question 
 in which all the parties engaged in our present war feel 
 a deep and similar interest? I allude, of course, to 
 Mexico and what is called the l Monroe Doctrine, the 
 principles of which are directly involved in the con 
 test now waging there." He added that from all ac 
 counts it was evident that the Northern people and their 
 government were opposed to the establishment of an 
 empire in Mexico by France. Both Lincoln and 
 Seward replied that this was so. Then, said Stephens, 
 
 1 The Confederate leaders seem to have been no match for Lincoln 
 in the art of masked design. Ellis P. Oberholtzer tells the whole 
 story when in his Life of Lincoln, p. 359, he observes that Blair 
 1 was provided with a passport and secured interviews . . . 
 which were edifying to Mr. Lincoln, although he shrewdly dis 
 claimed all responsibility for the mission. 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 335 
 
 " could not both parties in our contest come to an 
 agreement to postpone their present strife, by a 
 suspension of hostilities between themselves, until this 
 principle is maintained in behalf of Mexico, " and 
 would this not i i almost inevitably lead to a peaceful 
 and harmonious solution of their own difficulties?" 
 Lincoln earnestly replied that he * i could entertain no 
 proposition for ceasing active military operations, 
 which was not based upon a pledge first given for the 
 ultimate restoration of the Union." He had " con 
 sidered the question of an armistice fully," and he 
 " could not give his consent to any proposition of that 
 sort on the basis suggested." The only possible set 
 tlement was "the reestablishment of the national 
 authority throughout the land." 
 
 This apparently put an end to the conference on the 
 proposed lines, as the Confederate commissioners " had 
 no authority to give any such pledge, even if inclined 
 to do so." It had been agreed that, failing to secure an 
 armistice, the commissioners would endeavor to ascer 
 tain on what terms the Washington government would 
 be willing to end the war. So Judge Campbell now 
 asked what was the plan on the nationalist side for 
 a restoration of the Union. Thereupon Seward sug 
 gested that a reply to this inquiry might well be post 
 poned until Stephens had more fully developed his (or 
 Blair s) proposition. This, after Lincoln had appar 
 ently closed the subject, surprised the Confederates, but 
 Stephens gladly seized the opportunity to speak 
 further. He dwelt on the grandeur of the project 
 and expressed the hope that the temporary union of 
 North and South in behalf of home rule in Mexico and 
 against foreign aggression might lead to a larger rec- 
 
336 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 ognition of the right of home rule in the States of the 
 late American Union, and thus to an ultimate settle 
 ment not antagonistic to the ardent Southern desire for 
 independence. The subject evidently occupied his 
 thought and engaged his imagination to a much larger 
 extent than was true of the other Confederate commis 
 sioners who had not fondly dreamed, as he had, of a 
 greater Confederacy, not confined to the slave States, 
 based on the Montgomery convention s revision of the 
 .Constitution of 1787. His earnestness and persistence 
 were pathetic in their hopelessness. 
 
 At the conclusion of Stephens s remarks Mr. Hunter 
 made the important announcement that there was not 
 unanimity in the South on the subject of undertaking 
 the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine and that it 
 was not probable that the Confederate government 
 would agree to send any portion of its army into 
 Mexico. Stephens adds that he had previously agreed 
 with the other commissioners that they could not 
 promise this. His course in urging the project on 
 Lincoln was, therefore, inconsistent, as Nicolay and 
 Hay critically observe. But Stephens doubtless hoped 
 and believed that if Lincoln and the North could be 
 persuaded, Davis and the South in view of the Con 
 federacy s gloomy prospects could also be persuaded. 
 
 Lincoln repeated his declaration that no arrange 
 ments were possible that did not involve a restoration 
 of the Union, and Judge Campbell returned to his in 
 quiry as to how the restoration was to take place, sup 
 posing the Confederates should consent. " By dis 
 banding their armies," said Lincoln, " and permitting 
 the national authorities to resume their functions." 
 Judge Campbell suggested that in that event, stipula- 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 337 
 
 tions or assurances of some sort would be necessary. 
 Stephens asked if the seceded States would be admitted 
 to representation in Congress, and "Mr. Lincoln very 
 promptly replied that his own individual opinion was 
 that they ought to be j he also thought they would be, 
 but he could not enter into any stipulation. His own 
 opinion was that when resistance ceased and the na 
 tional authority was recognized, the Southern States 
 would be immediately restored to their practical rela 
 tions to the Union. " Stephens urged the importance 
 of some understanding on this point, but Lincoln re 
 plied that he could not enter into agreements of any 
 sort l i with parties in arms against the government. 
 Then, said Mr. Hunter, there could be no stipulations, 
 no treaty, " nothing but unconditional submission. 7 
 Seward observed that no such words as " unconditional 
 submission had been used. Hunter repeated that it 
 amounted to that " unconditional submission to the 
 mercy of the conquerors." Seward replied that they 
 were not conquerors further than that they required 
 obedience to the laws," and that the rights of the 
 Southern -States would be secured by the Constitution. 
 But, said Hunter, " you make no agreement that these 
 rights will be so held and secured." At this point 
 
 1 i Mr. Lincoln said that so far as the Confiscation 
 Acts and other penal acts were concerned, their en 
 forcement was entirely with him, and on that point he 
 was perfectly willing to be full and explicit, and on his 
 assurance perfect reliance might be placed. He would 
 exercise the power of the Executive with the utmost 
 liberality. He went on to say that he would be willing 
 to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for their 
 slaves. He believed the people of the North were as 
 responsible for slavery as the people of the South, and 
 
338 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 if the war should then cease, with the voluntary aboli 
 tion of slavery by the States/ he would be in favor, 
 individually, of the government paying a fair indemnity 
 for the loss to the owners. He said he believed this 
 feeling had an extensive existence in the North. He 
 knew some who were in favor of an appropriation as 
 high as four hundred millions of dollars for this pur 
 pose. I could mention persons, said he, i whose 
 names would astonish you, who are willing to do this, 
 if the war shall now cease without further expense, and 
 with the abolition of slavery as stated. 7 But on this 
 subject, he said, he could give no assurance, enter into 
 no stipulation. He merely expressed his own views 
 and what he believed to be the views of others on the 
 subject." 
 
 To this Seward added, as Stephens states, that the 
 Northern people were weary of the war and "he be 
 lieved they would be willing to pay as an indemnity 
 for the slaves what would be required to continue the 
 war." 
 
 The conversation had lasted about four hours and 
 now there was a pause, "as if all felt that the inter 
 view should close." Stephens rose saying that appar 
 ently the mission would be entirely fruitless unless 
 something could be accomplished in the matter of 
 exchange of prisoners. Lincoln replied that he was 
 in favor of bringing about an agreement on this long 
 
 1 In speaking a few minutes before he had advised Stephens to go 
 to Georgia, induce Governor Brown to recall the State s troops 
 from the war, convene the legislature and ratify the Thirteenth 
 Amendment " prospectively, so as to take effect, say in five years." 
 He added : " Such a ratification would be valid in my opinion. 
 . . . Your people must be convinced now that slavery is 
 doomed . . . and the best course for your public men to pur 
 sue would be to adopt such a policy as will avoid as far as possible 
 the evils of immediate emancipation." Vol. II, p. 614. 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 339 
 
 deferred question, but referred the commissioners to 
 General Grant in whose hands he was willing to place 
 the whole matter. On their return to City Point the 
 Confederate commissioners took up the subject with 
 General Grant, with the happy result of a general 
 exchange soon afterward. The hopelessness of the 
 Confederate leaders being now made evident and the 
 war being nearly at an end, the Federals could well 
 afford to release the long detained Confederate prison 
 ers and secure the return of their own captive soldiers 
 in exchange. At parting Stephens expressed the wish 
 that Lincoln would reconsider the question of an armis 
 tice on the basis suggested. Shaking hands in fare 
 well, the latter said : " Well, Stephens, I do not think 
 my mind will change, but I will reconsider. 7 Thus 
 ended the Hampton Eoads Conference, wherein, from 
 the testimony of a Southern witness, it appears that 
 Abraham Lincoln revealed capability of great sym 
 pathy for the people of the Southern States in their 
 coming difficulties, particularly in connection with the 
 distressing negro problem. 
 
 It is said that on the day after the conference 
 he submitted to his cabinet the question of compensa 
 ting the slave owners, and that all except Seward 
 objected, although he argued that a hundred days 
 more of war would cost as much as he proposed to give 
 the slave owners in order to bring about peace. 1 That 
 Lincoln was inclined toward compensated emancipa 
 tion from the outset as the least costly method of ter 
 minating the war, and this because he did not under 
 stand how intense was the Southern desire for 
 
 1 Henry Watterson, Compromises of Life, chapter on Lincoln, 
 pp. 165-6. 
 
340 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 independence irrespective of the slavery question, 
 appears from his recommendation to Congress on 
 March 6, 1862; and that the subject was still in his 
 mind is established by Stephens s account of the 
 Hampton Eoads Conference. But even if the Confed 
 erate commissioners had been authorized to accept 
 such a proposition at the price of yielding independ 
 ence and returning to the Union, Lincoln "could 
 give no assurance," as he told Stephens, and it may 
 well be doubted whether he could have prevailed on 
 Congress even to discuss the matter at a time when 
 the end of the war was virtually in sight. The Con 
 federate government could not be blamed, therefore, 
 for not accepting what was never really offered. 
 
 The Hampton Eoads Conference accomplished noth 
 ing for the Confederates, but on the contrary inflicted 
 incalculable damage to their cause by disseminating 
 the impression abroad that they were compelled by 
 necessity to treat for peace. When the dissappointed 
 commissioners returned to Eichmond with the report 
 that there could be no peace short of " unconditional 
 submission, " the general feeling was nearly akin to 
 desperation. Sherman was triumphantly marching 
 northward and Lee s hungry and attenuated army 
 must soon yield to the hosts of Grant. Davis made a 
 last effort to inspirit the people through a hopeful 
 message to Congress and an eloquent public speech in 
 Eichmond. Of that effort, wherein the Confederacy s 
 chief rose above despair and called upon a people to 
 defend their liberties to the last breath, Stephens 
 nearly always critical of Davis says : "It was not 
 only bold and undaunted in tone, but had that loftiness 
 of sentiment and rare form of expression, as well as 
 
THE INEVITABLE COLLAPSE 341 
 
 magnetic influence in its delivery, by which the people 
 are moved to their profoundest depths. . . . Many 
 who had heard this master of oratory in his most 
 brilliant displays in the United States Senate said they 
 never before saw Mr. Davis so really majestic ! The 
 occasion . . . the circumstances . . . caused 
 the minds of not a few to revert to like appeals by 
 Eienzi and Demosthenes." l 
 
 Stephens listened, admired and was thrilled, but 
 shook his head. Now, for the first time, he looked 
 upon the Confederacy s cause as utterly hopeless. 
 "It may be that it was utterly hopeless anyhow," he 
 resignedly writes in his historical account. " It may 
 be that if the course which I thought would or could 
 have saved it had been adopted, it would have come 
 as far short of success as the one which was pursued ; 
 and it may be that the one which was taken on this 
 and all occasions, on which I did not agree, was the 
 very best that could have been taken." Howsoever 
 all this might be, he, on his part, was unwilling to 
 sume responsibility for any further continuance of 
 war. He refused to appear and speak at two public 
 meetings in Eichmond, and on February 9th, parting 
 amicably with Davis, as he states, and without express 
 ing himself to any one, he went to Georgia and retired 
 to the quiet of his home, " Liberty Hall," there to 
 await the inevitable culmination of the tragedy. He 
 had not long to wait. On April 2d, the Confederate 
 government was forced to retreat from Eichmond, and 
 on April 9th, at Appomattox, General Lee surrendered 
 his starving army and his matchless sword. 
 
 There were not to be two republics, or a dozen, be- 
 1 Stephens, A Constitutional View, Vol. II, pp. 623-4. 
 
342 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 tween the Canada line and the Eio Grande and for 
 this result, at least, as well as for the extinction of 
 slavery, all Americans, even at the South, may now 
 give thanks. The tragedy of battle and privation was 
 at an end. The more grievous affliction of recon 
 struction, robbery, and negro rule was yet to come. 
 
CHAPTEE XVH 
 
 CARPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE 
 
 STEPHENS remained quietly at home until arrested 
 by the United States authorities on May 11, 1865. In 
 the unpublished diary of his prison life he states that 
 his negro servants all wept when he was taken away, 
 and that his own grief at leaving his beloved home as 
 a prisoner of State was " too burning, withering, 
 scorching for tears. " A great crowd of sympathetic 
 friends of both races assembled at the station in Craw- 
 fordville. The leave-taking was more than Stephens 
 could bear, and at his request Captain Pritchard 
 hurried their departure. The diary states that he 
 asked to be conveyed North in a separate train or 
 boat from that which carried Davis, but this was 
 denied him. In the same steamer with the Davis 
 party, General Eeagan, Clement C. Clay and General 
 Wheeler, he was taken from Savannah to the neigh 
 borhood of Fortress Monroe, and there transferred to 
 the warship bound for Fort Warren, in Boston harbor. 
 
 Concerning the meeting of Davis and Stephens the 
 diary reads : " As much as I had disagreed with him, I 
 could not but deeply sympathize with him in his present 
 condition. His salutation was not unfriendly, but far 
 from cordial. We passed but few words, and they 
 were commonplace. 7 The tragedy of the situation 
 was deepened by the accusing attitude toward each 
 other of the President and Vice- President of the dead 
 
344 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Confederacy. When they parted at Hampton Boads, 
 with an unknown fate before them, their hearts in 
 clined more toward forgiveness. They shook hands 
 cordially and Davis seemed " more affected" than 
 Stephens had ever known him to be. The elated 
 victors in charge of them probably did not reflect that 
 the solemn convictions and tragic fortunes of millions 
 of earnest men and devoted women were represented 
 by these two invalids bound for Northern military 
 prisons. 
 
 Captain Kelly, of the Clyde, reminded Stephens of 
 his anti-secession speech at Milledgeville in November, 
 1860, and expressed regret that he " had not adhered 
 to it" The diary indicates that Stephens answered 
 at some length, showing that he had adhered to it ; 
 for, although he opposed secession as bad policy, in 
 the same speech he admitted the right to secede and 
 declared that his highest allegiance was due the State 
 of Georgia. But Captain Kelly "did not seem to 
 recollect that part of the speech " doubtless because 
 it was not included in the extracts which he had read. 
 Little is said in the diary of the voyage to Fort 
 Warren on the Tuscarora further than that Captain 
 Fraily gave up his bed to Stephens "in consideration 
 of his age and past services to the country." Why 
 there was no spare stateroom befitting his dignity is 
 not stated. 
 
