Georgia Natural Wonder #130 - A.H. Stephens State Park-Taliaferro Co. (Part 1). 916

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #130 - A.H. Stephens State Park - Taliaferro County (Part 1)

We continue our Mountain to Classic South theme, even though we cheated last week, combining the theme with Alcovy Mountain GNW #129 (Part 1) in Walton County GNW #129 (Part 2).



Our Classic South feature is stretching it again on the Natural Wonder, but ALL of our State Parks have a certain "Get back to Nature appeal" with campgrounds, picnic tables, recreation, and the CCC appreciation of trees and forest and history. We touched for two parts on Kettle Creek GNW #128 (Part 1), Washington, and Wilkes County GNW #128 (Part 2). We did a big old Civil War tangent on Robert Toombs GNW #128 (Part 2).



Today's post is the same day companion visit if you have come this far out in the state's more remote areas, or are passing to or from Augusta on I-20.

A.H.Stephens State Park Official Site

"The historic architecture, gentle rolling hills, forested trails and placid lakes of A.H. Stephens Historic State Park, once home to the Vice President of the Confederacy and later the 'boys' of the Civilian Conservation Corps, now provide you an oasis of natural and historical beauty for recreation, reflection and relaxation."

Conveniently located a few miles off of I-20, this pretty State Park west of Augusta is best known for its equestrian facilities, Confederate museum and lakeside group camp.



Horseback riders can explore 21 miles of trails and stay overnight in their own campground.



Overnight guests can choose from lakeside cottages or a modern campground, while large groups can enjoy privacy in the park’s group camp or pioneer campground.



Visitors can enjoy geocaching, fishing and boating, while also learning about a key officer in the American Civil War. Named after the vice president of the Confederacy and governor of Georgia, A.H. Stephens State Park features a Confederate museum with one of the finest collections of Civil War artifacts in Georgia. Stephens’ home, Liberty Hall, is renovated to its 1875 style, fully furnished and open for tours.

More Detail

A. H. Stephens State Park, also known as A. H. Stevens Historic Park, is a 1,177 acres Georgia state park located in Crawfordville. The park is named for Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America, and a former Georgia governor. The park contains Stephens' home, Liberty Hall, which has been fully restored to its original 1875 style. The park's museum houses one of Georgia's largest collections of Civil War artifacts. The park also offers several mill ponds for fishing and nature trails.


I stopped by when there was a Saturday Morning Senior Fishing Tournament.

The A. H. Stephens Historic Park contains tent and trailer sites, picnic sites, and fishing ponds, as well as a nature trail and rustic cabins, and was mostly built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, beginning in 1933.Explore the Civilian Conservation Corps Tower and learn about its history and the role it played in protecting the local counties.



On the sleepy morning of June 24th, 1933 a train pulled into Crawfordville after having traveled all night from Fort McClellan, Alabama. On this train were 200 young men who were frightened with anticipation with what lay ahead for them. These young train passengers were boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps better known as the CCC.



Most of them hailed from Alabama. For many of them, this was the first time they were away from home. Each one of them had dreams of making a better life for themselves and for their families. The period was the Great Depression. These boys came from homes where there was no money to put food on the table. There were no jobs and people were going hungry.



Franklin Roosevelt made a campaign promise running for president that he had a New Deal for the American people. He was going to create jobs that would improve the economy and make the Depression a thing of the past. One of the first New Deal programs of FDR’s Presidency was the CCC. This forestry program would provide natural resource related work to young men between the ages of 17 and 25. They would be paid a dollar a day and receive three hots and a flop or three hot meals and a place to sleep at night. They would work in rural rustic camps fighting forest fires, planting trees, creating trails, and building state and national parks.



One of these parks that the CCC Boys developed was Alexander H. Stephens State Historic Site. The fruits of the labor of these young boys is still being enjoyed today, 83 years later. As you walk the grounds of this Historic Site treasure take a look at what the boys accomplished.



