Alexander H. Stephens

Alexander Hamilton Stephens (February 11, 1812 – March 4, 1883) was an American politician who was the only vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and later the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives before and after the Civil War. Stephens attended Franklin College and established a legal practice in his hometown of Crawfordville, Georgia. After serving in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, taking his seat in 1843. He became a leading Southern Whig and strongly opposed the Mexican–American War. After the war, Stephens was a prominent supporter of the Compromise of 1850 and helped draft the Georgia Platform, which opposed secession. A proponent of the expansion of slavery into the territories, Stephens also helped pass the Kansas–Nebraska Act. As the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, Stephens joined the Democratic Party and worked with President James Buchanan to admit Kansas as a state under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution (which was overwhelmingly rejected by Kansas voters in a referendum). Stephens declined to seek re-election in 1858 but continued to publicly advocate against secession. After Georgia and other Southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, Stephens was elected as the Confederate Vice President. On March 21, 1861, Stephens delivered his infamous Cornerstone Speech while visiting Savannah, Georgia, which defended slavery; enumerated contrasts between the American and Confederate foundings, ideologies, and constitutions; and laid out the Confederacy's rationale for seceding. Stephens would attempt to deny and retract this speech following the Confederacy's defeat in 1865. In the course of the war, he became increasingly critical of President Jefferson Davis's policies, especially Confederate conscription...