Some of the criteria for political viability today do not compare favorably with those of earlier eras of American politics.  Candidates for high office today must be camera ready since campaigns are run in the mass media.  A robust and confident voice helps. Intelligence and wisdom are not necessary. In the 19th century, the State of Georgia produced the anti-type of the 21st Century cookie-cutter candidate, a man who would become a powerful and effective Congressman, Senator, Vice President, and Governor. He would provide the winning margin on historic legislation, be imprisoned for serving as Vice President, and die, at the age of 71, almost penniless because he gave much of his money away to educate young people.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens was born near Crawfordsville, Georgia, in 1812, raised in genteel poverty, and, with the help of benefactors, educated at Franklin College (later the University of Georgia.)  The diminutive Stephens weighed only 96 pounds and experienced a lifetime of illnesses. Someone once asked him what he would ask for if he could have anything in the world and he responded in his high pitched and weary voice “to be warm just once in my life.”

In the United States Senate he was a giant of rhetorical power and logic. He frustrated his opponents and brought applause from his allies. In a fit of pique after being bested by Stephens in a Senate debate, the violent and  gigantic Senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton, boomed out “little man, I could eat you up,” to which Stephens replied,” if you do, you’ll have twice as many brains in your stomach as your head.” Though a southerner and a slave owner, Stephens was known as a strong Union man and voted against his party and his section a number of times.

He had opposed the War with Mexico though he supported the expansion of slavery into the territories. He helped steward the Compromise of 1850 through Congress and saved the Kansas-Nebraska Act, by the one staving off secession for 10 more years, and by the other spurring the creation of the Republican Party. He voted against secession from the Union but when it became a fait accompli, he accepted the Vice Presidency of the Confederacy. A man of states-rights principle, he broke with Jefferson Davis when the administration pursued more nationalist policies. Stephens tried to negotiate a peace treaty with Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to no avail and returned to Georgia to await the defeat of the Confederacy.

Stephens wrote A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, in which he expressed his strict constructionist views of the founding document in light of secession and the Confederacy. The book demonstrated his formidable intellectual powers and conservative interpretation of the Constitution. Following Congressional Reconstruction, he returned to Congress for nine more years and died as Governor of Georgia.

The least imposing man imaginable, Alexander Stephens was a giant on the political stage and played one of the most important roles of leadership a public servant ever accomplished. It would be difficult for a sickly and tiny man with a high-pitched voice to get elected to national office today, but the same could probably be said for one of such large intellect, moral integrity, and strict constitutional convictions.

Bill Potter