 There is little complaint in the diary of his treat 
 ment at Fort Warren, which appears to have been, 
 on the whole, more humane and considerate than 
 might have been expected, in view of the public ex 
 citement and the unreasoning anger against all Con 
 federates resulting from the mad assassination of 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE 345 
 
 LincolD, the South s best friend at the time in any 
 way connected with the United States government. 
 After a few weeks of more rigorous confinement 
 Stephens was permitted the freedom of the grounds, 
 was allowed to write to his friends and to purchase 
 whatever he needed to insure his comfort, and his de 
 voted half-brother, Judge Linton Stephens, was finally 
 given permission to join and remain with him until 
 he was released on parole on October 12th, five months 
 after his arrest. i 
 
 Stephens s liberation so long before that of the other 
 distinguished prisoners of State was due partly to the 
 friendlier feeling toward him in the North as an 
 opponent of secession and partly to the earnest rep- \ 
 resentations of Southern and border State newspapers \ 
 that he would be of great service in bringing about 
 resignation, loyalty, and support of the central au- J 
 thority in his distracted section. The Louisville Jew-"" 
 nalj for example, urged the release of Stephens, "the 
 most brilliant man in the Southern States," as "a 
 matter of policy" which " could hardly fail to have 
 the happiest effects." The Macon Telegraph, of Sep 
 tember 6, 1865, in an article asking that Stephens be 
 allowed to return to his home on the ground that the 
 South needed him, declared that "the whole people 
 of Georgia look upon him with a feeling akin to idol 
 atry." Stopping at the Astor House in New York on 
 his way South, Stephens was overwhelmed with callers. 
 The New York World, of October 25th, observed that 
 he "must have found it no agreeable task to respond 
 to the proffered palms of so great a crowd." Passing 
 through Atlanta, it was noted by the press that "his 
 hair has turned quite gray since his imprisonment." 
 
346 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 He went directly to his country home and remained 
 there in quiet until the call of duty brought him again 
 before the public a few months later. 
 
 In January, 1866, being strongly urged by leading 
 citizens, Stephens agreed to serve as United States 
 senator from Georgia, and was elected, ex-Governor 
 Herschel V. Johnson being his colleague ; but they 
 were not allowed to take their seats, the dominant 
 element at Washington having rejected the Executive 
 plan of restoration (modeled on Lincoln s proposals), 
 and determined on a " reconstruction " of the Union. 
 On February 22d Stephens delivered by request an 
 address before the Georgia legislature, which was per 
 haps the noblest effort of his life. On April 16th he 
 was summoned before the Eeconstruction Committee 
 of Congress to testify as to the disposition of the 
 Southern people. His answers were bold and manly, 
 yet conciliatory. He told the simple truth when he 
 said that his people had not fought merely for slavery, 
 but for State sovereignty, for Constitutional liberty, 
 and having failed to secure independence, they were 
 now without exception anxious for the restoration of 
 order, would gladly return to the Union under the 
 terms of the Constitution, and were ready to abide 
 the results of the war in good faith. As to the abstract 
 right of secession and the reserved rights of the States, 
 he expressed himself without evasion or equivocation. 
 "My convictions on the original abstract question, " 
 he said, "have undergone no change; but I accept 
 the issues of the war as a practical settlement of the 
 question. " 
 
 Stephens s speech before the Georgia legislature on 
 February 22, 1866, as well as his later course in gen- 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO RULE 347 
 
 eral, fulfilled the promise that was made for him when 
 his release from prison was urged. It was a noble 
 task to seek to lift up a fainting people, bind their 
 wounds, give them courage to face the ills that afflicted 
 them and the greater ills yet to come, and to suggest 
 to them how they might do the best for themselves 
 amid unparalleled misfortunes. The problem was not 
 merely the simple one of submitting to the will of the 
 conqueror and facing the widespread poverty of years 
 which the loss of slave property, the devastation of 
 the country, the financial collapse and the shrinkage 
 of all values inevitably entailed. There was the fur 
 ther and greater problem of the emancipated negroes 
 who, though of an alien and lower race, were to be 
 immediately enfranchised and placed in authority over 
 their former masters a fearful punishment such as no 
 conquered people had ever before suffered in the his 
 tory of the world. The worst had not yet come, but 
 all knew from the tone of the speeches in Congress 
 what was to be. Stephens was not one of the Southern 
 statesmen who believed all effort futile, and, therefore, 
 were disposed to stand aside, bow their heads to the 
 storm and wrap themselves in a proud but demoraliz 
 ing despair. However little he might accomplish for 
 his ruined section, he was willing to drink the waters 
 of humiliation in order to make the effort. His criti 
 cism and counsel were therefore as constructive as 
 might be in the awful crisis. 
 
 He said to the Georgia legislators that the subject 
 before them involved "the welfare of millions now 
 living and that of many more millions who are to 
 come after us." Expressing the deepest sympathy for 
 the people of his State and of the South in their suf- 
 
348 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 ferings, misfortunes, and " present utter prostration," 
 he suggested that to give way to despair was the very 
 worst and most disastrous course that could be chosen. 
 "Adversity/ he said, "is a severe school, a terrible 
 crucible ; both for individuals and communities. We 
 are now in this school, this crucible, and should bear 
 in mind that it is never negative in its action. It is 
 always positive. It is ever decided in its effects j it 
 either makes better or worse. It either brings out 
 unknown vices or arouses dormant virtues. In morals 
 its tendency is to make saints or reprobates ; in politics 
 to make heroes or desperadoes. The first indication 
 of its working for good, to which hope looks anx 
 iously, is the manifestation of a full consciousness of 
 its nature and extent ; and the most promising 
 grounds of hope for possible good from our present 
 troubles, of things with us getting better instead 
 of worse, is the evident general realization, on 
 the part of our people, of their present situation ; 
 of the evils now upon them and the greater 
 ones still impending. . . . Can these evils upon 
 us the absence of law, the want of protection and 
 security of person and property be removed? Or 
 can these greater ones that threaten our very 
 political existence be averted? These are the ques 
 tions." 
 
 He admitted that the fortunes and destiny of the 
 Southern people were not entirely in their own hands, 
 yet there were some things they might do toward bet 
 tering their condition. "The first great duty that I 
 would enjoin at this time," he said, "is the exercise 
 of the simple, though difficult and trying, but never 
 theless indispensable quality of patience ... to 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 349 
 
 bear and to suffer with fortitude whatever ills may 
 befall. 7 He urged as the next great and necessary 
 duty "the exercise of a liberal spirit of forbearance 
 among ourselves . . . the banishment of every 
 feeling calculated to stir up the discords of the past," 
 or to prompt any man to accuse his neighbor. As 
 common sharers in common misfortunes, all should 
 unite in an effort looking toward their amelioration, 
 and, in his judgment, the surest hopes of the Southern 
 people were bound up with the restoration policy of 
 President Johnson. " We should accept the issues of 
 the war and abide by them in good faith. The people 
 of Georgia have in convention revoked and annulled 
 her ordinance of 1861 which was intended to sever her 
 from the compact of Union of 1787. The Constitution 
 of the United States has been reordained as the organic 
 law of our land. Whatever differences of opinion 
 heretofore existed as to where our allegiance was due, 
 none for any practical purpose can exist now. Whether 
 Georgia, by the action of her convention of 1861, was 
 ever rightfully out of the Union or not, there can be 
 no question that she is now in, so far as depends upon 
 her will and deed. The whole United States, there 
 fore, is now without question our country, to be 
 cherished and defended as such, by all our hearts and 
 by all our arms." 
 
 But with this change, he pointed out, came a new 
 order of things which must be faced. Georgia and the 
 other Southern States had not only annulled their se 
 cession ordinances but had compliantly abolished 
 slavery. The old social fabric had been entirely sub 
 verted and the relation toward the negroes was alto 
 gether changed. 
 
350 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 "It is a bootless question now whether the new sys 
 tem is better for both races than the old one was. That 
 may be a proper matter for the philosophic historian 
 at some future time to inquire into after the new sys 
 tem shall have been fully and fairly tried. Our duty 
 is not with the past or the future ; it is with the pres 
 ent. Let us give the new system a fair and just trial, 
 without prejudice, and with that earnestness of pur 
 pose which always looks hopefully to success. It is an 
 ethnological problem, on the solution of which depends, 
 not only the best interests of both races, but it may be 
 the existence of the one or the other, if not both. 
 
 1 i This duty of giving this new system a fair and 
 just trial will require of you as legislators of the land, 
 great changes in our former laws in regard to this 
 large class of population. Wise and humane pro 
 visions should be made for them, ample protection 
 should be secured them, so that they may stand equal 
 before the law, in the possession and enjoyment of all 
 rights of person, liberty and property. Many consid 
 erations claim this at your hands. Among these may 
 be stated their fidelity in times past. They cultivated 
 your fields, ministered to your personal wants, nursed 
 and reared your children ; and even in the hour of 
 peril they were, in the main, true to you and yours. 
 To them we owe a debt of gratitude as well as acts of 
 kindness. This should be done also because they are 
 poor, untutored and uninformed. Legislation should 
 ever look to the protection of the weak against the 
 strong. Inequality does not lessen the moral obliga 
 tions on the part of the superior to the inferior, but 
 rather increases them. . . . All obstacles, if there 
 be any, should be removed, which can possibly hinder 
 or retard the improvement of the blacks to the extent 
 of their capacity. All proper aid should be given to 
 their own efforts. Channels of education should be 
 opened to them. Schools and the usual means of 
 moral and intellectual training should be encouraged 
 amongst them. This is the dictate not only of what is 
 right and just in itself, but it is also the promptings of 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE 351 
 
 the highest considerations of interest. It is difficult to 
 conceive a greater evil or curse that could befall our 
 country, stricken and distressed as it now is, than for 
 so large a portion of its population to be reared in 
 ignorance, depravity and vice." 1 
 
 It is interesting to note that this advanced utterance 
 was delivered before the national government, through 
 a new exercise of power, had enfranchised the blacks 
 in the Southern States, and before the invasion of 
 Northern school-teachers and the collection of Northern 
 funds for educational purposes among the freedmen. 
 Stephens closed with a message of hope. He bade all 
 support President Johnson s policy of restoration, de 
 claring further that the establishment of good govern 
 ment and the return of fraternal feeling throughout the 
 country depended upon both the North and the South. 
 "I have faith," he said, " in the American people, in 
 their virtue, intelligence and patriotism." 
 
 His faith was justified so far as ultimate results were 
 concerned, but the people of the North after the un 
 timely death of Lincoln were persuaded to support a 
 set of revolutionary leaders and radicals in Congress 
 who were determined to "make treason odious" by 
 holding the Southern States as conquered provinces 
 for years, and, while talking of their magnanimity in 
 not hanging the leaders of secession, meting out to the 
 whole white population the very refinement of cruelty 
 in the name of the protection of the negroes. Edmund 
 Burke said it was impossible to indict an entire people, 
 but the radical leaders in Congress convincingly 
 proved that he was wrong. The negro must be pro 
 tected, therefore he must be made to rule over the 
 
 1 Cleveland, Letters and Speeches of Stephens, pp. 804-818. 
 
352 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 whites. Thaddeus Stevens avowedly aimed at "a 
 loyal black South" with the whites as a disfranchised 
 and disconsidered class. He did not care for "bloody 
 punishments" but preferred " punishments quite as 
 appalling and longer remembered than death," also 
 favoring the latter * l because they would reach a greater 
 number." * D. H. Chamberlain, former carpetbag 
 governor of South Carolina, who was certainly in a 
 position to know, has declared that "minds were never 
 more ruthlessly set upon a policy than were Stevens 
 and Morton on putting the white South under the heel 
 of the black South," adding that "not all eminent 
 Republican leaders shared these sentiments, though 
 they acquiesced in the policy." 2 The theory that the 
 seceded States had never been out of the Union and 
 could not go out no longer held. They were now out 
 and could not get back on anything faintly suggesting 
 equal terms until they had paid the uttermost farthing 
 in loss of wealth, suffering and humiliation. Indeed, 
 Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, declared in Congress that it 
 would be necessary to "keep them dependencies for 
 ever." 3 Speaking as a friendly Northern Democrat, 
 John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, on October 20, 
 1868, warned the people of the desolate section not to 
 forget that the Southern States were "conquered terri 
 tories" and that the entire white population were 
 "prisoners of war." 4 As Garfield, on the Republican 
 side, candidly expressed it, "the bayonet" was "at 
 
 1 Henry Wilson (Senator from Mass. ), History of Reconstruction, 
 pp. 78-9. 
 
 2 Atlantic Monthly, April, 1901. 
 
 3 Wilson, History of Reconstruction, p. 48. 
 
 4 Speech at Charleston. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 353 
 
 the breast of every rebel [every white person would 
 have been more accurate] in the South. 77 
 
 The hopefulness displayed by Stephens in his con 
 structive address before the Georgia legislature, in 
 February, 1866, did not last. Interviewed by the New 
 York Herald in September, 1868, he said that condi 
 tions at that time were deplorable, that "the last 
 vestiges of constitutional freedom" were " rapidly 
 disappearing," and that the country was "fast verg 
 ing into centralization and despotism." He declared 
 that peace was all Southern men desired, " and the 
 civil liberty which as citizens of this republic they are 
 entitled to." Yet "in Georgia 25,000 and in Tennes 
 see 80,000 Anglo-Saxons have been disfranchised 7 
 with similar conditions in all the Southern States. 
 He cried out to unheeding ears that * i the cause of the 
 South is the cause of us all 77 all American lovers of 
 constitutional republican government. 
 
 The vast extent of disfranchisement among the 
 whites, accompanying the grant of universal manhood 
 suffrage to the negroes, was due not only to the fact 
 that the proclamation of amnesty excepted fourteen 
 classes of Southern men, but to the test oath provided 
 by Congress on March 23, 1867, which was made even 
 more exhaustive through special enactments of the 
 carpetbag and negro governments set up in the pros 
 trate States. The classes denied citizenship in the 
 amnesty proclamation of President Johnson were : 
 
 (1) All civil or diplomatic officers, or domestic or 
 foreign agents, of the Confederate government. 
 
 (2) All who left judicial stations under the United 
 States to aid the Confederacy. 
 
 (3) All who had been military or naval officers of 
 
354 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 the Confederacy, above the rank of colonel in the army 
 or lieutenant in the navy. 
 
 (4) All who left seats in the United States Congress 
 to join the Confederacy. 
 
 (5) All who resigned from the army or navy of the 
 United States to evade resistance of the secession 
 movement. 
 
 (6) All who engaged in any way "in treating 
 otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war " persons 
 found in the United States service. 
 
 (7) All who were or had been absentees from the 
 United States for purposes of aiding the Confederates. 
 
 (8) All military or naval officers in the Confederate 
 service who had been educated at West Point or at the 
 United States Naval Academy. 
 
 (9) All who held offices as governors of the seceded 
 States. 
 
 (10) All persons who passed from North to South 
 for purposes of aiding the Confederacy. 
 
 (11) All who had been engaged in the destruction 
 of the commerce of the United States, or in raids from 
 Canada. 
 
