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5th President of the Confederate States | |
| Predecessor | Thomas Jackson |
| Successor | G.T. Beauregard |
| Vice President | G.T. Beauregard |
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1st Vice President of the Confederate States | |
| Predecessor | Position established |
| Successor | Judah P. Benjamin |
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C.S. Senator from Georgia | |
| Predecessor | Herschel Vespasian Johnson |
| Successor | John Gordon |
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U.S. Representative from Georgia's 8th district | |
| Predecessor | Robert Toombs |
| Successor | John Jones |
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U.S. Representative from Georgia's 7th district | |
| Predecessor | Constituency established |
| Successor | David Reese |
| Born | February 11, 1812 Taliaferro County, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | October 14, 1883 (aged 71) Richmond, Virginia, C.S. |
| Political Party | Whig (1836–50), Union (1850–54), Democratic (1854-61), Southern (1876-83) |
Alexander Hamilton Stephens (born February 11, 1812 – October 14, 1883) was an American and Confederate politician who served as the 5th President of the Confederate States. He is also considered to be one of the founding fathers of the Confederacy, as well as the founder of the Southern Party.
Early Life[]
Early Political Career[]
Vice President of the Confederate States[]
Alexander Stephens was selected as the provisional vice president of the Confederacy and was later elected to a full term in the 1861 presidential election. He often clashed with President Jefferson Davis, disagreeing with Davis's policies such as conscription and suspending habeas corpus. Stephens opposed Davis's continued expansion of governmental powers during and after the war, a stance that would later lead him to form the Southern Party and run for president.
C.S. Senator[]
After leaving office as vice president, Stephens spent two years resting at home. He decided to run for C.S. senator in 1870, with the approval of the incumbent Herschel Vespasian Johnson. The Mexican-Confederate War had already broken out by the time he took office. He opposed the war, believing it to be an unjust action spurred only by Europeans who cared little about the everyday Confederates who would fight it. The war came to a quick conclusion and Stephens let it fade into the past.
Stephens was increasingly opposed to the policies of the presidents Davis, Benjamin, and Lee. He believed that the Confederacy was becoming unnecessarily militarized, with the general-presidents supporting imperialistic warfare and the maintenance of a standing army. He was disconcerted with the hero worship most of the Confederate populace had for Davis and his generals. Speaking against them, even their political policies, was treated almost as blasphemy. The military men were generally against the rise of political factions and so continued to nominate more of their own to unite the country around them. Stephens saw this never ending succession as problematic and hoped to break it up.
In 1873, he decided to run for president against Stonewall Jackson. He claimed that he was not running "against" the popular general, but actually running "alongside" him, as an alternative to the increasing power of the federal government and military. He defended his choice as vital to maintaining a thriving democracy, as true democracy could not flourish in an environment where presidents always ran unopposed. His ideology was expressed mostly through speeches on the Senate floor which would then be published in newspapers. He won more votes than expected but still didn't come close to winning the election.
As time went on, Stephens and other allied senators became more openly opposed to President Jackson's policies. The main breaking points were in 1875 when Jackson announced that he had successfully negotiated with the United States, securing a strong U.S. fugitive slave act, and in 1876 when he visited US President Pendleton in Washington. In the months before his ill-fated visit, outraged Southern politicians urged the president not to go and "bend the knee to the North." When he actually appeared in public with the Northern president, the outrage was magnified.
Stephens himself was not personally outraged by the incident. Never a hard secessionist, he saw the value in conducting limited diplomacy with the North, especially in return for concessions as Jackson had done. Ideologically, he considered that it could be the start of a worrying trend if taken too far. He feared that the North might be able to reassert its economic and diplomatic control over the South if the nations remained too close. Thus, at least while the Confederacy was still building itself as a nation, he thought it might be smarter to maintain a total separation.
The real benefit of the outrage for Stephens was that the embargo on criticizing Jackson and his allies had been lifted. Known as the primary anti-administration figure in the Confederacy's formative years, an oppositional party axis naturally formed around Stephens. With other leaders including Robert M.T. Hunter and Vice President Albert G. Brown, Stephens founded the Southern Independence Party. This party was meant to harness the popular rage and advance Stephens' policies, putting an additional emphasis on the independence of the South from the North. Most people simply called it the Southern Party and it was soon renamed to match. By the end of 1879, most of Congress had joined this new party even while the old guard protested the very concept of political parties in the C.S.
