Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography - Softcover

Schott, Thomas E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807121061 ISBN 13: 9780807121061

Publisher: LSU Press, 1996

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE JEFFERSON DAVIS AWARD

Rising from humble origins in the middle Georgia cotton belt, Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) became one of the South’s leading politicians and lawyers. Thomas E. Schott has written the first scholarly biography that analyzes the interplay between the public and private Stephens and between state and national politics during his contradictory career.

Stephens was a celebrated Whig, turned Democrat, who served as congressman from 1843 to 1859 and an antisecessionist who became vice-president of the Confederacy. Ignored by the Davis administration once in office, he eventually opposed most of its wartime policies. Schott argues that Stephens’ devotion to the southern cause was as genuine as his devotion to civil liberties and states’ rights. After the war, he became an elder statesman for Georgia, serving nine more years as a congress-man and the last five months of his life as governor.

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas E. Schott is an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma.

From Library Journal:

Stephens was a bundle of contradictionsa prominent Whig who became a Democrat, an antisecessionist who became a vice president of the Confederacy, a Southern nationalist who became the symbol of states' rights obstructionism in the Confederacy. Schott's full and interesting biography rescues Stephens from an undeserved historical oblivion, as it also reveals the tragedy of a statesman whose world did not extend beyond Georgia. Stephens's very limitations speak volumes on why the idea of a single South crashed against the reality of many little Souths. Recommended for university libraries.Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0807121061
• ISBN 13: 9780807121061
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 584