The first thing you see when you arrive at the park is the beautiful home of A. H. Stephens. The boys of the CCC rehabilitated the main house along with the out buildings. They built the museum and planted the grounds. Take a look at the siding on the museum where the ends join at a corner. The boys had to cut these compound miters with a hand saw. The hardware on the windows and doors are all hand forged on site by a CCC blacksmith. These boys were unskilled but soon learned trades that they could carry over into civilian life.



The structure that stands tallest in the park is the wooden fire tower in the campground. This was designed to spot wildfires and to provide water pressure within the park from the water storage tank built inside. Keep in mind that the land around Taliaferro County was primarily cotton fields. Pine trees were not as abundant as they are today. A fire tower attendant could see all the way to Washington and beyond, a distance of 20 miles.



The group camp is reminiscent of an era gone by when summer camps were rustic and simpler.



When this beautiful facility was built with its dining hall, it became a focal point of community activity with dances and a social life.



One more thing to pay attention to is the rock work throughout the park. Take a look at the foundations of the buildings, the fireplaces, the steps, drainage culverts, and the dry stacked retaining walls. The rock work was precision. You may notice drill holes done by hand on the edges of some granite blocks indicative of where it was cut from a larger piece. Some of the granite lintels placed horizontally across a fireplace opening are massive. How in the world did they raise these into place?



The CCC was a unique program within the New Deal. It focused on natural resource related work. However, it was only one of many agencies that were created during the FDR presidency. FDR’s presidency became known as the alphabet soup administration for all the new programs with catchy abbreviations. Programs such as the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) and the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) were developed during the depression and are still going strong today.



What is fascinating about the CCC is that it was designed to be a temporary fix to the economy 83 years ago. While it created jobs for more than 3 million young men, the important human outcome was that it built self-esteem and gave motivation to make a difference. This source of manpower was a resource to build up the military for World War II. These boys were well nourished, in excellent physical shape and knew how to work together as a team.



Little did these boys know at the time, but their work at building parks throughout the country would be enjoyed eighty years later by their great grandchildren. Now that is a legacy to be proud of.



The park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as A.H. Stephens State Park. It includes four contributing sites, twelve contributing structures, and one other contributing object. It includes Colonial Revival and Rustic Style architecture.



Liberty Hall, also known as Bachelor's Hall, built in 1834, is one of the structures on the site, and is separately listed on the NRHP. It is currently a National Historic Landmark maintained by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. A.H. Stephens bought the estate in 1845, and lived in this house until 1875, when he tore down the main structure to construct Liberty Hall. The two-story "big house" is a traditional 4 × 4 with four rooms on each level.



Many of Stephens' books are housed in a smaller structure behind the facility, where he spent much of his time after the war.



After Stephens's death in 1883, Liberty Hall, owned by his surviving relatives, served as a boardinghouse until 1932, when it was donated to the state of Georgia. The vice president's grave is on the front lawn, beneath a marble statue in his honor.



All About Liberty Hall

Liberty Hall is a historic house museum in Crawfordville, Taliaferro County, Georgia, in the eastern Georgia Piedmont. It was the home of Alexander H. Stephens, a prominent Georgia political figure who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1853), Vice President of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865), and after the end of the American Civil War, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives again (1873–1882) and governor of Georgia (1882–1883). Stephens resided in the home from 1839 until his death in 1883. The home is now a museum and part of A. H. Stephens Historic Park, a Georgia state park maintained by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and designated historic district.



The structure was also known as Bachelor's Hall in 1859. The home was Stephens' "isolated haven," situated twenty miles away from Washington, Georgia.



History and description

Stephens was born two miles north in a log cabin on his father's farm; he was orphaned at the age of fourteen. Stephens purchased the estate in 1845 from the estate of Williamson Byrd, a relative of his stepmother. The building was the former family home, but "had been sold out from under the brothers when their father died." In 1872–1875, Stephens tore down the old house, except for two rear rooms, and erected the current structure, which is restored to its original appearance. The home is a simple two-story white frame house. It has a hip roof and a veranda extending across its front.



The first floor includes the front parlor.



