Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
A morbid consciousness of his feeble physique sometimes drove him
into truculence, and on one occasion he was stabbed eighteen times by
a certain ornament of the Georgia bench, and saved his life only by
grasping the blade that was driven at his throat. But such encounters
can be explained on the ground of overcorrection; the real Stephens was
gentle, peace-loving, hating all swaggerers military or civilian, “a
man of generous sympathies, of broad humanity, a democrat of democrats,
a friend of all the world” (Pendleton, _Alexander H. Stephens_,
p. 253). The words _Non sibi sed aliis_, cut in his tombstone at
Crawfordville, come nearer the truth than epitaphs usually do. He was
never selfishly ambitious and he could justly say after the fall of the
Confederacy, “I am old and weak in bodily infirmity, but I have done
my duty to God and my country, and I am ready for whatever fate may be
assigned me” (_ibid._, p. 393).
Stephens was a lifelong student of politics, regarding it as “one
of the most intricate, as well as interesting subjects that can
engage the attention of reflecting minds.” He was not a political
philosopher like Calhoun, concerned with principle and theory, but a
constitutional historian concerned to trace the genesis and development
of the fundamental law of the land. He was probably more widely read
in the early literature of the Constitution than any other man of his
generation. He had thumbed and dog-eared Elliot’s _Debates_, and could
cite dates and explain circumstances for the elucidation of doubtful
points or the correcting of an unhistorical interpretation. He knew the
genesis of every article, of almost every word in the Constitution, and
the reasons which determined the special form which each assumed; and
this exact knowledge equipped him for the task of critical commentator
on earlier commentators. Unfortunate was the theorizer who fell into
his hands. Federalist expositors like Story and Motley, given to rash
generalization from inadequate data, suffered disaster under his
critical inspection. With his fund of historical knowledge he was amply
prepared for the labor of love to which he turned after the war, and in
his _Constitutional View of the War between the States_ he produced
one of the most notable studies in the origin of the Constitution that
we have.
Certain deep personal needs, taking form in passionate conviction,
determined the bias of Stephens’ political philosophy, which was
quite simple, consistent and inflexible, from his first entry into
public life until his death. There was no subtlety in his intellectual
processes, no balancing uncertainly between diverse appeals, but
a clear faith which he expounded to the common voter in confident
expectation that it would awaken sympathetic response. His extensive
reading was not so much a disinterested search for light on the
ideal relations of men in society, as for confirmation of certain
prepossessions. That those prepossessions were shared by his fellow
Georgians, that they were the natural product of existing social
conditions, gave to them an added sanction. The creative source of
his philosophy was a passionate love of freedom; and his meditations
convinced him that the only freedom worth a tuppence is civil liberty
under civil law--that the test of any civilization is the concern it
manifests for the safeguarding of such liberty by exact and adequate
constitutional provisions. His reverence for law was a religion with
him, and his love of the Constitution as the fostering mother of the
law was only this side idolatry. “No stronger or more ardent Union man
ever lived than I was,” he asserted late in life. Intense loyalty was
almost commonplace amongst the people from whom he sprang. Love of the
Union, and of the Constitution as a guarantee of that Union, was far
stronger in the South before the Civil War than in the North. But it
was the Constitution of the fathers, not a newfangled consolidating
instrument that drew all power to Washington, that they loved. Pride
of locality--naïve though it might be and provincial--the spontaneous
pride of a simple untraveled people--was rooted in the southern
heart. It was nourished by a deep love of homestead and neighborhood,
natural to an agrarian society; and it came to political expression
in the doctrine that the commonwealth must be free to manage its own
affairs in its own way. The theory of states rights, amongst such
a people, was not an abstract principle but an expression of the
psychology of localism created by everyday habit. This explains the
intensity of conviction which colors the thought of Stephens. The
principle of local sovereignty was inbred. He rarely deigns to argue
the question. He never concerned himself with abstract argument--as
Jefferson had done--to prove the superior excellence of local home
rule. This failure, indeed, may perhaps be accounted his greatest
weakness as a political thinker. Rather he was concerned to prove that
state sovereignty existed prior to the Union, that it was jealously
guarded at the making of the Constitution, that it had never been
surrendered, and hence was the constitutional order until destroyed by
the Civil War. But if he refrained from abstract argument touching the
desirability of localizing political power, he exhibited a Jeffersonian
fear of unregulated power which consolidation makes possible.
This passionate love of freedom he exemplified in his own career. He
followed his convictions and spoke his own mind, regardless of occasion
or circumstance. He was no man’s tool. He hated a demagogue and never
curried favor with his constituents or calculated popular response. In
his public life he considered himself a representative of the people
of Georgia, and the one object of his labors was the preservation of
that constitutional liberty in which they had grown up. In furtherance
of this policy he found himself not infrequently at odds with other
southern leaders. He vigorously opposed his party in its Mexican war
policy, looking upon it as no other than imperialistic vandalism aimed
at a weaker neighbor for the purpose of extending slave territory.
