This great statesman was born in Georgia on February 11, 1812, and was
left an orphan at an early age. He studied law and was admitted to the
bar in 1834, having the advantage of a college education. He entered
upon the practice of law at Crawfordsville in his native State, and his
natural ability and splendid education soon won for him a most lucrative
practice.
Mr. Stephens early became a convert to the Calhoun school of politics,
and he remained firmly fixed until death in the belief that slavery was
the proper sphere in which all colored people should move. He believed
it was better for the races both white and black.
Though physically weak he was wonderfully developed in personal courage.
In 1836 Mr. Stephens was elected to the State legislature, to which he
succeeded five successive terms. In 1842 he was elected to the State
senate, there to remain only one year when he was sent as a Whig to the
national congress, there to remain until 1859 when, July 2nd, in a
speech at Augusta he announced his intention of retiring to private
life. When the old Whig party was superceded by the present Republican
party Mr. Stephens joined the Democrats. During the presidential canvass
of 1860 Mr. Stephens supported the northern wing under Douglass, and in
a speech at the capitol of his State bitterly denounced secession. As
the speech so well illustrates his powers of oratory, so far as words
can portray that power, we give the speech as follows:--
This step, secession, once taken can never be recalled, and all the
baleful and withering consequences that must follow, as you will see,
will rest on this convention for all coming time. When we and our
posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war which
this act of yours will inevitably provoke, when our green fields and
waving harvests shall be trodden down by a murderous soldiery, and the
fiery car of war sweeps over our land, our temples of justice laid in
ashes and every horror and desolation upon us; who, but him who shall
have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure shall be held
to a strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and
be cursed and execrated by all posterity, in all coming time, for the
wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now
propose to perpetrate?
Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can
give that will satisfy yourselves in calmer moments? What reasons can
you give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring
upon us? What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to
justify it? They will be calm and deliberate judges of this case, and to
what cause, or one overt-act can you point on which to rest the plea of
justification? What right has the North assailed? Of what interest has
the South been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim
founded in justice and right has been unsatisfied? Can any of you name
to-day one governmental act of wrong deliberately and purposely done by
the government at Washington, of which the South has a right to
complain? I challenge an answer.
On the other hand, let me show the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I
am not here the advocate of the North, but I am here the friend, the
firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this
reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every
other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness), of which I wish
you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and
undeniable, and which now stand in the authentic records of the history
of our country. When we of the South demanded the slave trade, or the
importation of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they not
yield the right for twenty years? When we asked a three-fifths
representation in Congress for our section was it not granted? When we
demanded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the recovery of
those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the
Constitution, and again ratified and strengthened in the fugitive slave
law of 1850? Do you reply that in many instances they have violated this
law and have not been faithful to their engagements? As individuals and
local committees they may have done so, but not by the sanction of
government, for that has always been true to the Southern interests.
Again, look at another fact. When we asked that more territory should be
added that we might spread the institution of slavery did they not yield
to our demands by giving us Louisiana, Florida and Texas out of which
four States have been carved, and ample territory left for four more to
be added in due time, if you do not by this unwise and impolitic act
destroy this hope, and perhaps by it lose all and have your last slave
wrenched from you by stern military rule, or by the vindictative decrees
of a universal emancipation which may reasonably be expected to follow.
But again gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change of our
relation to the general government? We have always had the control of it
and can yet have if we remain in it and are as united as we have been.
We have had a majority of the presidents chosen from the South as well
as the control and management of most of those chosen from the North. We
have had sixty years of Southern presidents to their twenty-four, thus
controlling the executive department. So of the judges of the supreme
court, we have had eighteen from the South and but eleven from the
North. Although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen
in the free States, yet a majority of the court has been from the South.
This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the
constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally
watchful in the legislative branch of the government. In choosing the
presiding officer, _pro tem_, of the Senate we have had twenty-four and
they only eleven; speakers of the house we have had twenty-three and
they twelve. While the majority of the representatives, from their
greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have
generally secured the speaker because he to a great extent shapes and
controls the legislation of the country, nor have we had less control in
every other department of the general government.
Attorney-Generals we have had 14, while the North have had but five.
Foreign ministers we have had 86, and they but 54. While three-fourths
of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from
the free States because of their greater commercial interests, we have,
nevertheless, had the principal embassies so as to secure the world's
markets for our cotton, tobacco and sugar, on the best possible terms.
We have had a vast majority of the higher officers of both army and
navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn
from the Northern States. Equally so of clerks, auditors, and
comptrollers, filling the executive department; the records show for the
last 50 years that of the 3,000 thus employed we have had more than
two-thirds, while we have only one-third of the white population of the
Republic.
Again, look at another fact, and one, be assured, in which we have a
great and vital interest; it is that of revenue or means of supporting
government. From official documents we learn that more than
three-fourths of the revenue collected has been raised from the North.