 (12) All in military or civil confinement or custody 
 for offenses of any kind. 
 
 (13) All citizens of the seceded States owning prop 
 erty valued at more than $20,000. 
 
 (14) All persons who took the oath of amnesty 
 under the proclamation of December 8, 1863, and had 
 not "kept and maintained the same inviolate. " 
 
 The test oath provided by Congress, March 23, 1867, 
 for all who were to be permitted to vote, in the five 
 military districts, into which the eleven seceded States 
 had been merged, covered not only the excepted classes 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 355 
 
 of the amnesty proclamation, but added to these dis 
 franchised classes every man who had ever "been 
 a member of any State legislature, or held any execu 
 tive or judicial office in any State, and afterward en 
 gaged in insurrection against the United States or 
 given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." This 
 test oath, already so exhaustive that scarcely one honest 
 Southern white man could conscientiously take it, was 
 enlarged on by the carpetbag and negro authorities in 
 the different Southern States. In Tennessee, for ex 
 ample, it read : "I do most solemnly swear that I 
 have never voluntarily borne arms against the govern 
 ment of the United States for the purpose of, or with 
 the intention of, aiding the late rebellion, nor have I 
 with any such intention, at any time, given aid, com 
 fort, counsel or encouragement to said rebellion," etc., 
 etc. As ninety-nine one-hundredths of the entire white 
 population had in one way or another given i i aid, 
 comfort, counsel or encouragement," few white men, 
 women or children in the South could have taken such 
 an oath without personal infamy, or without incurring 
 the penalty provided for perjury. Even before these 
 test oaths were ordained, and merely as a result of the 
 exceptions in the amnesty proclamation, the Union 
 governor of Virginia in his message to the legislature, 
 June 20, 1865, declared that " nineteen-twentieths of 
 the [white] people are disfranchised and cannot hold 
 office." 
 
 But even such complete measures as these for the 
 indictment and punishment of a whole people, and for 
 giving the votes of eleven unwilling States to the 
 Eepublican party, did not satisfy, and intimidation of 
 white voters was resorted to. One method of doing 
 
356 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 this was "to handcuff Democrats and carry them 
 great distances and by devious routes through popu 
 lous portions of the State, exhibiting them by the way 
 in such manner as to encourage the blacks and in 
 timidate the whites." l In South Carolina alone 96,000 
 negroes were enrolled in military companies and 
 kept needlessly active at a great cost. The few native 
 white companies in existence were ordered to disband. 
 The policy in election campaigns, as appears from the 
 report on June 25, 1870, of a deputy constable of that 
 State was to "encourage the [negro] militia and 
 frighten poor white men." 2 Eace conflicts, resulting 
 in the killing of a negro or negroes here and there 
 were encouraged, instead of discouraged, for the sake 
 of the hue and cry and the further supply of Federal 
 troops that might be called for. Carpetbag Governor 
 Smith of Alabama, who, like Chamberlain of South 
 Carolina, sickened at the atrocities committed by the 
 aliens and negroes in control, said of one of the former, 
 J. D. Sibley, in a letter to the Huntsville Advocate, 
 July 25, 1870, that he did not want the law executed 
 1 1 because that would put down crime, and crime is his 
 life s blood ; he would like very much to have a Ku 
 Klux. outrage every week to assist him in keeping up 
 strife . . . and furnish a semblance of truth to 
 [Senator] Spencer s libels upon the people of the 
 State." 
 
 The writing of the darkest page in American history 
 was begun when in December, 1865, Thaddeus Stevens, 
 of Pennsylvania, introduced a joint resolution in the 
 Thirty-ninth Congress to inquire into the condition of 
 
 1 Ex-Secretary H. A. Herbert, Why the Solid South, p. 65. 
 8 Ibid. , p. 93-4. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE 357 
 
 the Southern States and report whether "any of them 
 are entitled to be represented in either house of Con 
 gress." For his part, he did not think they ought 
 ever to be admitted to representation until the Consti 
 tution should be " so amended . . . as to secure 
 perpetual ascendency to the party of the Union." He 
 also wanted to see the "proud traitors " and their 
 children put to work, and he advised that the " prop 
 erty of the subdued enemy" be employed to support 
 disabled soldiers of the Union. 1 Senator Fessenden of 
 Maine argued that "the conqueror has the right, if he 
 chooses," not only "to punish" but "to change the 
 form of government." Mr. Shell abarger, of Ohio, 
 accompanied his argument that the Southern States 
 should be "kept dependencies forever" with the 
 sensational declaration, as conscienceless as it was ri 
 diculous, that the Confederates "carved the bones of 
 your dead heroes into ornaments, and drank from 
 goblets made out of their skulls ! " 
 
 The policy of envenomed radicals prevailed, and from 
 eight to ten years the Southern States were kept under 
 alien and negro domination by enactments which could 
 be used to disfranchise virtually every white man in a 
 given Southern community, and were so employed 
 whenever it suited the purposes of those in local 
 authority. Against these enactments and the Federal 
 troops and negro militia, those who represented the 
 virtue, intelligence and ability of the Southern States 
 were helpless. And yet Abraham Lincoln in his letter 
 to Governor Hahn, of Louisiana, had advocated the 
 immediate enfranchisement of only a few of the more 
 
 1 Wilson, History of Reconstruction, pp. 78-9. 
 9 Ibid., p. 47. 
 
358 ALEXANDEK H. STEPHENS 
 
 intelligent negroes and those who had fought well in 
 the Union ranks. He had also proposed the imme 
 diate restoration of the Southern States, and these, in 
 expectation of such a course, had elected new govern 
 ments composed almost entirely of men who had op 
 posed secession. The reorganized governments had 
 promptly adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, com 
 pliantly repudiating the Confederate debt and assum 
 ing the national debt, and submission was so universal 
 that Grant reported to the President in December, 1865, 
 a general acceptance at the South of the situation "in 
 good faith." 
 
 Nevertheless by the act of March 2, 1867, the South 
 ern State governments were annulled and the country 
 placed under military rule. The reason for this, as an 
 nounced, was that the Southern States had rejected the 
 Fourteenth Amendment and that the freedinen needed 
 protection. The Southern State governments assumed 
 that they might deliberate, debate and act freely as in 
 former times, but it was a reckless assumption, and, 
 could they have looked into the future, they would 
 have done all that was required of them, even this. 
 Yet they would have been less than human if they had 
 not at first balked at the Fourteenth Amendment which 
 disfranchised their own leaders and branded with dis 
 honor their best citizens. The amendment disqualified 
 for any office, civil or military, under either the 
 national or State governments, all who had "engaged 
 in rebellion against the United States or given aid or 
 comfort to the enemies thereof." 
 
 As for the protection of the negroes, the speech of 
 Stephens, which has been outlined, indicates the exist 
 ence at the outset of a disposition among leading 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 359 
 
 Southern men to give the freedmen a fuller measure of 
 kindly consideration and justice than could reasonably 
 have been expected under conditions so trying. There 
 was no hatred of the negro in the beginning, but only a 
 rational recognition of his fitness for a subordinate 
 position in human society, even though free. As re 
 gards those " new slave codes in the South," as Elaine l 
 describes certain laws enacted in order to meet the 
 conditions of an utterly demoralized labor situation, no 
 unprejudiced mind can condemn the general purpose 
 in them, although in some particulars they doubtless 
 went too far, and their framers were unquestionably 
 indiscreet, in view of the times. The disordered 
 condition of the labor market was partly due to the 
 sudden emancipation of millions of slaves, partly to 
 the indolent and improvident character of the negroes 
 in the mass, and partly to the corrupting influence, 
 industrially at least, of the Freedmen 7 s Bureau and 
 the Union League. In his report to the President, 
 December 18, 1865, General Grant said that " the belief 
 widely spread among the freedmen of the Southern 
 States that the lands of their former owners will, at 
 least in part, be divided among them, has come from 
 the agents of this [Freedmen s] Bureau." 
 
 While the Bureau fed them on this hope, the League 
 tended to draw them from industry to politics as a live 
 lihood and to cultivate in them distrust and suspicion 
 of all native white men. Its very initiation, for ex 
 ample, required the applicant to " hold and believe 
 that secession is treason." All this made for the 
 policy of a loyal black South with the whites as a dis 
 considered class also for idling, vagrancy and theft 
 1 Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. II, p. 94. 
 
360 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 among the negroes. There was no other large class of 
 laborers, the country was impoverished, the land must 
 be tilled, and employers were desperate. Hence the at 
 tempt to meet the situation and bring a certain amount 
 of order out of chaos by the enactment of vagrant laws, 
 holding heedless negro employees to their promises. 
 
 Discussing these enactments, Elaine complained that 
 1 stubborn and refractory servants and l servants 
 who loiter away their time were declared by law to 
 be vagrants and might be brought before a justice 
 of the peace and fined fifty dollars, and in default of 
 payment they might be hired out on three days notice 
 by public outcry for the period of three months." 
 To the Northern mind this severe punishment readily 
 suggested the conditions of recent slavery, yet Elaine 
 might have brought the same complaint against the 
 authorities of Ehode Island, the laws of that State 3 
 providing : "If any servant or apprentice shall depart 
 from the service of his master or otherwise neglect 
 his duty " he shall be arrested on oath to be made " in 
 writing by his master," and committed to the state 
 workhouse of correction. The difference between 
 "otherwise neglect his duty" and "loiter away his 
 time " suggests that between Tweedledum and Tweedle- 
 dee, and the punishment is the same enforced labor 
 in a Ehode Island workhouse and enforced labor on a 
 Southern farm. The apprentice laws adopted at the 
 same time in the South were also similar to those then 
 existing in the New England States, as ex-Secretary 
 Herbert has shown by numerous comparisons. 8 Yet 
 
 1 Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. II, p. 94. 
 
 2 Revised Statutes of 1872, p. 243. 
 8 Why the Solid South, pp. 31-36. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGRO RULE 361 
 
 the New England States did not suffer at that time 
 from the same distressing demoralization of labor con 
 ditions, and intermeddling emissaries from distant 
 points were not multiplying that demoralization a 
 hundredfold. The supersensitive attitude of the 
 Northern mind is revealed when Elaine even points 
 accusingly to the terms " master, 7 " mistress," etc., 
 although the same terms occur in the New England 
 statutes and are embedded in the terminology of the 
 law descending to us from old England. Indignation 
 on the part of an uninformed Northern public against 
 the alleged "new slave codes" was perfectly natural, 
 however, and it was inevitably made the most of by 
 radical politicians. 
 
 Testimony of no little interest in this connection 
 may be found in a volume written by a negro State 
 senator from Leon County, Florida. Discussing the 
 conditions while that State was still under military 
 rule, he declares that " the officers and soldiers of the 
 regular array . . . would abuse and maltreat the 
 negro much worse than their former masters, who in 
 many instances would have to interfere in his behalf, 
 to save him from cruelty and injustice." Writing 
 of the " oppression and usurpation of power" that in 
 Jackson County resulted in arraying the two races 
 "against each other in deadly hostility," a the same 
 author says : "This state of things was not due to the 
 enmity of the whites to the blacks, nor their opposi 
 tion to the new law enfranchising the latter though 
 they were opposed to it of course nor was it due to 
 any natural bad temper or hatred of the whites on the 
 
 1 John Wallace, Carpetbag Rule in Florida (1888), p. 37. 
 id., p. 107. 
 
362 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 part of the colored people . . . [but] to the evil 
 influence of the very men who were delegated to pre 
 serve peace, to administer j ustice. > This negro writer 
 urges in his preface that the freedmen " would have 
 made better citizens and more honest legislators if 
 they had not been contaminated by strange white 
 men" (from distant States), adding, with much point, 
 that "the secret leagues riveted the former slaves to 
 these strangers." 
 
 Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, in his History of 
 Reconstruction, 1 remarks that * to reconstruct the Union 
 so as to secure the fruits of victory was no easy task." 
 Possibly it was with a view to securing some of the 
 " fruits of victory" that General Pope, while in com 
 mand of the military district of Georgia, Florida and 
 Alabama, issued orders that legal advertising would 
 not be legal unless published in Eepublican news 
 papers. The latter being few and far between, prop 
 erty sold at public outcry and other legal matters had 
 to be announced in journals published from a hundred 
 to two hundred miles distant from the communities to 
 which the business related. 2 
 
 An idea of the policy of the military authorities of 
 the district including South Carolina may be gath- 
 
 1 Page 14. 
 
 2 One result of this act of needless oppression was that Philip C. 
 Pendleton, a paroled officer of Lee s army, who had begun the pub 
 lication of the South Georgia Times in a thinly settled section of the 
 State, lost the legal advertising of eight counties. Thus this con 
 servative newspaper whose files show counsels of submission to the 
 aliens in authority and of kindliness toward the freedmen, received 
 a staggering blow from which it was years in recovering. It is a 
 source of pride to this editor s heirs that, in spite of such persecu 
 tion, his newspaper (now known as the Valdosta Times) survived, 
 and the majority of its stock still remains in the possession of his 
 family. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND KEGEO EULE 363 
 
 ered from the fact that that State s new constitution of 
 April, 1868, was adopted by the votes of negroes upon 
 whom the ballot had not yet been formally conferred 
 either by that State or by the United States, the Fif 
 teenth Amendment, which as Grant s proclamation 
 announced, " makes at once four millions of people 
 voters," not being ratified till March 30, 1870. This 
 South Carolina convention of 1868 was made up of 
 thirty-four white and sixty-three negro delegates. 1 
 The thirty-four whites were composed of Northern 
 carpetbaggers and a handful of native renegades almost 
 entirely from the scum of the State. The misrule that 
 followed in this and other Southern States has been 
 well described by Professor Burgess, of Columbia Uni 
 versity, as " soul-sickening," 2 and by the British his 
 torian Lecky, in his Democracy and Liberty, as "a 
 grotesque parody of government, a hideous orgy of 
 anarchy, violence, unrestrained corruption, undis 
 guised, ostentatious, insulting robbery, such as the 
 world had scarcely ever seen." 
 
 In May, 1875, D. H. Chamberlain (apparently the 
 only carpetbagger worthy of respect), stated to a cor 
 respondent of the Cincinnati Commercial that when he 
 entered on his duties as governor of South Carolina in 
 1874 two hundred trial justices were holding office by 
 executive appointment who could neither read nor 
 write. In Georgia, after the proclamation excepting 
 from amnesty fourteen classes, which included all the 
 influential citizens and those "whose taxable property 
 was over $20,000," informations were filed in the 
 United States Court by the district-attorney praying 
 
 1 Why the Solid South, p. 85. 
 
 2 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, pp. 263-4. 
 