Stephens' bedroom, including original walnut furniture, a round table at which Stephens wrote, Stephens' wheelchair, a repaired original flowered ingrain carpet, and wallpaper with blue and gold stripes. The dining room includes "massive chairs" replicated from a single remaining original chair.



To the rear is the library, where Stephens wrote from 1868–1870 his Constitutional View of the Late War between the States.



Steps lead from the dining room to the second floor; at the top of the stairs is the "Tramps' Room," where many guests, including uninvited guests, often stayed. To the home's rear are restored outbuildings: slave quarters, a wine cellar, smokehouse, woodhouse, washhouse, and chickenhouse.





At the time of emancipation in 1864, Stephens owned thirty-one slaves, most of whom remained with him after the war's end. It was at Liberty Hall that Stephens was captured by Union Army forces from a detachment of the 4th Iowa Cavalry, after which Stephens formally surrendered to General Emory Upton and was imprisoned before being released.



Stephens' constant companion at the home was a large, fluffy white dog named Rio. He is buried in the backyard.



Many of Stephens' books are housed in a smaller structure behind, where he spent much of his time after the war. The home was known for its many guests from all walks of life, who were invited for meals with Stephens. After Stephens' death in office in 1883, his sitting room was preserved as he left it. After Stephens' death in 1883, the hall passed to his surviving relatives. It served as a boardinghouse until 1932, when it was donated to the State of Georgia.



Today, the house is renovated to its 1875 appearance. The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1970 and was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 4, 1983.


It is neat approaching this house from downtown Crawfordville.

TRD addendum from recent visit. All sorts of historical places around Liberty Hall.

Richard Malcolm Johnson House right next to Liberty Hall.





Looking from porch of Johnson House to Liberty hall.



Crawfordville Academy right next to Liberty Hall.



Crawfordville baptist Church right next to Liberty Hall.





Two of his loyal slaves who later stayed with him as house servants.



Bad Leroy and I made a Road trip to visit Tee back in the day and we were impressed by the Osage Orange Tree Stephens had in his yard.



They used this tree's wood for wagon wheels, saw same tree at Bulloch Hall in Roswell.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens

Most famous for serving as the only vice president of the Confederacy during the Civil War (1861-65), and later as the 50th Governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883, Alexander Hamilton Stephens was a near-constant force in state and national politics for a half century.

Early and family life


An illustration of Stephens as a young man

Stephens was born on February 11, 1812. His parents were Andrew Baskins Stephens and Margaret Grier. The Stephenses lived on a farm in Taliaferro County, Georgia. At the time of Alexander Stephens's birth, the farm was part of Wilkes County. Taliaferro County was created in 1825 from land in Greene, Hancock, Oglethorpe, Warren, and Wilkes counties. His father, a native of Pennsylvania, came to Georgia at 12 years of age, in 1795.



According to the Biographical Sketch of Linton Stephens (Linton Stephens being Alexander Stephens's half-brother), Andrew B. Stephens was "endowed with uncommon intellectual faculties; he had sound practical judgment; he was a safe counselor, sagacious, self-reliant, candid and courageous."


Brothers.

His mother, a Georgia native and sister of Grier's Almanac founder Robert Grier, died in 1812 at the age of 26; Alexander Stephens was only three months old. In the introduction to Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens, there is this about his mother and her family: "Margaret came of folk who had a liking for books, and a turn for law, war, and meteorology." The introduction continues: "In her son's character was a marked blending of parental traits. He [Alexander Stephens] was thrifty, generous, progressive; one of the best lawyers in the land; a reader and collector of books; a close observer of the weather, and father of the Weather Bureau of the United States." In 1814, Andrew B. Stephens married Matilda Lindsay, daughter of Revolutionary War Colonel John Lindsay.



