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.

Salesman's dummy, containing prospectus (p. [1]-[39], 1st group), press notices about the work (p. 1-15), and blanks for names of subscribers; sample bindings mounted inside front and back covers. LC copy has been used as scrapbook with t.p. and first few pages of text obscured by mounted newspaper clippings.

Was Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens really a "racist" Dixiecrat who believed that slavery was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, as pro-North writers assert? Was he actually guilty of "treason" against the U.S., an "anarchist" who should have been hanged for leading the secession of the Southern states? Of course not. And "The Quotable Alexander H. Stephens," by award-winning author and Southern historian Lochlainn Seabrook, proves it! This well-researched work, a companion to Seabrook's "The Alexander H. Stephens Reader," provides nearly 700 footnoted entries that reveal the authentic man, one completely opposite of the negative image of Stephens fabricated by enemies of the South. Known as one of America's most kindly and charitable individuals, he was a true friend of the black man, as well as a pro-Unionist who at first campaigned against Southern secession. Also a brilliant thinker, spell-binding orator, and prodigious author, he was, in fact, one of history's most extraordinary, interesting, honorable, and noble figures. Follow Stephens in his own words, as he takes us through the development of the U.S. after the American Revolution, and into the growing bitter sectionalism between the South and the North in the 1840s and 1850s. Get a you-are-there view of the entire "Civil War," from the disastrous election of big government Liberal Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, to the tragic fall of the Confederacy and Stephens' illegal imprisonment in the Spring of 1865. Follow the frail but feisty Georgia governor-who turned down offers to run for both U.S. president and C.S. president-from so-called "Reconstruction" and the rebuilding of the South (which he helped direct), through the postwar administrations of Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur. Along the way, not only do we learn the true cause behind Lincoln's War, but Stephens also lays out the facts concerning Southern slavery and his "Cornerstone" speech, while forcefully defending the constitutional right of secession. Follow the lifelong bachelor-politician (who served in the U.S. government, in one capacity or another, from President Andrew Jackson to President Chester A. Arthur, a span of forty-seven years) as he discloses his everyday thoughts and personal opinions on everything from the weather and dogs to self-government and states' rights, in this profusely illustrated one-of-a-kind book that is sure to become a standard in Southern literature. With the publication of "The Quotable Alexander H. Stephens," the anti-South movement's vicious slander against "little Aleck," as he was lovingly known to his relatives, friends and constituents, is now powerless. Thanks to Mr. Seabrook, Alexander H. Stephens has finally been fully redeemed. Lochlainn Seabrook, a Stephens family descendant and a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal, is a Civil War scholar, an unreconstructed Southern historian, and the author of over thirty popular books for all ages. The sixth great-grandson of the Earl of Oxford and a seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage, he is a cousin of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Known as the "American Robert Graves" after his celebrated English cousin, Seabrook has a thirty-year background in the War for Southern Independence and Confederate studies and biography. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the National Grange, and lives with his wife and family in historic Middle Tennessee, the heart of the Confederacy. Seabrook's other titles include: "Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask A Southerner!"; "Honest Jeff and Dishonest Abe: A Southern Children's Guide to the Civil War"; and "A Rebel Born: A Defense of Nathan Bedford Forrest."

Sample Text

Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The fifteen years since the original publication of Apostles of Disunion have seen an intensification of debates surrounding the Confederate flag and Civil War monuments. In a powerful new afterword to this anniversary edition, Dew situates the book in relation to these recent controversies and factors in the role of vast financial interests tied to the internal slave trade in pushing Virginia and other upper South states toward secession and war.

Since it was first published in 1955, Georgia History in Outline has been the standard concise history of the state. The third edition includes a major revision of the chapter on the twentieth century, reflecting in part new information and interpretation on modern Georgia from A History of Georgia and in part the author's personal knowledge of events since the 1920s.