ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS
(Alexander Hamilton Stephens)
The “rupture and revolution” was Southern secession and the Civil War. This quotation is very important because it so clearly states the cause of the Civil War—the threat of the abolition or change of the institution of slavery. During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, many historical revisionists—in an effort to promote national unity—began stating and teaching that the cause of the rebellion was a philosophical difference over State’s rights and not something so banal as the greed for and immorality of the benefits of slavery. See {621370} for another Southern quotation illustrating this point.
It was indeed the first government that was ever founded on that fallacious principle. In retrospect, it was amazing that more Southerners did not question why no other government in the history of the world based a society on that principle. The Southern hubris was a great failing for them.
The attacks on slavery were growing and the more slavery was attacked in Congress, the greater the talk of secession. It would be over a decade before secession actually took place.
Even after the South was defeated in the Civil War, most Southern politicians strove to keep the newly freed Blacks from voting. The vehicle they chose to attain that purpose was the concept of States’ Rights where the states were the sole determiners of who could and could not vote. The majority of the country rejected that view and the Constitution was amended to allow Black men to vote. After reconstruction Black voting in the South was curtailed substantiality by devices such as poll taxes and literacy requirements and terror and intimidation. It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that most Blacks could vote in the Southern States.
This hypocrisy and insincerity was seen for what it was by the Radical Republicans, Abolitionists and the newly freed slaves themselves. See {617728} and {617339}. However, this approach soon was adopted as the “party line” by intellectual Southerners of the time, and has continued to this day. The rebellion that caused the deaths of more Americans than all the rest of our wars, was not as they stated it caused by any conflict over slavery, no economic causes, no differences in labor philosophies and trade, no contention over control of new territories, but was simply an attempt to vigorously support and defend the Constitution. However, one advantage to using this story as an explanation of the bloody rebellion, was that the defeated Southerners could see their acts as somewhat nobly motivated.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician who served as the vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and later as the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives before becoming governor.
