Alexander Stephens

Alexander Stephens (1812-83), vice president of the Confederate States of America. Alexander Hamilton Stephens was born on February 12, 1812, near Crawfordville, Georgia. He helped organize the Whig Party in Georgia and in 1843 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, in which he served until 1859. Stephens opposed the secession movement in Georgia in 1860-61, but after the state had voted to secede he supported its action, and in 1862, after the outbreak of the American Civil War, he was elected vice president of the Confederacy.

In February 1865 Stephens headed the Confederate delegation that met with President Abraham Lincoln at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in a futile attempt to arrange satisfactory peace terms. When the South surrendered later that year, he was imprisoned for a brief time. In 1866 he was elected U.S. senator from Georgia, but the Senate refused to seat him. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1873 to 1882, and in the latter year was elected governor of Georgia; he died in Atlanta on March 4, 1883.