[Alexander H. Stephens.]
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 When the old Whig party was superceded by the present Republican party Mr.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.