364 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 confiscation of the property of the proscribed classes, 
 and these proceedings resulted in a harvest of costs 
 exacted as a condition of settlement from people who 
 in the universal financial depression were unable to 
 bear the burden. 1 Such extortions became very com 
 mon under the order from Washington directing the 
 Attorney- General to instruct the proper officers to libel 
 and bring to judgment, confiscation and sale, all prop 
 erty subject to confiscation. 2 
 
 The invitation to carpetbaggers to overrun the coun 
 try was contained in the ruling of the highest author 
 ities that where suitable residents could not be found 
 appointments should be made from other States. As a 
 rule the only " suitable " residents were ignorant 
 negroes, and here and there a mercenary white man 
 who was a disgrace to his section. A popular method 
 of extortion practiced upon a helpless people is illus 
 trated by the case of Colonel James J. Gathings, 3 of 
 Hill County, Texas, against whom no charge of any 
 kind had been preferred. Without warning Lieuten 
 ant Pritchett, with three white and four negro police, 
 invaded his home in December, 1870, and searched it 
 despite his protests. The result of incautious com 
 plaint against Pritchett was that General Davidson 
 with a hundred State guards was sent to the vicinity 
 and promptly arrested Gathings, placing him in the 
 court-house, excluding all citizens, and stationing a 
 heavy guard. It was then suggested to the helpless 
 victim that if he would pay five hundred dollars a 
 day, estimated as the expenses of the force that held 
 him, no military commission would be convened to try 
 
 1 Why the Solid South, p. 114. 
 
 *21rid., p. 115. *ffid., pp. 374-5. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO RULE 365 
 
 him. The prisoner refusing to comply, Davidson de 
 clared that he would place the county under martial 
 law, tax its people to support the troops, try him by 
 court-martial, and send him to the penitentiary without 
 the right of appeal. Thus terrorized, poor Gathings 
 agreed to a subsequent proposal to settle the matter 
 for $3,000, and, with the assistance of friends, he paid 
 the money. In no case was it of the slightest use to 
 complain either to the corrupt State or the unfeeling 
 national authority, for, as ex-Governor Chamberlain 
 observes, 1 "so ingrained was the disregard of South 
 ern Democrats ... so implacable was the de 
 termination of the officials and leaders at Washington 
 to keep the [carpetbag and negro] heel on the [South 
 ern white] neck, that hardly one high Eepublican 
 authority could be appealed to for discountenance" of 
 the corrupt rulers and their vicious methods. 
 
 The legislature of South Carolina in 1868 contained 
 eighty-five negro members, fifty-two carpetbaggers 
 and " scalawags" (native renegades), and twenty-one 
 Democrats. The negroes and carpetbaggers, besides 
 voting themselves unheard-of salaries, Havana cigars, 
 free champagne, etc., 2 filled their pockets with the loot 
 of the State. In the capitol of North Carolina also 
 there was a bar which the tax-payers were compelled 
 to support, and rooms devoted to purposes of prostitu 
 tion. 3 J. S. Pike, a Eepublican and ex-United States 
 minister to the Hague, after investigating " a society 
 turned bottom side up," reported that the treasury of 
 South Carolina " has been so thoroughly gutted by the 
 thieves . . . there is nothing left to steal." He 
 
 1 Atlantic Monthly, April, 1901. 
 
 2 Why the Solid South, p. 89. s lUd., p. 80. 
 
366 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 not only studied the "huge system of brigandage," 
 took note of the " pi eked villains" who u robbed the 
 poor and rich alike by law," but observed that the 
 negro majority did " the debating, the squabbling, the 
 law-making," created "all the clamor and disorder," 
 and that some of their * l types it would be hard to find 
 outside of the Congo." l There were frauds in connec 
 tion with taxation, State bonds, and railroads, and of 
 every other possible kind. In 1871 South Carolina s 
 taxable property was only one-third the value of what it 
 was in 1860, but the taxes gathered had increased 500 
 per cent. In consequence in the single year 1874 no less 
 than 2,900 pieces of real estate had to be forfeited for 
 taxes in Charleston County alone. In Arkansas the 
 lands of Democrats were openly assessed at from two to 
 five times the value of Eepublicans lands of the same 
 quality. 2 The alleged cost of public printing in 
 South Carolina from 1868 to 1876 was greater than in 
 Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and 
 Maryland combined and was more than double the 
 amount paid out by the State for that purpose during 
 the previous seventy-eight years. In the last desperate 
 struggle of the carpetbag and negro governments to 
 hold their position the prices of votes ranged from 
 $25 to $2, 000. 
 
 The State debt of Georgia under alien and negro 
 rule rose from five to eighteen millions ; that of Ala 
 bama from eight to twenty -five millions. South Caro 
 lina s debt was multiplied by four during the first four 
 years of Eepublican administration. In North Caro 
 lina the alien government saddled the State with a 
 
 1 J. S. Pike, The Prostrate State, pp. 10, 12, 26, 58. 
 
 2 Why the Solid South, p. 315. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 367 
 
 debt of $42,000,000, although the whole property of 
 the commonwealth in its impoverished condition was 
 not over $120,000,000. In the entire South the as 
 sessed value of property was $2,100,000,000 less in 1870 
 than it was in 1860. The desolation of so-called recon 
 struction following upon the devastation of war ex 
 plains the reproach of alleged lack of enterprise in the 
 prostrate Southern States for so many years a re 
 proach for which there is happily no longer any basis. 
 Harder to bear than poverty, the squandering and 
 stealing of the public money (for which there was not 
 one public improvement to show), disfranchisement, 
 extortion and innumerable forms of oppression, was 
 the elevation of the ignorant ex-slaves into the seats of 
 the mighty and all that that unparalleled atrocity in 
 volved. Even so conservative and unimpassioned a 
 witness as Hon. Henry G. Turner, of Georgia, speaks 
 of the " disdainful scorn 7 l of the puffed -up negroes 
 for the prostrate whites. The Alabama Democratic 
 platform of 1874 complained that the Eepublican party 
 had " inflamed the passions and prejudices of the ne 
 groes as a race against the [native] white people. " 
 There were virtually unprovoked murders of Demo 
 crats by the negro militia with the connivance of the 
 carpetbag and negro governments. 2 Citizens swal 
 lowed many an affront from negroes whose heads had 
 been turned, realizing that the safety of their families 
 was at stake. Negresses of heavy build deliberately 
 threw themselves against delicately nurtured white 
 women on the streets, shouting : " I don t gie de road 
 to po buckra ! " White children were waylaid and 
 
 1 Why the Solid South, p. 126. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 289-301. 
 
368 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 beaten by negro youths. And it was at this time that 
 were first heard of those attacks on white women by 
 negro brutes, who were taught that they could and 
 should marry into the master but now prostrate race. 
 Who can wonder at the Southern contention that for 
 every negro dragged out of bed in the dead of night 
 and flogged or slain the radical leaders at Washington 
 were morally responsible ? 
 
 Nor can we wonder that so many Southern men, in 
 spite of the intense love of native soil, abandoned 
 everything but their families and went as almost 
 penniless emigrants to the far West, to Canada, to 
 Mexico, Cuba, Brazil and elsewhere. 1 It was nothing 
 more than a dreadful symptom of a still more dreadful 
 disease when a night-riding Ku Klux Klan arose in 
 every Southern State to remind the deluded and crimi 
 nal blacks that, after all, the native whites even with 
 Federal bayonets at their breasts were not absolutely 
 helpless and could still strike for home and fireside. 
 Granting the real and alleged bloodshed attributed 
 to that mysterious organization, or to those afterward 
 masquerading in and abusing its name, it is not too 
 much to say that in its first organized activity it was a 
 power for good, in spite of the desperate means em 
 ployed, and that it helped to save a civilization threat 
 ened with absolute extinction. 
 
 What brought the nightmare to an end 1 There was 
 
 1 On December 17, 1867, Charles Nathan, of New Orleans, pub 
 lished a notice that he had arranged with the Emperor of Brazil to 
 carry to that country a thousand families per annum. Members 
 of the Brazilian colony who did not prosper were brought back in 
 an American war-ship several years later. Nothing but wide 
 spread poverty prevented a vast emigration from the Southern 
 States. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO KULE 369 
 
 a combination of causes, chief of which was the determi 
 nation of the native whites who grew stronger toward 
 the last as more of them were amnestied to throw off 
 the yoke at all hazards, as illustrated in the South 
 Carolina campaign led by General Wade Hampton. 
 In many communities the Ku Klux Klan bred a dis 
 taste for the ballot-box among the negroes. The radi 
 cal leaders of the North were unnerved by the utter 
 ances of such men as Horace Greeley, Charles Francis 
 Adams, Carl Schurz, and Henry Ward Beecher, and 
 their grip relaxed. They were also frightened by the 
 Democratic gains in the midst of General Grant s 
 second term and the great vote for Tilden in 1876, l 
 accepting these as a rebuke to the powers in control, 
 and rightly, for they were a sign that the people of the 
 North and West were beginning to realize that they 
 could not hold to the institutions of their fathers and 
 at the same time endorse what was being done in the 
 South. The troops began to be recalled and the 
 carpetbaggers trembled. No sooner was the with 
 drawal complete than nature asserted itself and the 
 bayonet-protected fabric toppled to the ground. 
 
 The sense of relief in the South after the deliverance 
 from the hideous incubus, the satisfaction in the knowl 
 edge that the local governments would once more come 
 into the hands of the virtue and intelligence of each 
 community, the joy in the certainty that the ten years 
 of " the very abomination of desolation " 2 had come to 
 an end, are vividly suggested by the following words 
 
 1 The Electoral Commission of eight Republicans and seven 
 Democrats decided, by a strict party vote, that Hayes was elected. 
 The popular vote for Tilden, by Republican count, was 4,285,992; 
 for Hayes, 4,033,768. 
 
 a Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p. 296. 
 
370 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 of Colonel James T. Bacon in the Edgefield (S. C.) 
 Advertiser, describing the feelings of the citizens after 
 being assured of "Wade Hampton s triumph : 
 
 "They are filled with exultation with glory with 
 unbounded, unrestrained, tumultuous joy. The day 
 has come to their deliverance from the most damnable 
 and degrading yoke that ever galled the necks of free 
 men ! Many of them are mounted, while the majority 
 are on foot. They yell, they shriek, they scream, they 
 shout, they sing, they pray ; they embrace their friends, 
 hail their comrades ; they cheer lustily for Hampton, 
 for Tilden, for Butler, for Gary ! They charge to and 
 fro like rockets. They stream about in ever-eddying 
 channels of excitement. They are wild, crazy, buoyant 
 as the bubbles upon the crested waves. And why 
 should they not be f In the name of God, why should 
 they not be f 
 
 "If they shoot the stars and straddle the meteors, 
 and leap over the moon, who could blame them ? " 
 
 But the collapse of the carpetbag and negro govern 
 ments did not solve the negro problem, and no satis 
 factory solution is even now in prospect. The South 
 ern States enjoy local self-government and have at 
 tained a large measure of prosperity, built up from the 
 ashes of the past ; but the negroes are still, as they 
 have been for eighty-eight years, or since the Missouri 
 Compromise, a source of irritation between the sections. 
 They are still, as they have been throughout the same 
 period, a bar to that immigration which the South has 
 so much needed and yet needs. According to the re 
 port of the United States Commissioner of Education, 
 1896-97, between that date and 1870 the Southern 
 States had taxed themselves a hundred million dollars 
 
 Vol. II, p. 2296. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGBO KULE 371 
 
 to provide public schools for the blacks (more than 
 nine-tenths of which was paid by the whites) ; but un 
 happily education complicates instead of solves the 
 problem, inasmuch as it makes for greater discontent 
 among the negroes, and breeds in them the disposition 
 more and more to demand what the whites, at the 
 North as well as at the South, are unwilling to grant. 
 Social inequality is inevitable even among the people 
 of the same race, but here we have a great dividing 
 line drawn at race and color, which no man on either 
 side, if left to his normal instincts, will desire to over 
 pass. It is a simple fact, which every reflecting mind 
 will recognize, that there is not an acre of land in the 
 United States whereon a negro can have in every par 
 ticular a white man s chance. We may discover the 
 injustice of race prejudice in the abstract, but we bow 
 to its decree in the presence of the problem in the con 
 crete. Deplore it though we may, it is ineradicable 
 and will endure, because it is the barrier erected by 
 Providence (or nature, as you will) to prevent the 
 white, the black, the brown and the yellow races of 
 men from becoming merged into one mongrel and in 
 ferior amalgamate. Unfortunately the negroes of the 
 United States, as a result of abnormal conditions, are 
 not controlled by this normal race instinct, but are 
 filled with the unworthy desires of their cousins in 
 Cuba, where, as the popular song relates, 
 
 " Los negros quieren ser blancos ; 
 Los nmlatos caballeros." l 
 
 Both for the sake of the American people and the 
 
 lr rhe negroes would like to be white men; the mulattoea, white 
 men of high degree. 
 
372 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 alien race among them it is much to be regretted that 
 Lincoln s plan of colonizing the freedmen abroad came 
 to nothing. In his debates with Douglas before the 
 war he admitted that there was a difference between 
 the two races such as would forever prevent their oc 
 cupation of a common territory in a state of social and 
 political equality, 1 and to a deputation of free negroes 
 on August 14, 1862, he said that the only solution of 
 the problem was the separation of the races, referring 
 to his plan of colonizing the blacks in purchased Cen 
 tral American territory. " You and we are different 
 races," he said. " We have between us a broader dif 
 ference than exists between almost any two races. 
 . . . This physical difference is a great disadvan 
 tage to us both, I think. Your race suffer very 
 greatly, many of them, by living among us while ours 
 suffer from your presence. . . . But for your race 
 among us there could not be war. . . . Even 
 when you cease to be slaves you are yet far removed 
 from being on an equality with the white race. You 
 are cut off from many of the advantages which the 
 other race enjoys. On this broad continent not a 
 single man of your race is made the equal of ours. 
 Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still 
 upon you. I do not propose to discuss this but to pre 
 sent it as a fact. . . . It is better for us, therefore, 
 to be separated. . . . There is an unwillingness 
 on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you 
 free colored people to remain among us." 2 In this ad- 
 
 1 Lincoln s Speeches, Vol. I, p. 369. 
 
 2 Henry J. Raymond, Life and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln, 
 pp. 505-8. See also Lincoln s Speeches, Vol. II, p. 222, and his 
 message to Congress, December 3, 1861. (Messages and Documents, 
 Government ed., 1861, Vol. I, pp. 14-15.) 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 373 
 
 dress Lincoln spoke of the advantages of Liberia and 
 described the desirable features of the Central American 
 territory he wished to secure, favoring the latter be 
 cause it was " nearer to us 7 and on a highway of 
 travel. He appealed to the negro men before him to 
 interest themselves in the colonization plan for the 
 good of both their race and the white people of 
 America. 
 