There was no glamor for him in military victories; he would not concede
that a republic might plead manifest destiny in extenuation of armed
aggression, or that the ends of civilization may be furthered by war.
In a speech opposing the policy of his fellow Whigs, he thus expressed
his conception of national progress:
I am no enemy to the extension of our domain, or the enlargement
of the boundaries of the republic. I trust the day is coming,
and not far distant, when the whole continent will be ours; when
our institutions shall be diffused and cherished, and republican
government enjoyed, throughout the length and breadth of this
land.... That this is our ultimate destiny, if wise counsels
prevail, I confidently believe. But it is not to be accomplished
by the sword.... Republics never spread by arms. We can properly
enlarge only by voluntary accessions....
There is much said in this country of the party of progress. I
profess to be of that party; but I am far from advocating that kind
of progress which many of those who seem anxious to appropriate
the term exclusively to themselves are using their exertions to
push forward. Theirs, in my opinion, is a downward progress. It
is a progress of party, of excitement, of lust of power; a spirit
of war, aggression, violence and licentiousness. It is a progress
which, if indulged in, would soon sweep over all law, all order,
and the Constitution itself.... It is to progress in _these_
essential attributes of national greatness that I would look: the
improvement of mind, the “increase and diffusion of knowledge among
men,” the erection of schools, colleges and temples of learning;
the progress of intellect over matter; the triumph of mind over the
animal propensities; the advancement of kind feeling and good will
among the nations of the earth; the cultivation of virtue and the
pursuits of industry; the bringing into subjection and subservience
to the use of man of all the elements of nature around us; in a
word, the progress of civilization, and everything that elevates
and ennobles man. This ... is not to be done by wars, whether
foreign or domestic. Fields of blood and carnage may make men brave
and heroic, but seldom tend to make nations either virtuous or
great. (Quoted in Pendleton, _Alexander H. Stephens_, pp. 79-80.)
A man of peace, Stephens was greatly agitated over the movement of
secession. He fought the Fire Eaters to the bitter end in his native
state, but like other high-minded Southerners he went out with his
commonwealth. Loyalty to Georgia was stronger than loyalty to the
nation. But in the new order he preserved his old principles. The
Jeffersonian democrat could not forget his teachings. When the
Confederacy was discussing its proposed Constitution, he took alarm
at some loose talk about the desirability of setting up a monarchy.
His old friend Bob Toombs, one of the ablest of the southern leaders,
quite frankly preferred the English system to the American.[404] There
seems to have been considerable comment to like effect amongst the Tory
hot-heads; but the wind was not blowing in that direction and such
straws were only the stirrings of vagrant eddies. The Constitution as
adopted was more democratic than the older instrument--an outcome to
which Stephens contributed greatly.
As Vice President of the Confederacy he constituted himself the special
guardian of constitutional liberty, and his jealous concern at what
he regarded as administrative usurpations of power brought on grave
differences with President Davis. Even in the urgent crises of war he
would not sanction the use of extra-constitutional powers. He knew
better than most that power grows by what it feeds on, that too often
war destroys the liberty it professes to be serving. To win the war
and lose the peace, to secede in defense of constitutional rights and
then tamely yield them up, seemed to him a pitiful ending, and when
President Davis suspended the right of _habeas corpus_ and his generals
proclaimed martial law, he took alarm. “All such orders,” he said,
“are palpable and dangerous usurpations, and if permitted to continue
will end in military despotism.... Better in my judgment that Richmond
should fall, and that the enemy’s armies should sweep our whole country
from the Potomac to the Gulf than that our people should submissively
yield obedience to one of these edicts of our own generals” (Pendleton,
_Alexander H. Stephens_, p. 292). Freedom of speech he would not have
interfered with under any excuse. The suspension of civil law he
considered a threat aimed at every citizen of the South. He had heard,
he said, that one purpose of the act was “to control certain elections
and certain expected assemblages in North Carolina”--where there was a
good deal of disaffection--“to put a muzzle upon certain presses, and
a bit in the mouth of certain speakers of that State. If this be so, I
regard it as the more dangerous to public liberty” (_ibid._, p. 313).
To the question, “Can you not trust the President?” he replied in words
that deserve to be remembered:
To the question of whether I would not or cannot trust him with
these high powers not conferred by the Constitution, my answer is:
I am utterly opposed to everything looking to or tending toward
dictatorship in this country. There is no man living and not one of
the illustrious dead, whom, if now living, I would so trust.... I
would not turn on my heel to choose between masters. I was not born
to acknowledge a master from either the North or the South. I shall