Alexander Stephens

America's apocryphal Vice President

• Vice President to:       Jefferson Davis - Democrat, from Mississippi.
  
  
  • Jefferson served the Confederate States 1861 - 1865. He died in 1889, at the age of 81.
    
    
• Dates Served: Stephens served the Confederate States from 1861 - 1865.
  
• Political Party: Stephens was a Democrat, from Georgia.
  
• Born: 1812.
  
• Died: 1883, at the age of 71.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1860 Confederate campaign was:
  
  
  • Nobody
    (Jefferson Davis was unanimously appointed interim President of the new Confederate States by the newly seceded states)
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1860:
  
  
  • The primary issue was the same everywhere, Slavery and the question over where the ultimate seat of control lay, with the Federal or State governments. After Lincoln won the election the Southern states began their exit from the Union and a new government was established in Virginia, representing the new Confederacy. The North considered this treason and the South viewed federal troops on Southern soil as an occupying army. There was no real election campaign in the new Confederacy. Former Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, was chosen by the new Confederate Congress to lead the new nation, and former Georgia House Representative Alexander Stephens was chosen as his running mate. Had the South won, election campaigns would have been initiated later. But it was not to be.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Alexander Stephens:
  
  
  • Stephens was the most diminutive of all Vice Presidents, weighing only about 100 pounds.
    
    
  • Due to his small stature, Stephens was nicknamed "Little Aleck".
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: Stephens was a Presbyterian. At one point in his life he had planned on becoming a minister, but changed his mind and sold his soul to become a politician. He claimed to read the Bible daily, and once wrote this in his journal: "My before breakfast reading was taken from Job, a favorite book with me. I have read Job oftener than any book in the Bible, except perhaps St. John... This morning I finished John, in many respects the most remarkable of the Gospels. John represents Jesus on all occasions as making known that He was the Christ." Most of Stephens' public statements about religion were in the context of the Confederate cause, arguing that the South's goal was an exercise in standing up for basic Christian values.
    
    
  • Originally a lawyer, Stephens began his political career by being elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, serving from 1837 - 1841, then in the Georgia State Senate from 1842 - 1843.
    
    
  • He was elected to the US House of Representatives, representing Georgia from 1843 - 1859. He was a Whig and supported all legislation that promoted the extension of Slavery throughout the new territories.
    
    
  • Alexander Stephens may have been short, but he wasn't beneath challenging an opponent to a duel. He did exactly that, in 1846, in reply to a political opponent who called Stephens a liar in public. The opponent, a Democrat named Herschel Johnson, who would later become Governor of Georgia (as would Stephens also, later in life) managed to avoid picking up a pistol by exchanging the usual pre-duel letters of explanation and saving-of-face with Stephens, so shots were never fired. This was a time when politicians who fought duels were considered qualified to become Governor.
    
    
  • In 1848, while campaigning for re-election to the House, Stephens got into an altercation one night in Atlanta outside of a hotel, with a judge named Francis Cone, who disapproved of Stephens' support of some earlier legislation. Cone was heard to call Stephens a traitor, Stephens was then reported to have hit Cone with his walking stick, and Cone replied by stabbing Stephens 6 times. Stephens survived and won re-election. Never trust a judge with a knife...
    
    
  • When the Whig Party dissolved he joined the Democrats and supported Stephen Douglas in the election of 1860 against Lincoln.
    
    
  • When Georgia seceded in 1861, he didn't support the breakup of the Union but left Washington anyway and joined the new Confederate government. Due to his consistent record of promoting States' Rights, he was appointed Vice President in Jefferson Davis' war-time Confederate government. But his loyalty to the principle of State's Rights put him in conflict with Davis' policy of direct federal control over the Southern States' military. He often worked to undermine efforts by Davis that he felt worked against this basic Southern principal.
    
    
  • In 1860, President Lincoln wrote a letter to Stephens in which he pledged to never interfere in slavery in the South. Obviously, he later changed his mind.
    
    
  • In February of 1865, two months prior to the war's end, Stephens led a delegation to West Virginia and secretly met with President Lincoln and his Secretary of State Seward on a boat, to try and conduct a peace conference with the North, but failed.
    
    
  • After the Civil War Stephens was imprisoned along with other members of the Confederate government, spending 5 months in a prison in Boston.
    
    
  • After he was released, Stephens was re-elected to the US Senate, but the Radical Republicans didn't recognize the post-war governments of the Southern States and didn't allow him to take his seat in the Senate. Later, when Reconstruction began to wane, Stephens was elected to the US House of Representatives, representing Georgia from 1873 - 1882.
    
    
  • He was later elected Governor of Georgia, serving for 4 months from 1882 - 1883, when he died in office.
    
    
  • After the war, Stephens wrote a long book defending the goals of the South, called "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States".
    
    
  • Stephens' dying words were said to have been, "Get ready, we are nearly home".

Notable events during his Vice Presidency:

• Secession of 11 Southern states beginning in January of 1861, forming the new government of the Confederate States of America (the "CSA").
  
  
• The Confederate Constitution was adopted by the Confederate government in Virginia on March 11, 1861, which was similar to the US Constitution but with greater emphasis on States' rights.
  
  
• Four years of Civil War, followed by the collapse of the Confederacy, with Jefferson Davis being charged with treason, but no trial ever being held.
  
  
• During the war the eastern half of Virgina ceceeded and formed the capital of the CSA in Richmond, and the western half became the new state of West Virginia, admitted into the Union in 1863.