 But, yielding to the dominating sentiment of the day, 
 Lincoln appears soon to have modified his position, 
 for in a message to Congress before the end of the same 
 year he gave his own scheme a staggering blow by de 
 claring that the objections to the free blacks remaining 
 in this country were l i largely imaginary, if not some 
 times malicious." Had he lived and held to his posi 
 tion, had he turned toward Africa as a more suitable 
 field for colonization, and induced Congress to take up 
 the matter and appropriate ample funds, the exodus 
 might have been accomplished in the course of years. 
 The desire of Thomas Jefferson, of Henry Clay, of 
 many of the patriot fathers, and of Abraham Lincoln 
 himself, in his saner and unpersuaded moods, would 
 thus have been fulfilled. If this alien people must 
 remain among us, its own best interests demand 
 that it be not congested in one section but scattered 
 throughout the country, thus exciting less race preju 
 dice ; and the hope of the South, industrially and in 
 all ways, is bound up with a continuing efflux of blacks 
 and influx of whites. As for the North after all that 
 has happened it has no right to complain of a fairer 
 division of the burden, notwithstanding the hostile 
 temper of its labor unions, the guardedly expressed but 
 distinctly discouraging attitude of its newspapers to- 
 
374 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 ward negro immigration from the South, and a chang 
 ing sentiment among its people which seems to promise 
 that the long strife between the sections over the im 
 ported African is rapidly nearing its end. 
 
 Stephens s speech before the Georgia legislature, on 
 February 22, 1866, shows that from the outset he de 
 sired to see full justice done the negroes by the law 
 makers and the public of his State j but during the re 
 construction era, when it was his own race that looked 
 in vain for justice, he, in common with every other 
 Southern white man, had reason to regret that Lin 
 coln s plan of colonizing the freedmen abroad had not 
 been carried out. During that era, however, there 
 was probably no native white man in Georgia to whom 
 the negroes would have listened with the same patience 
 and respect. His influence on those in his immediate 
 section was described as "most beneficent." l 
 
 An incident that occurred when the blacks were no 
 longer in power indicates the esteem in which Ste 
 phens was held by those of his own section, as well as 
 that they now looked to him as a friend. On the 
 4th of July, 1876, the negro Sunday-schools of 
 Taliaferro and adjacent counties, having assembled in 
 a grove near Crawfordville to celebrate, expressed a 
 wish to march in procession to " Liberty Hall" that 
 afternoon and sing for its master. A cordial assent 
 was given, and Stephens, then very feeble, was rolled 
 in his chair out on the long piazza in view of the three 
 thousand negroes, men, women and children, gathered 
 on the lawn. Having listened with great pleasure to 
 the hymns that were sung, he addressed the sable as 
 semblage. He * i advised them, cautioned them, encour- 
 1 Johnston and Browne, p. 533. 
 
CAEPETBAG AND NEGEO EULE 375 
 
 aged them" ; he "told them of the duties they owed 
 themselves, of the duty of educating their children that 
 they might understand the position in which they were 
 placed, the new responsibilities that rested on them, 
 and the all-importance of a faithful and intelligent 
 performance of duty." l Finally, the three thousand 
 negroes 1 1 marched in file past and each touched the 
 feeble hand " of the invalid statesman. 
 
 1 Johnston and Browne, pp. 532, 533. 
 
CHAPTER XVin 
 
 LAST YEARS 
 
 SPEAKING in 1868 of Southern men of ability and 
 prominence, John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, said 
 that " reconstruction " had " scorned their protests, 
 repelled their aid, insulted their misery, and inflicted 
 on them an abasement which they felt to be intolerable 
 in posting over them their slaves of yesterday. " 
 Under the conditions thus truly described, Alex 
 ander H. Stephens, although desiring the best inter 
 ests not only of his own section, but of the Union now 
 supposed to be restored, was compelled to play an in 
 active role. Disfranchised, discredited and thrust 
 aside, he could do little more than counsel his people 
 to wait patiently for better days. 
 
 Being now too confirmed an invalid to resume active 
 practice at the bar, he was called upon to face a period 
 of complete repose, full of terrors for a man of his sleep 
 less intellect and consuming melancholy. A corre 
 spondent of the Ealeigh, N. C. , Standard, of October, 
 1868, a " Radical " or Eepublican organ, described 
 the Vice-President of the fallen Confederacy as feeble 
 and almost decrepit. * His voice is shrill and cracked. 
 His face is ploughed with a thousand lines and wrink 
 les ; " but " his uneasy eye tells of a spirit still restless 
 and active." It is easy to understand why this restless 
 spirit, this untiring brain, now turned to literature for 
 solace and occupation. 
 
LAST YEAES 377 
 
 He set to work on his Constitutional View of the Late 
 War Between the States, a book of 1,400 pages in two 
 octavo volumes, completing it in about three and a half 
 years (1867-70), although handicapped by frail health 
 and not infrequent severe attacks of illness. His re 
 plies to his critics were later published in a volume 
 entitled Reviewers Reviewed. A brief history of the 
 United States, afterward extensively employed in 
 Southern schools, was begun late in 1870 and com 
 pleted in 1872. The success of his work, the royalty 
 on the sale of the Constitutional View alone amounting 
 to $35,000, tempted him to further labors in the 
 historical field ; and he undertook a History of the 
 United States, which he succeeded in completing dur 
 ing the last year of his life and published shortly 
 before his death in 1883. But owing to growing in 
 firmities, the want of the same keen interest in a 
 subject in large part already handled, and the dis 
 tractions of a resumed political career, the book 
 lacked the vigor of his earlier effort and was a 
 financial failure. 
 
 The first volume of his most important work, the 
 Constitutional View, is appropriately dedicated to " all 
 true friends of the Union under the Constitution of 
 the United States throughout their entire limits, with 
 out regard to present or past party associations ; and 
 to all true friends of Constitutional liberty, the world 
 over, now and forever." This book is worth the at 
 tention of the modern student of history, if for no other 
 reason, because it is the ablest defense of the secession 
 of the Southern States that has been written. It will 
 also appeal to the lover of home rule and constitu 
 tional government as opposed to the Federal centraliza- 
 
378 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 tion of power and the enlargement of Executive pre 
 rogatives, which are noticeable features of our present 
 political history as well as of the period in which 
 Stephens wrote. This masterly presentation of its 
 subject is less readable than it might have been owing 
 to the form of dialogue adopted in order to represent 
 fairly all sides of the various controversies, an object 
 far more fully achieved than could reasonably be hoped 
 in a period of such partisanship and bitterness. 
 
 Discussing the first volume in April, 1869, the dis 
 interested London Saturday Eeview said : 
 
 " In justice to a brave, high-minded and most unfor 
 tunate people, and in due regard to historical truth and 
 to the interests of political science, it is even now worth 
 while to hear what a scholar, a man of deep political 
 learning, of profound knowledge of constitutional his 
 tory, of moderate opinions and temperate spirit, has to 
 say in defense of principles which, however generally 
 repudiated in 1866, were as generally entertained ten 
 years before, and which the South deemed worth up 
 holding with her whole wealth and her best blood. Mr. 
 Stephens, if any one, may be expected to think and 
 speak fairly and impartially on this subject. He was 
 more consistent than any Northern opponent of se 
 cession ; he is less embittered than any Southern 
 secessionist. . . . 
 
 " The opinions and arguments of such a man are en 
 titled, a priori, to respectful attention ; when they are so 
 just, so clear, so well reasoned, so amply supported by 
 authorities of the highest character and of every class as 
 we find them in the volume before us, they cannot but 
 assist us greatly in forming a true judgment upon the 
 nature and merits of the controversy. ... A sov 
 ereign can have no judge, and the Federal Constitu 
 tion provided no means by which one State could 
 bring another to justice for wrong-doing or non-fulfill- 
 
LAST YEAES 379 
 
 ment of engagements. In like manner there existed 
 no legal mode whereby the Federal government could 
 coerce a State which should exercise the right of sov 
 ereignty to redress its wrongs under the compact by re 
 nouncing the compact itself. A sovereign power is the 
 judge of its own rights. Its subjects must obey it and 
 defend it, right or wrong. It follows therefore from the 
 sovereignty of the States that they were entitled legally 
 to secede, if they chose, and that their citizens were 
 bound to follow and to fight for the choice of the State. 
 This was the view on which Stephens acted j and in 
 its support he cites eminent authorities. . . . He 
 calls Daniel Webster to testify that the systematic 
 violation of the Constitution in the case of fugitive 
 slaves was alone a sufficient vindication of the total 
 repudiation by the South of a compact which the 
 North observed only so far as she pleased. It is 
 impossible, within our limits, to give a fair idea even 
 of the outlines of such an argument ; much more 
 to convey a just impression of the lucidity, power of 
 thought, vast and appropriate reading, and vigorous 
 reasoning by which it is sustained. It would be diffi 
 cult to name a more perfect masterpiece of constitu 
 tional reasoning and political disquisition ; a work 
 which might with greater advantage be placed in 
 the hands of a young lawyer, who desired to see 
 how those high questions, which are the common 
 ground of the lawyer, the historian and the states 
 man, can be treated by one who combines the qualifi 
 cations of all three. The book . . . may be con 
 fidently recommended as indispensable to every one 
 who wishes really to understand either the Federal 
 Constitution or the Civil War ; and it will be ranked 
 among the most valuable of those materials which the 
 writers of this age are accumulating for the future 
 historian of America." 
 
 It might be expected that a work published in the 
 South s darkest hour, and placing her defeated cause 
 
380 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 in so favorable a light before the world, would be re 
 ceived in the ruined section with universal gratitude 
 as well as admiration. Yet the irony of fate ruled 
 that the bitterest attack on the book and its author 
 should be made among the people they defended. 
 Even while declaring his conviction that l i the Confed 
 erate cause was lost by our own dissensions," Benja 
 min H. Hill revived those disastrous dissensions by 
 attacking Stephens and his history, and dragging into 
 public view much that might better have been left to 
 oblivion at a time when the ill-starred Confederate 
 States were still prostrate under the desolating heel of 
 the negro and the alien. 
 
 The bitter controversy that followed reflected no 
 credit on either of the two eminent Georgians, and it 
 was left to wiser citizens to entreat them to desist. It 
 may be said in behalf of Stephens that being attacked, 
 he felt compelled to defend himself. In his paper on 
 the "Unwritten History of the Hampton Eoads Com 
 mission," to which we have referred, Benjamin H. Hill 
 virtually attributed the Confederacy s defeat to Ste 
 phens s arguments against the constitutionality of 
 Confederate military laws, his attacks on the Davis ad 
 ministration, and his part in the peace movement in 
 Georgia. It was charged that Stephens could have 
 checked harmful activity on the part of Governor 
 Brown at the critical hour of the Hampton Eoads Com 
 mission, but, although urged, failed to interfere, and 
 that therefore that conference was worse than useless. 
 The paper declared that such men as Stephens were 
 "not fit" to write Confederate history; that "the 
 malcontents are not the men to pass judgment on the 
 faithful," and that " those who were themselves notori- 
 
LAST YEAES 381 
 
 ously impractical, or whose zeal, efficiency, or fidelity 
 iii any form to the cause was a matter of debate, could 
 not agree with Mr. Davis during the war, and of writ 
 ing books in their own defense since the war there is 
 no end." The suggestion breathed throughout Hill s 
 paper, though not stated in set terms, was that if 
 Stephens was not at heart a traitor to the South, 
 his course was such as to breed that suspicion in every 
 reflecting mind. The damage done the Confederacy by 
 Stephens through his untimely ardor for strictly con 
 stitutional government has already been discussed. 
 That Davis, Hill and others should have been incensed 
 at his course was natural, but there is nothing to sup 
 port, and his whole life discountenances, the suspicion 
 that he was insincere or that he was not eager for the 
 success of the Confederate arms, however he might op 
 pose the policies of the Davis administration. 
 
 Stephens wrote five long communications to the 
 Augusta Constitutionalist in reply to Hill, and the latter 
 as many more to the Atlanta Constitution in rejoinder. 
 As a representative of the Davis administration, Hill 
 had a real grievance, and this gave his argument a 
 force it would otherwise have lacked. Stephens de 
 fended himself very ably. Both descended -to bitter 
 personal attack, and betrayed an ill-feeling that reached 
 back to the quarrel and challenge to a duel in 1856. 
 Hill s unfair assault on Stephens approached the ex 
 treme limit of vituperation, as in this passage of his 
 letter of June 16, 1874 a masterpiece of its kind : 
 To what shall we liken him ? We must not blas 
 pheme the dead by hunting among them for his model. 
 We will not insult the living by seeking among them 
 for his rival. We cannot libel the innocent unborn 
 
382 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 by supposing that among them he could ever have an 
 imitator. No ! this defamer of Davis and eulogist of 
 Grant, this reckless accuser of despotism in the Con 
 federacy and ready apologist of usurpations by Eadical- 
 ism ; this pretentious oracle of State sovereignty, and 
 supple persecutor of manacled Louisiana j this wicked 
 maligner of others and worshiping adulator of him 
 self j this lord of slanderers, king of demagogues, and 
 hero of marplots must be left forever alone unap 
 proached and unapproachable in the ghostly solitude 
 of his own irreconcilable and anomalous self, serene, 
 sej,f-adored and infamous ! " 
 
 / Stephens, who had admired Grant personally since 
 /their meeting in the preliminaries of the Hampton 
 Eoads Conference, said in 1873 that his greatest objec 
 tion to him as President was l his rigid enforcement 
 of the very bad laws which malcontent Eepublicans 
 had carried through Congress, some of them by fraud 
 and perfidy as well as usurpation," and that in the 
 matter of Louisiana not Grant himself, but those who 
 made unjust laws and the courts that rendered wrong 
 ful decisions were to blame. To a man of HilPs tem 
 perament, Stephens s policy during the reconstruction 
 era was likely at times to suggest that of kissing the 
 hand which smites. ^lt would be more just to describe 
 it as the policy of the man who is wise and strong 
 enough to rise above the wounded pride of a single 
 person, and, for the sake of a whole people, to seek to 
 conciliate the conqueror by every means consistent 
 with honor. /He ardently desired to bring the es 
 tranged sections nearer together as soon as possible, 
 and therefore in 1873 favored war with Spain over the 
 Virginius affair as a means to that end. The war over 
 
LAST YEAES 383 
 
 Cuba, producing the result he had sought, came exactly 
 twenty -five years later. Stephens s early policy of con 
 ciliation, and of urging all Southern men who were 
 allowed to take part in elections and accomplish what 
 good they might, was naturally criticized by the proud, 
 despairing spirits who washed their hands of every 
 thing and stood aloof. He was also bitterly accused 
 by those "New Departure " Democrats who supported 
 Horace Greeley in 1872. Stephens opposed their policy 
 on the ground that it was a mistakejx) sacrifice true 
 Democratic principles of State rights and home rule 
 in support of a. centralist, even though friendly to the 
 South, who could not possibly be elected, and his 
 prophecy that Greeley would not carry a single North 
 ern State was duly fulfilled. He consistently stood for 
 the " straight-out " Democratic ticket, which avowed 
 strict adherence to the principles of Jefferson, and was 
 represented by Charles O Connor, of New York, and 
 John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts. 
 