Pause now while you have the opportunity to contemplate carefully and
candidly these important things. Look at another necessary branch of
government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in
that department, I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we now
enjoy under the General Government, as it has been for years past. The
expense for the transportation of the mail in the free States was by the
report of the postmaster-general for 1860, a little over $13,000,000
while the income was $19,000,000. But in the Slave States the
transportation of the mail was $14,716,000, and the revenue from the
mail only $8,000,265, leaving a deficit of $6,715,735 to be supplied by
the North for our accommodation, and without which we must have been cut
off from this most essential branch of the government.
Leaving out of view for the present the countless millions of dollars
you must expend in a war with the North, with tens of thousands of your
brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices on the altar of
your ambition--for what, I ask again? Is it for the overthrow of the
American Government, established by our common ancestry, cemented and
built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles
of right, justice and humanity? I must declare to you here, as I have
often done before, and it has also been declared by the greatest and
wisest statesmen and patriots of this and other lands, that the American
Government is the best and freest of all governments, the most equal in
its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its
measures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race
of men that the sun of heaven ever shone upon.
Now for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this under
which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century, in which
we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety
while the elements of peril are around us with peace and tranquility
accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed is the
height of madness, folly and wickedness to which I will neither lend my
sanction nor my vote.
This is one of the most eloquent appeals recorded on the pages of
history, and had Mr. Stephens carried out his first intention as
expressed, "I will neither lend my sanction nor my vote," in his
subsequent career during that war he had so eloquently and prophetically
depicted, he would to-day not only be recognized as one of the ablest
and most brilliant of orators as he is known, but would have stamped his
life as a consistent and constant legislator which is so laudable in any
man. But only a month later, after delivering the great speech at
Milledgeville in defense of the Union he accepted one of the chief
offices in the Confederacy, and began to perpetrate the very wrongs he
had so vehemently deplored, seeking by speeches innumerable to overthrow
that government he had so eloquently eulogized.
At Savannah he spoke something as follows: "The new constitution has put
to rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar
institutions--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 the present revolution. Jefferson in his
forecast had anticipated this as the rock upon which the old Union would
split. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading
statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were
that the enslavement of the African was in violation to the laws of
nature; that it was wrong in principle socially, morally and
politically."
"Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite ideas. Its
foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that
the negro is not equal to the white man. That in slavery, subordination
to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new
government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this
great physical, philosophical and moral truth. It is the first
government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to
nature and the ordination of Providence in furnishing the materials of
human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of
enslaving certain classes, but the classes thus enslaved were of the
same race and enslaved in violation to the laws of nature."
"Our system commits no such violation of the laws of nature. The negro,
by nature or by the curse against Canaan is fitted for that condition
which he occupies in our system. The architect in the construction of
buildings lays the foundation with the proper material, the granite;
then comes the brick or marble. The substratum of our society is made of
the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it
is best not only for the superior, but the inferior race that it should
be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us
to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For
his own purposes he has made one race to differ from another, as he has
made one star to differ from another in glory. The great objects of
humanity are best attained when conformed to his laws and decrees in the
formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy
is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This
stone which was rejected by the first builders 'is become the chief
stone of the corner' in our new edifice."
By both of these speeches he was of great service to the national
government. The first was used to justify the suppression of secession,
and the second to excite the animosity of the world against secession.
After the war Mr. Stephens was once more a member of the National
Congress and Governor of his native State. On the 3rd day of March,
1883, he died at his home in Crawfordville. We have thus spoken of Mr.
Stephens as a legislator; personally, he was a very pleasant man to
meet, loved in society, was kind-hearted, and we believe sincere. His
eloquence was at times wonderful, and was augmented rather than
diminished by his physical infirmity. Those who have heard him will
never forget the squeaking voice and haggard look.
According to Webster, the three cardinal points essential to true
oratory are clearness, force and sincerity. In all of these Stephens was
proficient. His descriptive powers were remarkable, and he could blend
pathos with argument in a manner unusual. He was a warm friend of Mr.
Lincoln, and one of the most characteristic stories ever told of Mr.
Lincoln is in connection with Governor Stephens' diminutive appearance
and great care for his shattered health. On one occasion before the war
he took off three overcoats, one after the other, in the presence of Mr.
Lincoln, who rose, and walking around him, said, "I was afraid of
Stephens, for I thought he might keep on taking off clothes until he
would be nothing but a ghost left," and speaking to a friend standing
by, remarked further, "Stephens and his overcoats remind me of the
biggest shuck off the smallest ear of corn that I have ever seen in my
life." One by one the eminent men of State pass away. Their deaths make
vacancies which the ambitious and active hasten to occupy whether they
are able to fill them or not.