In May 1826, when Alexander Stephens was 14 years old, his father, Andrew, and stepmother, Matilda, died of pneumonia only days apart. The young Stephens was orphaned at fourteen, which intensified his already melancholic disposition. Their deaths caused him and several siblings to be scattered among relatives. He grew up poor and in difficult circumstances. Not long after the deaths of his father and his stepmother, Alexander Stephens was sent to live with his mother's other brother, General Aaron W. Grier, near Raytown (Taliaferro County), Georgia. General Grier had inherited his own father's library, said to be "the largest library in all that part of the country." Alexander Stephens, who read voraciously even as a youth, mentions the library in his "Recollections."



Frail but precocious, the young Stephens acquired his continued education through the generosity of several benefactors. One of them was the Presbyterian minister Alexander Hamilton Webster, who presided over a school in Washington, Georgia. Out of respect for his mentor, Stephens adopted Webster's middle name, Hamilton, as his own. Stephens attended the Franklin College (later the University of Georgia) in Athens, where he was roommates with Crawford W. Long and a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. He raised funds for Phi Kappa Hall, located on the university campus. Stephens graduated at the top of his class in 1832.

Early Career

Frail and sickly, the lifelong bachelor poured his nevertheless considerable vigor into public life. Stephens was sickly throughout his life, most painfully from "crippling rheumatoid arthritis and a pinched nerve in his back". Though his adult height was 5 feet 7 inches, he often weighed less than 100 pounds. After several unhappy years teaching in school, Stephens began legal studies, was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1834, and began a successful career as a lawyer in Crawfordville. During his 32 years of practice, he gained a reputation as a capable defender of the wrongfully accused. None of his clients charged with capital crimes were executed.



As his wealth increased, Stephens began acquiring land and slaves. By the time of the Civil War, Stephens owned 34 slaves and several thousand acres. He entered politics in 1836, and was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, serving there until 1841. In 1842, he was elected to the Georgia Senate.Elected as a Whig to the state legislature in 1836, he served there for seven years. During his political apprenticeship Stephens made a lifelong friend and ally in a man who was in many ways his opposite, the robust and blustery Robert Toombs. After serving in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, he won election to Congress, taking his seat in 1843.

Congressional career

Stephens served in the U.S. House from October 2, 1843, to March 3, 1859, from the 28th Congress through the 35th Congress. In 1843, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Whig, in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mark A. Cooper. This seat was at-large, as Georgia did not have House Districts until the next year. Stephens was re-elected from the 7th District as a Whig in 1844, 1846, and 1848, as a Unionist in 1851, and again as a Whig (from the 8th District) in 1853. In 1855 and 1857, his re-elections came as a Democrat. Like most southern Whigs, Stephens maintained a delicate balance between supporting states' rights and backing the party's nationalist program.



As a national lawmaker during the crucial decades before the Civil War, Stephens was involved in all of the major sectional battles. He began as a moderate defender of slavery but later accepted the prevailing Southern rationale utilized to defend the institution.



Stephens quickly rose to prominence as one of the leading Southern Whigs in the House. He supported the annexation of Texas in 1845. Along with his fellow Whigs, he vehemently opposed the Mexican–American War, and later become an equally vigorous opponent of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have barred the extension of slavery into territories that were acquired after the war. He also controversially tabled the Clayton Compromise, which would have excluded slavery from the Oregon Territory and left the issue of slavery in New Mexico and California to the Supreme Court. This would later nearly kill Stephens when he argued with Judge Francis H. Cone, who stabbed him repeatedly in a fit of anger. Stephens was physically outmatched by his larger assailant, but he remained defiant during the attack, refusing to recant his positions even at the cost of his life. Only the intervention of others saved him. Stephens' wounds were serious, and he returned home to Crawfordville to recover. He and Cone reconciled before Cone's death in 1859.