 In 1869 Stephens declined a chair of political science / 
 in the University of Georgia. In the same year he 
 became a cripple, ever after employing crutches the 
 result of an acute attack of inflammatory rheumatism, 
 aggravated by an accident (a heavy gate falling on 
 him), in which the sciatic nerve was injured. It was 
 expected that this, added to his constitutional frailty, 
 would end his career ; yet such was his energy that he 
 continued his historical writings, and in the spring of 
 1871 purchased an interest in the Southern Sun, pub 
 lished at Atlanta, thereafter devoting much labor to the 
 writing of editorials expressing his views on the issues 
 of the times, the greatest of which, in his opinion, was 
 not whether a State had a right to secede, but whether 
 
384 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 a State had any rights which the central government 
 iniglit not set aside at its pleasure. Many of these 
 editorials, which were always signed " A. H. S.," were 
 several columns in length, and one in the issue of July 
 11, 1871, filled five and a half columns. Such ponder 
 ous journalism could hardly be a popular success, and 
 within less than three years he withdrew from the en 
 terprise some $20,000 poorer than at the outset. // 
 
 Stephens has been described, more or less correctly, 
 as an u amiable egotist," and it did not surprise his 
 friends when he noted editorially in the Sun his own 
 movements to and from " Liberty Hall " and the capi 
 tal, as in the article in the issue of November 26, 
 1872, discoursing upon "Our Visit to Atlanta." His 
 life-long friend Eobert Toombs, at this time living in 
 retirement at Washington, Ga., is reported to have 
 commented : "Oh, yes, that s the way with Alec 
 always posing before the public. He won t be satisfied 
 until he corrects the proofs of his own obituary." 
 This is precisely what he did do a few years later, ac 
 cording to Mr. Clark Howell. Believing from the ac 
 counts of one of his severe attacks that death was near, 
 the editors of the Atlanta Constitution prepared an 
 elaborate obituary and biographical sketch, and when 
 the sufferer unexpectedly rallied and became fairly 
 well once more, this was sent to him for approval and 
 he cheerfully corrected and returned it to the publish 
 ers, who, later on, had they been so minded, might 
 have " scooped " their rivals with "The Only True 
 Obituary of Alexander H. Stephens, Corrected by 
 Himself. Stephens s sense of humor, which was strik 
 ingly manifested at times, accompanied him to his last 
 illness, during which he said to his secretary, who was 
 
LAST YEAES 385 
 
 urging food on him: "Slidell, don t you know you 
 ought not to feed a horse until he whickers I " 
 
 The files of the Southern Sun reveal the interesting 
 fact that when, during the Greeley campaign, the con 
 troversy of that newspaper and the Constitution reached 
 a bitter stage, Stephens suddenly gave up his whole 
 editorial page to a reprint of "The Code of Honor, or 
 Eules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in 
 Duelling," by John Lyde Wilson. An introductory 
 editorial note signed "A. H. S.," stated: "We be 
 lieve the publication of this Code at this time is pe 
 culiarly opportune. The frail l i mannikin who had 
 challenged big "Ben" Hill in 1856 was still himself, 
 m spite of his crutches and his roller-chair. 
 / The death of his beloved half-brother and most inti 
 mate of friends, Judge Linton Stephens, in the summer 
 of 1872, was a crushing blow to the invalid of " Liberty 
 Hall," from which he was long in recovering. Greater 
 distraction even than writing history and political edi 
 torials was soon found necessary for one who had ever 
 sought refuge from his own consuming melancholy in 
 an active public life ^ and in December of the same 
 year, while visiting Atlanta, he announced himself as 
 a candidate for the United States Senate on the issue 
 between "straight-out" Democracy and the "New 
 Departure." But he who might have gone to the Sen 
 ate before the war had not his friendship for Toombs 
 prevented, and was elected to the Senate in 1866, but 
 was not allowed to take his seat, was now defeated by 
 the dashing soldier, General John B. Gordon. Nev 
 ertheless, driven by his miseries and the necessity of 
 forgetfulness in public activities, he promptly deter 
 mined to appear once more in the lower house of Con- 
 
386 ALEXANDEB H. STEPHENS 
 
 gress, and was elected, without an opposing vote, to fill 
 a vacancy that had occurred. The New York Com 
 mercial Advertiser s comment, in February, 1873, on 
 Stephens s reappearance in Congress, was typical of the 
 dominating Northern attitude throughout the recon 
 struction period. But for the work of the friends of 
 established institutions and a reluctance among all 
 thinking people to repudiate the Constitution and set 
 up an empire in form as well as in essence, the indica 
 tions are that the impulse to hold the Southern States 
 as " dependencies forever 7 might have triumphed. 
 Eepresentatives from the South in Congress were 
 looked upon as there, not of right, but on sufferance 
 through the magnanimous concession of the triumphant 
 States which alone were " the nation." Thus we find 
 the Commercial Advertiser saying: " Alexander H. 
 Stephens does not emulate the modesty of the rose. 
 He positively refuses to pine upon the bush. He is 
 not only ready to be plucked but means to oblige some 
 body to pluck him. He feels that his dear Georgia 
 cannot get along without him at Washington." The 
 Advertiser admitted, however, that "this little irre-" 
 pressible human steam engine, with a big brain and 
 scarcely any body, is one of the most accomplished 
 parliamentarians the world has ever seen," and, there 
 fore, graciously consented to his return to Congress 
 with a concluding, " Let him come back."/ 
 
 Three years later the correspondent of a more 
 friendly Northern newspaper illustrating the grad 
 ual growth of a somewhat better state of feeling thus 
 described him as he appeared in the House, at a time 
 when his physical sufferings were greater than usual : 
 " A little way up the aisle sits a queer-looking bundle. 
 
LAST YEARS 387 
 
 An immense cloak, a high hat, and peering somewhere 
 out of the middle a thin, pale, sad little face. This 
 brain and eyes enrolled in countless thicknesses of 
 flannel and broadcloth wrappings belong to Hon. Alex 
 ander H. Stephens, of Georgia. How anything so 
 small and sick -and sorrowful could get here all the 
 way from Georgia is a wonder. If he were to draw 
 his last breath any instant you would not be surprised. 
 If he were laid out in his coffin he need not look any dif 
 ferent, only then the fires would have gone out in 
 those burning eyes. Set, as they are, in the wax- 
 white face, they seem to burn and blaze. Still, on the 
 countenance is stamped that pathos of long-continued 
 suffering which goes to the heart. That he is here at 
 all to offer the counsels of moderation and patriotism 
 proves how invincible is the soul that dwells in his 
 shrunken and aching frame." 
 
 V During this, his second career in Congress, Stephens 
 was handicapped by the fact that he came from a dis 
 credited and disconsidered section, but he none the 
 less boldly championed the Constitutional rights of 
 the States as against the aggressions of the Federal 
 government. He ably opposed on Constitutional 
 grounds as an invasion of State jurisdiction, the Civil 
 Eights Bill, the object of which, briefly stated, was to 
 force the whites of the South, on pain of heavy fine, 
 not only to sit beside the blacks in public conveyances, 
 in theatres, in schools, in churches, and to eat with 
 them in hotels, but to lie beside them in cemeteries. 1 
 
 1 a . . . or any cemetery . . . that shall make any dis 
 tinction as to admission or accommodation, " etc. The framers of 
 this bill stopped just short of providing for the intimate relations 
 of the two races in the world to come. Not until 1883 was this act 
 declared to be unconstitutional. 
 
388 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 Stephens pointed to the decision handed down by the 
 Supreme Court in the Slaughter House Cases, " affirm 
 ing that the Fourteenth Amendment did not transfer 
 the security and protection of civil rights from the 
 States to the Federal government, nor bring the do 
 main of those rights within the jurisdiction of Congress ; 
 but that all the essential features of the original Fed 
 eral system remained unchanged. And further : 
 
 " Interference by the Federal government, even if 
 the power were clear and indisputable, would be against 
 the very genius and entire spirit of our whole system. 
 If there is one truth which stands out prominently 
 above all others in the history of these States, it is that 
 the germinal and seminal of American Constitutional 
 liberty is the absolute unrestricted right of State self- 
 government in all purely internal affairs. The first 
 union of the Colonies, from which sprung the union of 
 the States, was by joint action to secure this right of 
 local self-government for each. It was when the char 
 tered rights of Massachusetts were violated by a Brit 
 ish parliament that the cry first went up from Virginia, 
 1 The cause of Boston is the cause of us all ! 7 This led 
 to the declaration and establishment of the independ 
 ence, not of the whole people of the united colonies as 
 one mass, but of the independence of each of the origi 
 nal thirteen colonies, then declared by themselves 
 to be, and afterward acknowledged by all foreign 
 powers to be, thirteen separate and distinct States. 
 . . . Since the passions and prejudices which at 
 tended the [late armed] conflict are fast passing away, 
 the period has now come for the descendants of a com 
 mon ancestry, in all the States and sections of the 
 country, to return to the original principles of their 
 fathers, with the hopeful prospect of a higher and 
 brighter career in the future than any heretofore 
 achieved in the past. On such return depends, in my 
 
LAST YEAES 389 
 
 judgment, not only the liberty of the white and colored 
 races on this continent, but the best hopes of man 
 kind." 
 
 This appeal did not receive its desired answer, how 
 ever, until 1883, nine years later, when the second 
 Civil Eights Act was finally declared unconstitutional. 
 Meanwhile for even so serious a matter as an invasion 
 of the Constitutional rights of the States may have its 
 humorous side ignorant, blustering Southern negroes 
 continued to prove that they were "as good" as the 
 most intelligent and gently nurtured whites and "a 
 heap better n po buckra " by pointing to the fact that 
 "de Silver Eights bill done pass ." 
 
 A bit of legislation with which Stephens was act 
 ively connected at this period, and for which he was 
 much censured, was the "salary grab," or the increas 
 ing of the salaries of Congressmen and doubling that of 
 the President, his arguments in favor of the measure 
 being sound and convincing. He was also criticized 
 in the South for advocating acquiescence in the parti 
 san decision of the Electoral Commission in 1876 ; yet 
 any other policy would have been madness, for the 
 dominating majority in the North would not have 
 suffered the presence of a Democratic President in the 
 White House at that period and only a military con 
 queror could have seated him. This is clear from the 
 suppressed excitement caused by the election of Cleve 
 land even as late as 1884. Stephens was also the ob 
 ject of censure because of his action a,t the close of the 
 session of 1874-5 in voting to take up and adopt the 
 report of the Committee on Louisiana Affairs, but his 
 vote, which turned the scale, brought up the considera 
 tion of that report and was instrumental in leading to 
 
390 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 the unanimous condemnation by the House of the in 
 famous returning board of the carpetbag regime in that 
 afflicted commonwealth. 
 
 * An important event in Stephens s second career in 
 Congress under the changed conditions was his speech 
 on February 12, 1878, in the sixty-seventh year of his 
 age, at the uncovering of Carpenter s painting, "The 
 Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation." The 
 invitation and his acceptance were significant signs 
 of a real movement in the direction of that reunion 
 and fraternity which he so greatly desired. Among 
 the congratulatory letters following his i patriotic ad 
 dress" was one from President Barnard, of Columbia 
 College, which read, in part : " It is indeed a marvel 
 ous thing how, after her trials, the South still con 
 tinues to maintain her noble preeminence in statesman 
 ship and in moral dignity ; and still more marvelous, 
 perhaps, that one who had been so conspicuous in 
 the councils of the nation before the war, and also 
 during the progress of that painful struggle had 
 been identified with equal prominence with the 
 Southern cause, should continue after all to com 
 mand equally, North and South, a homage, a re 
 spect, and a confidence which are awarded by the peo 
 ple to hardly any other." In intent, and in large 
 part in performance, Stephens may with propriety be 
 described as the Henry Clay, the patriotic peace 
 maker, of this troublous period. 
 
 In 1882, having at last retired from Congress at the 
 age of seventy, Stephens was persuaded to become a 
 candidate for governor of his native State. Unsatisfied 
 ambition was charged upon him by his opponents, but 
 his impelling motive was doubtless the same as always 
 
LAST YEAES 391 
 
 to occupy his mind and escape from himself in pub 
 lic activities. He was still an Orestes driven by the 
 furies of restless melancholy. But if he had foreseen 
 the strength and bitterness of the opposition he would 
 probably have refrained. His war and reconstruction 
 records were intemperately and too often unjustly at 
 tacked. The Macon Telegraph tauntingly inquired of 
 the Atlanta Constitution if it was " charmed" with 
 Stephens s contributions during reconstruction " to 
 ward the deliverance of Georgia from the flies and the 
 frogs and lice and other vermin that were spewed into 
 our midst by the enemies of our rights and liberties." 
 It was also objected that he was too weak and old 
 which was true enough and he was not infrequently 
 referred to as " The Roller- chair." In some instances 
 he was opposed pal^Ty 15e^ause "*6Lis nomination inter 
 ested and seemed to please Northern editors, this being 
 interpreted as a sign that his fidelity to his own section 
 might justly be questioned. 
 
 Cut to the soul by the unexpected strength and bitter 
 temper of the opposition having been led to look for 
 virtual unanimity in his favor Stephens imposed 
 upon himself the heavy task of pleasing all factions by 
 the superiority and justice of his administration. It 
 was conceded that he made a good governor during 
 the short time allowed him (he was inaugurated in the 
 autumn of 1882 and died early in 1883), but the effort 
 of his great will to rouse his failing energies and rise 
 to the occasion imposed too severe a tax on his frail 
 body. Instead of holding the reins of government at 
 Atlanta and wrestling with self-seeking politicians, he 
 should now have been in the enjoyment of the peace 
 and rest of " Liberty Hall" which outraged nature so 
 
392 ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS 
 
 piteously demanded ; yet no one ever desired to die in 
 harness more sincerely than he. His final collapse 
 was attributed by his physician to the constant and 
 excessive overtaxing of his brain. He died on Sun 
 day, March 4, 1883. 
 
 A great life, full of tragedy both public and private, 
 yet also full of triumph and of usefulness, was ended. 
 The Latin phrase, u Non sibi, sed aliis," on the tomb 
 of Georgia s " great commoner" at Crawford ville, is 
 more than official eulogy. Though a sufferer in body 
 and spirit throughout life, though the victim of ills 
 which only through great courage and patience could 
 be endured, he furnished innumerable proofs of an 
 unselfish and high devotion to other than self to 
 friends, neighbors, to all in need, to his State, his sec 
 tion, the country and the public at large. His religion, 
 which was simple and genuine, may be described in 
 the single phrase, character is salvation. This was 
 illustrated when, during his last illness, prayer and 
 Bible reading at his bedside were proposed. He 
 objected, not to these things in themselves, but to them 
 as suggesting a " death -bed repentance," explain 
 ing : "I have made it the rule of my life to live 
 each day as if it were to be my last. In the heat of 
 politics I may have sometimes forgotten myself, but I 
 am no better to-day on my death-bed than I have tried 
 to be every day of my life, and I have no special 
 preparations to make and no special pleas to offer." 
 