Stephens was offered his party's presidential nomination in 1879, but he initially turned it down due to his declining health and old age. He was eventually convinced that the Southern Party needed its most popular leader to run as its first presidential candidate. He was ill for much of the campaign and continued to express his beliefs through speeches and newspaper editorials. He won a narrow victory over General James Longstreet, heralding the beginning of the age of political parties in the Confederacy.
President of the Confederate States[]
Stephens as President
At his inauguration, President Stephens promised to bring in a new age of the Confederacy as it was meant to be- peaceful, idyllic, agrarian, and dominated by slavery. He pledged to reduce the power of the federal government and the executive branch, and also reduce the size of the standing military. Backed by a Southern Party-controlled Congress, he was able to accomplish much of his agenda. Tariffs were lowered even further, soldiers were sent home, military drafts were outlawed, and settlement efforts in the Mexican territories were supported.
As cotton prices continually fell, industrialization in the Confederacy picked up. While previously it was more profitable for a slave owning individual to set up a new plantation, it was now becoming more profitable to use slaves to set up new industrial ventures. Stephens and those in his party resented this trend. From Stephens' perspective, he had witnessed how easily industry had been able to claw its way into government in the North. He viewed industrialization as a trend that fostered corruption and abuses of hardworking citizens, as well as manipulation of the economy and the monetary system for personal gain. A strongly agrarian nation, in his view, would maintain honesty and peaceful living. Industry was beginning to change the Confederacy's agrarian character and Stephens thought this would lead to the death of the nation. Additionally, using slaves in industry generally meant they had to be educated more than they were to work in the fields, and this was seen as additionally worrying by the Southern Party.
To fight this trend, Stephens and his party passed anti-industry legislation. The most notable was the Slave Tax Act, which taxed factories a fee per slave equal to what the factory would have paid a white worker to do the work. Stephens hoped that this would discourage the use of slaves in factories and keep them in the fields. Most factory owners, however, preferred to pay the fee and continue using their slaves who had already been trained to do the work, rather than poor white laborers who were unfamiliar with the practices of industry. President Stephens and Congress also increased the tax on industry in general.
To Stephens, the national character of the Confederacy was strongly based on slavery. He was disheartened at the increasing trend of emancipation in the border states, especially Virginia. He felt that this would lead to further disunity and conflict as had happened in the United States before the war. If the South lost slavery, he believed, it would also lose its main moral prerogative to exist.
In 1882, Congress proposed a law to combat emancipation, officially called the Fair Compensation Act. This law would enforce a national emancipation fee- for every slave they freed, slave owners would have to pay. Stephens had mixed feelings on the act. On one hand, he believed it violated the principles of states' rights to determine their own practices in their own borders. On the other hand, he felt a strong need to maintain slavery across the entire country, lest it fell apart. He decided to support and sign the law. He justified this by saying "the preservation of our natural society is... paramount over all other duties and constitutional mandates of our government." This declaration came to be known as the Stephens Manifesto.
The so-called Emancipation Tax quickly became controversial, igniting a firestorm of sectional conflict previously unheard of in the Confederacy. Virginians in particular protested the infringement on their state's right to make its own policy on slavery, in addition to the individual's right to decide what to do with their own slaves. The law was quickly challenged in the courts and eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, which ruled in a 4-1 decision that it was an unconstitutional direct tax.
The economy collapsed in 1883 due to the Panic of 1883 which began in the United States. The South may have been better insulated against the financial ripples if it wasn't for its weakened industrial sector and banks that had been fought by the populist Southern Party. Stephens didn't believe that rash action was needed, at first asserting that the crisis only affected the fortunes of industrialists, financiers, and bankers. It soon became clear that it was actually the poor commoners who were affected most, but by this time Stephens was severely ill.
Stephens, who had experienced frail health for his entire term, became bedridden in September 1883 and passed away on October 14, 1883 at age 71. He was the second Confederate president to die in office. His vice president G.T. Beauregard took over and was left with the tall task of addressing the financial downturn.
Legacy[]
Stephens was controversial in his time. His unwavering personal vision of the Confederacy put him at odds with others who wished for more moderate and forward-thinking governance. He was called a hypocrite by some, using the powers of government to infringe on states' rights whenever it fit his personal ideological ends. To others, he has been a symbol of limited government and Southern pride, one of the architects of what a Southern nation would truly look like and what it stood for. He remained a popular figure in the Southern Party and among the lower classes. Southern Party politicians to this day attempt to link themselves with Stephens' legacy. His writings and particularly his manifesto still form the basis of Southern Party ideology. Stephens appears on the Confederate five dollar bill.
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