After the war, Stephens was a prominent supporter of the Compromise of 1850 and helped draft the Georgia Platform, which opposed secession. An ardent defender of slavery, he favored the annexation of Texas but also played a critical role in getting the Compromise of 1850 passed. In the early 1850s, Stephens and Toombs seized leadership of the state party from the less politically skilled John Macpherson Berrien. (The Peggy Affair)



Stephens and fellow Georgia Representative Robert Toombs campaigned for the election of Zachary Taylor as President in 1848. Both were chagrined and angered when Taylor proved less than pliable on aspects of the Compromise of 1850. Stephens and Toombs both supported said compromise between slave and free states, though they opposed the exclusion of slavery from the territories on the theory that such lands belonged to all of the people. The pair returned from the District of Columbia to Georgia to secure support for the measures at home. Both men were instrumental in the drafting and approval of the Georgia Platform, which rallied Unionists throughout the Deep South.



Stephens and Toombs were not only political allies but also lifelong friends. Stephens was described as "a highly sensitive young man of serious and joyless habits of consuming ambition, of poverty-fed pride, and of morbid preoccupation within self," a contrast to the "robust, wealthy, and convivial Toombs. But this strange camaraderie endured with singular accord throughout their lives."



As the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, Stephens eventually joined the Democratic Party. By this time, Stephens had departed the ranks of the Whig party, its Northern wing generally not amenable to some Southern interests. Back in Georgia, Stephens, Toombs, and Democratic Representative Howell Cobb formed the Constitutional Union Party. The party overwhelmingly carried the state in the ensuing election and, for the first time, Stephens returned to Congress no longer a Whig. Stephens spent the next few years as a Constitutional Unionist, essentially an independent. He vigorously opposed the dismantling of the Constitutional Union Party when it began crumbling in 1851. Political realities soon forced the Union Democrats in the party to affiliate once more with the national party, and by mid-1852, the combination of both Democrats and Whigs, which had formed a "party" behind the Compromise, had ended.



The sectional issue surged to the forefront again in 1854, when Senator Stephen A. Douglas, from Illinois, moved to organize the Nebraska Territory, all of which lay north of the Missouri Compromise line, in the Kansas–Nebraska Act. This legislation aroused fury in the North because it applied the popular sovereignty principle to the Territory, in violation of the Missouri Compromise. Had it not been for Stephens, the bill probably never would have passed in the House. He employed an obscure House rule to bring the bill to a vote. He later called this "the greatest glory of my life."



From this point on, Stephens voted with the Democrats. Until after 1855, Stephens could not be properly called a Democrat, and even then, he never officially declared it. In this move, Stephens broke irrevocably with many of his former Whig colleagues. When the Whig Party disintegrated after the election of 1852, some Whigs flocked to the short-lived Know-Nothing Party, but Stephens fiercely opposed the Know-Nothings both for their secrecy and their anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic position.


Photograph of Stephens by Mathew Brady

Despite his late arrival in the Democratic Party, Stephens quickly rose through the ranks. He even served as President James Buchanan's floor manager in the House during the fruitless battle for the slave state Lecompton Constitution for Kansas Territory in 1857. He was instrumental in framing the failed English Bill after it became clear that Lecompton would not pass, in order to negotiate its approval. The team later put its weight behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and both men resisted secession before U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's election. Unlike Toombs, though, Stephens continued to oppose separation right up to the time it became a certainty for Georgia in January 1861.


Stephens retires from Congress 1858.

Stephens did not seek re-election to Congress in 1858, but continued to publicly advocate against secession. As sectional peace eroded during the next two years, Stephens became increasingly critical of Southern extremists. Although virtually the entire South had spurned Douglas as a traitor to Southern rights because he had opposed the Lecompton Constitution and broken with Buchanan, Stephens remained on good terms with Douglas and even served as one of his presidential electors in the election of 1860.



On November 14, 1860, Stephens delivered a speech entitled "The Assertions of a Secessionist". He said:

When I look around and see our prosperity in every thing, agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of education, physical and mental, as well as moral advancement, and our colleges, I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity to—let us not too readily yield to this temptation—do so. Our first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led to believe that their condition would be bettered—that their eyes would be opened—and that they would become as gods. They in an evil hour yielded—instead of becoming gods, they only saw their own nakedness. I look upon this country, with our institutions, as the Eden of the world, the paradise of the universe.