 The last rites were attended by all the dignity with 
 which a great State could invest the observances in 
 honor of its deceased chief magistrate. Many thou 
 sands of both races viewed the body as it lay in state 
 in the capitol. The memorial was a notable gathering 
 
LAST YEAES 393 
 
 of statesmen and prominent citizens. Kobert Toombs 
 wept as he praised his life-long friend. He declared 
 that Stephens always dared to follow his convictions, 
 whatever the consequences, and recalled how he had 
 said after the fall of the Confederacy : " I am old and 
 weak in bodily infirmity, but I have done my duty to 
 God and my country, and I am ready for whatever fate 
 may be assigned to me. 7 Of the many tributes of 
 speakers at the many memorial gatherings in Southern 
 cities, of the public estimate shown in the resolutions 
 of State legislatures and of the Congress of the United 
 States, it is unnecessary to speak here. 
 
 Though not a source of strength to the warring Con 
 federacy, Alexander H. Stephens served the South 
 well before the great crisis, and after it his wisely 
 directed efforts were no small factor among the 
 forces that brought to an end the era of passion and 
 despotism. Of his wider usefulness, it may be said 
 that the thanks of all American patriots are due 
 to him as an untiring champion of Constitutional gov 
 ernment and home rule within the States, as opposed 
 to threatening encroachments of the Federal power. 
 For these he wrought mightily when they were most 
 imperiled, and the possible day when the republic of 
 North America shall be merged into the all of empire 
 except the name has been made more distant as a result 
 of his efforts. 
 
 The heritage of the American people is greatness, 
 even though new l i world-power responsibilities 
 threaten the integrity of our early institutions, even 
 though the individual liberty of the past be impaired 
 by complex modern conditions of industrialism and 
 finance. Stephens was ever and would be still an opti- 
 
394 ALEXANDEE H. STEPHENS 
 
 mist, although to the end he was pursued by the fear 
 that during the fifteen years of revolution from 1861 
 to 1876 the cause of Constitutional government in this 
 country had received a blow from which it would 
 never recover. It may be that the fathers of the 
 Federated American republic would confess to similar 
 fears for the future could they know of the present 
 tendencies toward a greater extension of the Federal 
 power at the expense of the States, as well as an ex 
 pansion of the prerogatives of the Executive at the cost 
 of the coordinate branches of the government, and 
 that, moreover, the chief magistrate of the republic in 
 our time is also the protector of San Domingo, the 
 suzerain of Cuba, the virtual supervisor of Latin - 
 America, and the imperial overlord of Tutuila, 
 Guam, Porto Eico, and the thousand islands of the 
 Philippines. 
 
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 SPEARS, JOHN R. The American Slave Trade. 
 
 SOUTHERN HISTORICAL PAPERS. 
 
 SOUTHERN NEWSPAPERS, Files of, 1840-1880. 
 
 SCRAP-BOOK of the War Period. 
 
 STEPHENS, ALEXANDER H. A Constitutional View of the War. 
 
 - Prison Diary of (in manuscript). 
 SCHURZ, CARL. Life of Lincoln. 
 STOVALL, PLEASANT A. Life of Robert Toombs. 
 VAN TYNE, C. H. Letters of Daniel Webster. 
 WADDELL, JAMES D. Life of Linton Stephens. 
 WALLACE ; JOHN. Carpetbag Rule in Florida. 
 WASHINGTON, GEORGE, Writings of. 
 WATTERSON, HENRY. The Compromises of Life e 
 WEBSTER, DANIEL, Works of. 
 WHITE, HENRY A. Life of Robert E. Lee. 
 WILSON, HENRY. History of Reconstruction. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABOLITIONISTS, agents of in 
 Georgia, 41 ; repudiate the 
 Constitution, 54 ; demand 
 Northern secession, 97, 108- 
 109, 121-123 ; radical utter 
 ances of, 120-123 ; their law 
 lessness, 126-127; agree with 
 secessionists in all points 
 except one," 108; date of 
 abolition in New York, 59, 
 128. 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, 94, 
 369. 
 
 Adams, John, 73, 203. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 73, 203. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 2d, 352, 
 376, 384. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, 200. 
 
 Americans, a conquering peo 
 ple, 83-84 ; their chief magis 
 trate the imperial overlord of 
 distant possessions, 394. 
 
 Ames, Fisher, 200, 207. 
 
 Anderson, Robert, 244. 
 
 Anti-Slavery, societies and 
 movements South, 57-58. 
 
 BABTOW, FRANCIS S., 176, 179. 
 
 Beauregard, General P. G. T., 
 244. 
 
 Benjamin, Judah P., 55, 270, 
 298. 
 
 Berrien, John M., 73-74. 
 
 Elaine, James G., 49, 234, 360. 
 
 Blair, F. P., Jr., 286. 
 
 Blair, Francis P., Sr., his mis 
 sion to Richmond, 328-330, 
 334. 
 
 Breckinridge, John C., 153, 
 176. 
 
 Brown, John, 138, 157. 
 
 Brown, Joseph E., 161; seizes 
 Fort Pulaski three months 
 before Sumter is fired on, 
 173-174 ; seizure of ships at 
 Savannah, 174-176, 179, 209, 
 322, 338; reply to Sherman 
 as to separate peace for 
 Georgia, 323-324. 
 
 Buchanan, James, 105-106, 
 138 ; message rebuking 
 Northern States for Constitu 
 tion-nullifying enactments, 
 168-169, 216. 
 
 Burlingame, Anson P., 121. 
 
 CABOT, GEORGE, 207-208, 212. 
 Calhoun, John C., 33, 43, 58, 
 
 77. 92, 96, 103 ; complains of 
 
 nullification in North, 104 ; 
 
 124, 129, 131, 154-155, 162, 
 
 210, 216. 
 Campbell, Justice John A., 
 
 241, 330, 332, 335-336. 
 Chamberlain, D. H., 352, 356, 
 
 363. 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., 171. 
 Clay, Cassius M., 54, 123-124, 
 
 249. 
 Clay, Clement C., 258, 261, 
 
 343. 
 Clay, Henry, 15, 32, 58, 72, 91, 
 
 96, 103, 106, 112, 124, 373, 
 
 390. 
 
 Clinton, George, 194. 
 Cobb, Howell, 110, 111, 178- 
 
 179. 
 
 Cobb, T. R. R., 39, 179. 
 Collins, Thomas, 194. 
 Colquitt, Walter T., 45. 
 
400 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Compromise of 1850, 103, 112, 
 117, 120, 131-132, 154. 
 
 Cone, Judge F. H., 39, 87-88. 
 
 Confederacy, Northern, 206- 
 208, 211-213. 
 
 Confederacy, Southern, pro 
 posed in 1850, 107-116 ; Con 
 federacy of 1861-5, 170, 
 176, 185; its small popula 
 tion compared with the 
 North, 184, 227, 254, 256, 
 257 ; its handicaps, 251-289 ; 
 its Constitution, 230-231 ; 
 adoption recommended in 
 North, 237; its early suc 
 cesses in the field, 244-245; 
 outclassed in numbers and 
 resources, 254-256, 310 ; Tory 
 and half-hearted elements, 
 255-256 ; privations during 
 war, 258-259, 278 ; Richmond 
 bread-riot, 260 ; hungry sol 
 diers, 261-263; problem of 
 caring for Federal prisoners, 
 264-265 ; classes exempted 
 from military service, 266- 
 269; desertion and lack of 
 devotion, 266-267, 269; pa 
 triotism, 268, 280-283 ; pro 
 posed enlistment of slaves, 
 269-272 ; the handicap of the 
 negro, 269-270 ; the defensive 
 policy, 276-277 ; internal dis 
 sension, 278-280, 308, 312- 
 314 ; chief monument to Con 
 federate valor, 280; women 
 of, 280-283; devastation by 
 enemy, 283-288 ; financial 
 embarrassments, 300; heavy 
 war tax, 301; cotton "fam 
 ine" policy, 303-306; Geor 
 gia s peace resolutions, 314- 
 320 ; secession from threat 
 ened, 279, 313-314, 322 ; col 
 lapse in sight, 325 ; Hampton 
 Roads Conference a confession 
 of despair, 329-330, 339 ; and 
 accomplishes nothing, 340 ; 
 
 exchange of prisoners at last 
 secured, 338-339 ; the end, 
 341-342. 
 
 Confederation, Articles of, 178- 
 179, 192-193, 195, 200. 
 
 Constitution, the Federal, 
 slavery-protecting, 59, 104- 
 106, 252 ; a compromise, 190- 
 191, 252; nullification of, 
 125-126, 157, 169, 186, 226 ; 
 compared with Articles of 
 Confederation, 192-193, 194 ; 
 a Federal "compact," 195- 
 196, 202 ; its limited powers, 
 196-200, 203, 206, 209,225- 
 226. 
 
 Constitutional Union party, its 
 triumph over secessionists in 
 1851, 111, 117-118. 
 
 Con way, Moncure D., 54, 122- 
 123. 
 
 Cotton question, Stephens s 
 view of, 302; failure of the 
 famine policy, 303-306 ; the 
 export plan, 302-303, 305; 
 vast store confiscated by the 
 United States government, 
 303. 
 
 Crawford, George W., 178. 
 
 Creek Indian troubles, 214, 215. 
 
 Crittenden, John J., 91, 171. 
 
 Curry, J. L. M., 230, 236-237. 
 
 D AMPUDIA, PEDEO, 78. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 44, 58, 124 ; 
 taught secession at West 
 Point, 219-221 ; President of 
 Confederacy, 237-239, 248, 
 249; checks bread-riot, 260- 
 261; appeals to planters to 
 raise food only, 267; against 
 class exemptions, 268-269 ; 
 favors enlistments of negroes, 
 270 ; character and powers, 
 273-274 ; letter to Pope Pius 
 IX, 276 ; criticism of, in the 
 South, 278-279 ; accused of 
 dictatorship, 312-314, 327; 
 
INDEX 
 
 401 
 
 aa to joint expedition into 
 Mexico, 330-332 ; object in 
 Hampton Roads Conference, 
 331 ; no commitments with 
 foreign powers, 328-329 ; last 
 appeal, 340-341; a prisoner 
 of state, 343-344. 
 
 DeTocqueville, Alexis, Democ 
 racy in America, 23, 32, 61- 
 63, 221-223. 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A., 51, 131, 
 153, 176. 
 
 ELLIOTT, BISHOP STEPHEN, in 
 structions to diocese in event 
 of secession, 228. 
 
 Ellsworth, Oliver, 195, 196, 199. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 123. 
 
 FEDERALISTS, the, secession 
 plots of, 109, 206-209, 211. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, as trader 
 in slaves, 128. 
 
 Fugitive Slave Law, execrated 
 by Abolitionists, 121 ; nulli 
 fied by Northern States, 104- 
 106, 125-126 ; clause of Con 
 stitution on which based, 
 124; reprisal proposed in 
 South, 160-161. 
 
 GARRISON, WILLIAM LLOYD, 
 his disunion sentiment 121- 
 123 ; denounces and publicly 
 burns the Constitution, 122. 
 
 Gathings, James J., robbed by 
 carpetbaggers, 364-365. 
 
 Georgia Resolutions of 1850, 
 remonstrance to the Northern 
 States and threat of secession 
 as a last resort, 107, 112-116, 
 118. 
 
 Giddings, Joshua R., 121. 
 
 Gorsuch, Edward, killed by 
 Abolitionists while pursuing 
 his escaped slaves, 126-127. 
 
 Grant, U. S., 283-284, 288,325, 
 359, 363, 369, 382. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 121, 224-225, 
 
 369, 383. 
 Griswold, Roger, 207-208, 213. 
 
 HALLECK, HENRY W., 284- 
 285, 288, 321. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 59, 182, 
 195, 198, 201-202, 206-207. 
 
 Hancock, John, 197, 200. 
 
 Hartford Convention, 109, 208- 
 209, 211-213. 
 
 Hayne, Robert Young, 210. 
 
 Helper, Hinton Rowan, 54, 139- 
 141. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, 56, 190-192, 
 198, 201, 204. 
 
 Herbert, Hilary A., 360. 
 
 Hill, Benjamin H., refuses to 
 fight Stephens, 85-87; for 
 Union, 117, 179, 183; on 
 treatment of prisoners, 264 ; 
 on Hampton Roads Com 
 mission, 331-332 ; attacks 
 Stephens s record, 380-382. 
 
 Howard, O. O., 286-287. 
 
 Hunter, R. M. T., 330, 332, 
 336-337. 
 
 IMMIGRATION, influence of, on 
 centralizing tendencies of a 
 semi-Europeanized North, 
 217. 
 
 JACKSON, ANDREW, 223. 
 
 Jackson, H. R., 174-175. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, favors eman 
 cipation and deportation of 
 slaves, 58-59, 373; predicts 
 that negro will wreck the 
 Union, 252 ; on the Constitu 
 tion, 192 ; nullification, 204- 
 205 ; right of revolution, 225 ; 
 his party of individualism and 
 human rights, 205-206, 209 ; 
 its growth, 208. 
 
 Jenkins, Charles J., 117. 
 
 Johnson, Andrew, 230, 349, 
 351 ; classes denied citizen- 
 
402 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ship in his amnesty proclama 
 tion, 353-354. 
 
 Johnson, Herschel V., 85, 179- 
 180, 183, 346. 
 
 Johnston, Joseph E., 219, 220, 
 302. 
 
 KANSAS-NEBRASKA bill, 131- 
 
 136, 154. 
 Know-Nothing party, 119, 138. 
 
 LAUBENS, HENRY, 56. 
 
 Lee, Robert E., taught secession 
 at West Point, 220; on his 
 suffering soldiers, 261-262 ; 
 recommends negro enlist 
 ments, 271 ; estimates of, by 
 Wolseley and Eoosevelt, 280 ; 
 checks flow of cotton across 
 lines, 305; surrender, 325, 
 341. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, moved by 
 Stephens s eloquence, 40 ; 
 favors deportation of negroes, 
 119, 143, 372-373 ; would re 
 imburse slave-owners, 130, 
 337-340; his vote in 1860, 
 153 ; his unavowed purpose, 
 159, 160, 273 ; his evasive let 
 ter to Stephens, 165; a shrewd 
 politician, 166, 209, 241-243 ; 
 246, 249, 266; employment 
 of negro question to weaken 
 South, 272-273; denounced 
 as a dictator, 274, 292-293, 
 308, 314-315, 316-317; his 
 masked design in the Blair 
 mission, 328-329, 334 ; at the 
 Hampton Roads Conference, 
 332-340 ; characteristic jokes, 
 332-333 ; sympathy for fallen 
 South, 339 ; aimed at limited 
 enfranchisement of blacks, 
 357 ; and immediate restora 
 tion of Southern States, 358. 
 
