THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

Alexander H. Stephens

Was Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens really a "racist" Dixiecrat who believed that slavery was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, as pro-North writers assert? Was he actually guilty of "treason" against the U.S., an "anarchist" who should have been hanged for leading the secession of the Southern states? Of course not. He was known as one of America's most kindly and charitable individuals, he was a true friend of the black man, as well as a pro-Unionist who at first campaigned against Southern secession. Also a brilliant thinker, spell-binding orator, and prodigious author, he was, in fact, one of history's most extraordinary, interesting, honorable, and noble figures. Stephens was  a frail but feisty Conservative Georgia governor - who turned down offers to run for both U.S. president and C.S. president - from so-called "Reconstruction" and the rebuilding of the South (which he helped direct), through the postwar administrations of Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur. Alexander H. Stephens was probably one of the greatest Constitutional scholars who ever lived. Unlike most of today's representatives in Congress, he depended on other means for his financial well being. Yes, he owned slaves, but he violated Georgia law by teaching them to read and to write. When, in the 1930s his former slaves were interviewed by the WPA, they all spoke very highly of him. Many today surely misunderstand Stephens, the Confederate States of America's first VP, due to honest lack of knowledge. But that lack of knowledge of the truth goes back to those who deliberately "misunderstood" Stephens and the South and who set out to make sure others "misunderstood" too.  Here, then, is a tome of passages from the pen and mouth (speeches) of Stephens. Here is a man nobler than the credit Union victors were willing to give him. What one discovers is not a Southern supervillain. Rather revealed is a man who was strongly Constitutionalist. He loved not only freedom, but also the peace that should accompany it. He opposed secession for a long while until circumstances forced him to accept it. Of course, secession shouldn't have been an event of physical strife, but the inevitable War Between the States resulted when the North under Lincoln asserted its federal centric designs at gunpoint. Slavery is also inevitably, and necessarily, a topic here. Yes, Stephens owned slaves. But - and this is not justification of the practice - his servants were people for whom he cared. He certainly did not behave callously toward them. His defense of the institution arose from his literalist belief in the Bible, which does, like it or not, condone and even command slavery. Obviously, an enlightened, mythic (think Jungian/Campbellian/mystic) sacred view would eschew this. But Stephens, a man of his time socially and religiously, accepted the institution as sanctioned by God. Of course, I do not agree but from such a standpoint, which was normative at the time, he cannot be condemned. He certainly cannot be singled out as some particularly onerous example of humanity. Not unless one allows presentism to eradicate context. Further, among the majority of the populace whose normative view this was, he was a kind, generous example. He was benevolent, as noted. Politically, his attitude toward slavery was that it was a state decision, not a centrally decided blanket decision by the federal government. Each state - pre civil war, the states were individual sovereign entities - should decide the issue for itself, Stephens asserted. And rightly so. For state sovereignty was the constitutional aim.

Now that we have that introduction, May I present, Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens

Alexander Hamilton Stephens was born February 11, 1812, Wilkes county, Georgia, U.S and died died March 4, 1883 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was politician who served as vice president of the Confederate States of America during the War of Northern Aggression (1861–65).

Called "Little Ellick" by his colleagues because he weighed only about 100 pounds, Stephens was admitted to the bar in 1834. Though plagued by infirmities, he rose steadily in politics, serving in the Georgia House of Representatives (1837–41), the state Senate (1842–43), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–59).

Stephens opposed the dissolution of the Union. When Georgia seceded, however (1861), he followed his state and was shortly elected vice president of the Confederacy.

Throughout the war Stephens opposed the exercise of extraconstitutional war powers by Confederate President Jefferson Davis lest the freedom for which the South was ostensibly fighting should be destroyed. The policy he advocated was to preserve constitutional government in the South and to strengthen the antiwar party in the North by convincing it that the Lincoln administration had abandoned such government; to the same end he urged, in 1864, the unconditional discharge of Federal prisoners. Stephens headed the Confederate commission to the abortive peace conference at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in February 1865.

After the fall of the Confederacy (May 1865), Stephens was confined for five months at Fort Warren, Boston. In 1866 he was elected to the U.S. Senate but was denied his seat because his state had not been properly reconstructed according to the congressional guidelines. He did serve again in the U.S. House of Representatives (1873–82), however, and as governor of Georgia (1882–83).  His book A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 2 vol. (1868–70), is perhaps the best statement of the Southern position on state sovereignty and secession.