On the eve of the outbreak of the American Civil War, he counseled delay in moving militarily against U.S.-held Fort Sumter and Pickens so that the Confederacy could build up its forces and stock resources.

Confederate Vice President

Despite grave misgivings, Stephens ultimately signed Georgia's ordinance of secession. To his consternation, the recently retired congressman was then selected with nine others to represent his home state at the Provisional Confederate Congress in Montgomery, Alabama, in February. There his status as the South's most outspoken former Unionist won him the vice presidency.


The original Confederate Cabinet from left to right included Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Stephens, LeRoy Pope Walker, Jefferson Davis, John H. Reagan and Robert Toombs

In 1861, Stephens was elected as a delegate to the Georgia Secession Convention to decide Georgia's response to the election of Abraham Lincoln. During the convention, as well as during the 1860 presidential campaign, Stephens, who came to be known as the sage of Liberty Hall, called for the South to remain loyal to the Union, likening it to a leaking but fixable boat. During the convention he reminded his fellow delegates that Republicans were a minority in Congress (especially in the Senate) and, even with a Republican President, they would be forced to compromise just as the two sections had for decades. Because the Supreme Court had voted 7–2 in the Dred Scott case, it would take decades of Senate-approved appointments to reverse it. He voted against secession in the convention but asserted the right to secede if the federal government continued allowing northern states to nullify the Fugitive Slave Law with "personal liberty laws." He was elected to the Confederate Congress and was chosen by the Congress as Vice President of the provisional government. By so elevating Stephens, the Montgomery delegates hoped to solidify support for the new nation among cooperationists and other moderate elements.



He took the provisional oath of office on February 11, 1861, then the 'full term' oath of office on February 22, 1862 (after being elected in November 1861) and served until his arrest on May 11, 1865. Stephens officially served in office eight days longer than President Jefferson Davis; he took his oath seven days before Davis's inauguration and was captured the day after Davis.

"The Hercules of 1861"


In this political cartoon, a Union officer (unidentified) swings a club labeled "Union" in defense against a many-headed serpent labeled "Secession." The serpent's heads are: Floyd, Pickens, Beauregard, Twiggs, Davis, Stephens, and Toombs, all leaders of the Southern secession movement and the resulting Confederacy.

On March 21 Stephens extemporaneously delivered in Savannah what has become known as the "Cornerstone Speech." In the speech, Stephens explained fundamental differences between the Confederate and U.S. constitutions and the reasons for Southern secession. In it he declared that slavery was the natural condition of blacks and the foundation of the Confederacy. He declared that relative to the U.S. Constitution:

"Our new Government is founded upon 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 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."

Stephens's Cornerstone Speech of March 1861 defended slavery, though after the war he distanced himself from his earlier sentiments. TRD Addendum, I have told myself the Civil War wasn't all about Slavery more than once. After reading and rereading that, I see it was all about Slavery. Touring the King Center everyday has made me see clearer.



Initially, Confederate president Jefferson Davis consulted his vice president frequently, and Stephens appeared to be part of the president's inner circle. That changed, however, once military concerns began to consume the administration's attention. In 1862, Stephens first publicly expressed his opposition to the Davis administration. Throughout the war he denounced many of the president's policies, including conscription, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, impressment, various financial and taxation policies, and Davis's military strategy.In the course of the war. "Little Aleck" was no military man, and Davis found little time for him after hostilities began in earnest. Stephens likewise had less and less use for the Richmond, Virginia, government, and the amount of time he spent in the Confederate capital decreased commensurately. He grew disaffected with Davis's nationalist bent and lent encouragement to Georgia's governor, Joseph E. Brown, who was a vigorous advocate of states' rights.