 Livingston, William, 194- 
 
 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 208-209, 
 212-213. 
 
 Lowndes, Rawlins, 211. 
 Lyons, Lord, 299-300. 
 
 MADISON, JAMES, against 
 slavery, 56, 60; on absence 
 of term " slave " in Constitu 
 tion, 124; on limited powers 
 of Federal government, 191, 
 196, 202 ; opposed to Hamil 
 ton, 206. 
 
 Mann, Horace, 123. 
 
 Marshall, John, 129, 189, 191. 
 201. 
 
 Mason, George, 56, 191, 204. 
 
 Mason, James Murray, 298- 
 299. 
 
 Maury, Dabney H., 220. 
 
 Memminger, Charles G., 303. 
 
 Missouri Compromise, 51, 92, 
 102, 154. 
 
 Monroe, James, 56, 60, 73. 
 
 Monroe Doctrine and Blair 
 mission, 329-338. 
 
 Morgan, Edwin Dennison, 174- 
 176. 
 
 Morris, Gouverneur, 192, 202. 
 
 Morton, Oliver P., his policy of 
 the black heel on the white 
 neck, 352. 
 
 NASHVILLE Convention of 1850, 
 threatening secession, 97, 
 98, 109. 
 
 Negroes (slave), declared "mer 
 chandise by English Coun 
 cil, 55; both "persons and 
 property," in Hamilton s 
 view, 59 ; in the North, 59, 
 60-63, 102, 128 ; in the South, 
 59, 60-62, 99-102, 129-130, 
 140-141, 145-147; slave rep 
 resentation, 59; civilized by 
 slavery, 60-61 ; an asset for 
 the North only during war, 
 269-270, 272-273; proposed 
 enlistment of by South, 269- 
 272; sleeping tiger not yet 
 
INDEX 
 
 403 
 
 awake, 282 ; fidelity of slaves, 
 350. 
 
 Negroes (free), in the North, 
 102; in the South of 1850, 
 102; more crime among, in 
 North than South, 129; the 
 quarrel of a century over, 
 149; in Confederate army, 
 272 ; the negro problem, 119, 
 123, 143, 371-372 ; Lincoln s 
 joke, 333; horrors of negro 
 rule, 352-368; legislators of 
 type found in Congo jungles, 
 366 ; their heads turned, 367- 
 368, 389; the hope of the 
 South in outflow of blacks, 
 373. 
 
 Nisbet, Eugenius A., 179, 181. 
 
 Nullification at the North, Mas 
 sachusetts resolutions, 51-54 ; 
 nullifying enactments of 
 many States, 104-106, 125- 
 126 ; Buchanan on, 168-169; 
 right of widely claimed, 203- 
 220; in Pennsylvania, 214; 
 Maine, 215; among Aboli 
 tionists, 97, 108-109, 121- 
 123. 
 
 Nullification at the South, in 
 Georgia, 32, 214-215; South 
 Carolina, 32, 49; Virginia 
 and Kentucky, 203-205 ; Ala 
 bama, 215 ; Jefferson favor 
 ing, 204-206. 
 
 PARK, MUNGO, on character of 
 slaves brought to America, 
 60-61. 
 
 Pendleton, Edmund, 191, 201. 
 
 Pendleton, Philip C., effect on 
 his newspaper of tyrannical 
 order of General Pope, 362. 
 
 " Personal Liberty enactments 
 of the Northern States nulli 
 fying Constitutional mandate 
 as to surrender of fugitive 
 slaves, 104-106, 125-126 ; the 
 law in Massachusetts, 125. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 121. 
 Pickering, Timothy, 206-207, 
 
 212-213. 
 
 Pinckney, Charles C., 202. 
 Polk, James K., 75-83. 
 Pulaski, Fort, captured three 
 
 mouths before Surater, 173- 
 
 174 ; cotton allowed to pass, 
 
 305. 
 
 QUINCY, JOSIAH, 54, 210. 
 
 RANDOLPH, EDMUND, 57, 191, 
 195, 202. 
 
 Randolph, John, of Roanoke, 
 56, 60 ; compared with 
 Stephens, 68, 70, 71. 
 
 Rawle, William, 217-221. 
 
 Reagan, John H., 343. 
 
 Reconstruction, refinement of 
 cruelty, 351 ; carpetbag and 
 negro regime an orgy of cor 
 ruption, 352-368 ; vast extent 
 of disfranchisement of whites, 
 353-356 ; armed negroes, 
 356 ; robberies, 363-365 ; 
 state treasuries gutted by the 
 thieves, 365-367 ; insolence 
 of blacks, 367-368 ; downfall 
 of the bayonet-protected fab 
 ric, 369-370. 
 
 Russell, W. H., on the men in 
 the convention of seceded 
 States, 232. 
 
 SCOTT, DEED, 138, 148. 
 
 Scott, Winfield T., 117-118, 
 142. 
 
 Secession, the right of, 211, 
 218, 222-223, 224-226, 186- 
 226, 379; threatened in New 
 England in 1803-4, 206-208 ; 
 in same in 1808, 209-211 ; in 
 same in 1812-14, 211-213 ; 
 by Josiah Quincy in 1811, 
 210 ; by Daniel W e b- 
 ster in 1812, 210-212 ; by 
 Massachusetts in 1843-5, 
 
404 
 
 INDEX 
 
 51-54 ; proposed in South in 
 1850-1, 107-116; urged by 
 Abolitionists, 108-109, 121- 
 123; taught at West Point 
 Military Academy, 217-221 ; 
 secession of Southern States, 
 170, 184-185; of Georgia, 
 176-185. 
 
 Seward, William H., 124. 131, 
 143, 240-243, 329, 334-335; 
 willing to pay for slaves to 
 stop war, 338. 
 
 Sheridan, Philip H., 283, 289. 
 
 Sherman, William T., 284-289, 
 299, 321-322, 325. 
 
 Slavery, early objection to, in 
 South, 54-59 ; industrial 
 handicap and injury to poor 
 whites, 140-143, 158, 233 ; 
 questionable advantage of, 
 129-130; the brighter side, 
 60-63, 99-100, 129-130; its 
 defense on Biblical grounds, 
 145-147 ; a curse to the South, 
 57, 139-143, 149 ; North also 
 responsible, 59, 60-63, 102, 
 128, 338 ; question of com 
 pensated emancipation, 130, 
 337-340. 
 
 Slave-trade, reopening of, urged, 
 147-149; Rhode Island s 
 slave-ships, 56 ; smuggling, 
 148. 
 
 Southern Rights party, 40, 42, 
 65; of 1850-1, 110; anti- 
 Union utterances of its news 
 papers, 110-111 ; defeated by 
 Southern Unionists, 111, 118. 
 
 State sovereignty, the question 
 of, 186-226, 244; one disease 
 of which Confederacy died, 
 323. 
 
 Stephens, Alexander H., birth 
 of, 16 ; boyhood, 17-25 ; col 
 lege life, 25-29; school 
 teacher and law-student, 30; 
 admitted to bar, 31; uuder- 
 size and appearance, 30, 33, 
 
 40, 68-70, 376, 387; ill 
 health, 33-34, 41, 70; con 
 suming melancholy, 33-34, 
 35 ; friend of the helpless, 
 35-38 ; straits and successes 
 as young lawyer, 35-40 ; early 
 assertion of right of secession, 
 31, 41-42, 65-67; elected to 
 legislature, 41 ; friendship for 
 Toombs, 41-42, 385 ; candi 
 date for Congress, 44 ; debate 
 with Colquitt, 45 ; jokes of 
 the campaign, 44-46 ; goes to 
 Congress, 48 ; for annexation 
 of Texas, 49-51 ; speech on, 
 63-67; newspaper estimates 
 of, 68-71, 386-387; abilities 
 as a debater and orator, 72; 
 on the Oregon boundary, 75 ; 
 opposes Mexican War as un 
 just, 76-80 ; speech on Mex 
 ican Appropriation Bill, 80- 
 82; challenges Benjamin H. 
 Hill, 85-8T| stabbed by 
 Judge Cone, cT-88 ; a leader 
 of the Whig party, 89-92 ; on 
 Wilmot Proviso, 92-93 ; quar 
 rels with Northern Whigs 
 over slavery question, 95 ; 
 kindness to his slaves, 99- 
 100 ; efforts to prevent seces 
 sion in 1850-1, 106, 111 ; sup 
 ports the Webster ticket, 
 117-119 ; his defense of slav 
 ery, 128-129 ; on Biblical 
 grounds. 145-147 ; speech on 
 Kansas- Nebraska Bill, 133- 
 136 ; attacks Know-Nothing 
 party, 143-144; on popular 
 sovereignty, 145, 154 ; sug 
 gests reopening slave-trade, 
 148 ; leaves public life, dis 
 claiming ambition to become 
 President, 150-151; cared 
 nothing for money, 151- 
 152 ; discourages secession 
 movement of 1860 and pre 
 dicts war, 154-156 ; speech 
 
INDEX 
 
 405 
 
 against secession as bad pol 
 icy, 158-163 ; favors secession 
 only as last resort, 160-161 ; ar 
 raigns the faithless States of 
 the North, 161; in letter to 
 Lincoln urges conservative 
 course and asserts right of 
 secession, 164-167 ; speech in 
 Georgia s secession conven 
 tion, 180-182; on the State 
 sovereignty question, 188- 
 189, 193, 201-202, 224; pre 
 dicts a bloody war, 227, 248- 
 249 ; comments on convention 
 of seceded States, 229-232; 
 work on Confederate consti 
 tution, 233-234, 236; Vice- 
 President, 237-240; on Sew- 
 ard s treatment of Confeder 
 ate commissioners, 242-243 ; 
 negotiates alliance with Vir 
 ginia, 247-248; damage to 
 cause by his corner-stone" 
 speech, 251-254; hardly able 
 to live on his salary of $10,- 
 000, 259; writes of war-time 
 in Confederacy, 262-263 ; ad 
 vises unconditional discharge 
 of Federal prisoners, 265 ; out 
 of harmony with Davis, 275, 
 293-295 ; on enemy s devasta 
 tions, 288-289; active oppo 
 sition to policies of Confeder 
 ate government, 290-296 ; 
 considers Lincoln government 
 a despotism and fears same 
 for South, 292-293, 308, 314- 
 317 ; long absences from Con 
 federate capital, 294 ; without 
 hope of recognition of Europe, 
 297-299; on financial and 
 cotton questions, 300-303, 
 308 ; opposed to cotton famine 
 policy, 303-304 ; breeds dis 
 couragement and dissension 
 by his course, 307-308, 318- 
 320; against Georgia s en 
 dorsement of Confederate 
 
 bonds, 308-309; futile effort 
 to secure exchange of prison-^ 
 ers, 309-311; final success 
 just before end of war, 338- 
 339; attacks Davis before 
 Georgia legislature, 312-314; 
 charged with disloyalty, 319- 
 320; defense of his "higher 
 and grander" object, 319, 
 321 ; answer to Sherman s 
 message, 323 ; advises change 
 of policy, 325 ; speaks in Sen 
 ate urging abandonment of 
 compulsory methods, 326- 
 327; propositions of peace 
 without required concessions, 
 327-328 ; consults with Davis 
 as to Blair mission, 330 ; why 
 he was sent to Hampton 
 Roads Conference, 331 ; his 
 leading part in that confer 
 ence, 332-339 ; compares 
 Da vis s last appeal to that of 
 Rienzi, 341 ; refuses to make 
 further effort in a hopeless 
 cause, 341 ; arrested and taken 
 to Fort Warren, 343-344 ; sad 
 meeting with Davis, 343- 
 344; his liberation, 345; 
 elected to United States Sen 
 ate, but not received, 346 ; 
 testimony before Reconstruc 
 tion committee, 346; earnest 
 efforts to aid his hapless sec 
 tion, 347, 382; constructive 
 speech before Georgia legisla 
 ture, 347-351 ; urges justice 
 to freedmen, 350 ; the cause 
 of the South under alien and 
 negro rule is "the cause of us 
 all," 353; good influence 
 over the negroes, 374-375; 
 his historical work and com 
 ment on, 377-378 ; bitterly 
 attacked by Hill, 380-382; 
 seeks to bring estranged sec 
 tions nearer together, 382- 
 383; as an editor, 383-385; 
 
406 
 
 INDEX 
 
 returns to Congress, 385 ; 
 there on sufferance, 386 ; 
 speaks against Civil Rights 
 Bill, 387-388; a patriotic 
 peacemaker, 390 ; governor 
 of Georgia, 391 ; his religion, 
 392 ; death and last rites, 
 392-393. 
 
 Stephens, Linton, 17, 33, 72- 
 73, 99, 167, 179, 183, 248, 
 291, 314, 345, 385. 
 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, his policy 
 of indicting a whole people, 
 221, 352, 356-357. 
 
 Story, Joseph. 72-73. 
 
 Suuiner, Charles, 121, 123, 124, 
 131. 
 
 Syracuse Convention (of Aboli 
 tionists) in 1851, urging dis 
 union, 108-109, 121-123. 
 
 TANEY, CHIEF-JUSTICE ROGER 
 BROOKE, 148. 
 
 Taylor, Zachary, 53, 78, 91, 
 106. 
 
 Tilden, Samuel J., great vote 
 for, 369. 
 
 Timrod, Henry, 170. 
 
 Toombs, Robert, friend and 
 political associate of Stephens, 
 39, 41-43, 49, 58, 72, 85, 91, 
 97, 111, 117, 119; for seces 
 sion, 124, 158, 161-163, 172- 
 173, 179, 181 ; bold and revo 
 lutionary, 231, 273, 279, 384- 
 385 ; weeps at Stephens s 
 bier, 393. 
 
 Troup, George M., 42, 214-215, 
 224. 
 
 Turner, Henry G., on scorn of 
 ruling blacks for prostrate 
 whites, 367. 
 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin, 120, 252. 
 
 Union of American States, 
 strength of sentiment in favor 
 of, in Georgia of 1850-1, 107- 
 112, 117 ; utterances of Union 
 newspapers, 107-110, 118. 
 
 VAN BUREN, MARTIN, 94. 
 Vance, Zebulon B., 279, 322. 
 
 WARNER, JUDGE HIRAM, 
 hanged by Sherman s rav- 
 agers, 287. 
 
 Washington, George, deplores 
 slavery, 56, 253; 129, 197; 
 calls the Union "the new 
 Confederacy," 202. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, rebukes North 
 for nullification, 104-106 ; 
 117, 119, 124, 132, 162, 169, 
 216 ; his threat of secession in 
 1812, 210-211. 
 
 West Point Military Academy, 
 right of secession taught at, 
 218-221. 
 
 Wheeler, Joseph M. C., 343. 
 
 Wilmot, David, author of Pro 
 viso, 92, 103, 132. 
 
 Wilson, James, 59, 199, 202. 
 
 Wise, Henry A., 142. 
 
 YANCEY, WILLIAM LOWNDES, 
 
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