Still, Stephens continued to perform some governmental functions, and in 1863 he attempted to initiate an exchange of prisoners with the North. In mid-1863, Davis dispatched Stephens on a fruitless mission to Washington to discuss prisoner exchanges, but the Union victory of Gettysburg made the Lincoln Administration refuse to receive him. As the war continued and the fortunes of the Confederacy sank lower, Stephens became more outspoken in his opposition to the administration. On March 16, 1864, Stephens delivered a speech to the Georgia Legislature that was widely reported in both the North and the South. In it, he excoriated the Davis Administration for its support of conscription and suspension of habeas corpus, and supported a block of resolutions aimed at securing peace. From then until the end of the war, as he continued to press for actions aimed at bringing about peace, his relations with Davis, never warm to begin with, turned completely sour.



That effort failed, but the vice president used the correspondence with his Northern counterparts to begin to push for a negotiated end to the war. There was little enthusiasm for such a solution in either the North or the South, but Stephens persisted in his hope that diplomacy could prevail. When a meeting with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward was arranged at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in February 1865, President Davis—who, significantly, did not attend—sent Stephens to head the Southern delegation. On February 3, 1865, he was one of three Confederate commissioners who met with Lincoln on the steamer River Queen at the Hampton Roads Conference, a fruitless effort to discuss measures to bring an end to the fight.



Of course, the North could accept no terms that allowed the Confederacy to continue to exist, and the negotiations came to nothing. In general, then, Stephens's tenure as the Confederate vice president may be characterized as a rarely broken string of frustrations and disappointments. Stephens and Lincoln had been close friends and Whig political allies in the 1840s. Although peace terms were not reached, Lincoln did agree to look into the whereabouts of Stephens's nephew, Confederate Lieutenant John A. Stephens. When Lincoln returned to Washington, he ordered the release of Lieutenant Stephens.



Postwar Career


Alexander Stephens (right), with an unidentified man.

Stephens was arrested for treason against the United States at his home in Crawfordville, on May 11, 1865. After the war Stephens was imprisoned for five months until October 1865 at Boston's Fort Warren. Upon his release, Georgia's citizens elected him in 1866 to the U.S. Senate. It was the first legislature convened under the new Georgia State Constitution. It was under President Andrew Johnson's forgiving Reconstruction scheme. Northerners were naturally dismayed by the prospect of the vice president of the Confederacy sitting in the Senate chambers a year after the Civil War ended, and congressional Republicans refused to seat Stephens. They placed restrictions on former Confederates. He used the resulting hiatus from public life to pen A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (1868-70), his two-volume apology for the Confederacy. Stephens published a U.S. history in 1868–1870, laying out the Lost Cause of the Confederacy: that secession was legal, and the attacks from the North aggression.


Stephens in his later years

Although not a member of the Bourbon Triumvirate that ruled over a "redeemed" Georgia, Stephens rose once more to political prominence after Reconstruction.In 1873, Stephens was elected US Representative as a Democrat from the 8th District to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Ambrose R. Wright. Stephens was subsequently re-elected to the 8th District as an Independent Democrat in 1874, 1876, and 1878, and as a Democrat again in 1880. He described himself, on the title page of the 1876 edition of his Compendium, as "Professor Elect of History and Political Science at the University of Georgia". He served in the 43rd through 47th Congresses, from December 1, 1873, until his resignation on November 4, 1882. 


John White Alexander's portrait of Stephens in 1883, the year he died

On that date, he was elected and took office as Governor of Georgia. His tenure as governor proved brief; Stephens died on March 4, 1883, four months after taking office. Stephens's grave is on the front lawn of his Crawfordville home, Liberty Hall, now a state park maintained by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.


Liberty Hall outbuildings back in the day.

Almost all of his former slaves continued to work for him, often for little or no money; whether this decision was voluntary or the result of few other options existing for former slaves in the Deep South is difficult to determine. These servants were with him upon his death. Although old and infirm, Stephens continued to work on his house and plantation. According to a former slave, a gate fell on Stephens while he and another black servant were repairing it, "and he was crippled and lamed up from that time on till he died."

Whew I have been working on this post since Sunday. Just got a message that Post was too large so I am breaking this down to two post for Georgia Natural Wonder #130. Today since we dug so deep in to the Vice President of the Confederacy, we have a trio of Politically incorrect GNW Gals...