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664 mestic affairs, under the plea of regulating its own organization. On the same principle Mr. Stephens, as senat'>r-':li'i-t from Georgia, in 18136, was not al- lowed to sit, Georgia not having complied with the terms of congress. He advocated the annexation of Texas by legislative resolution as early as ls:is-"!l, and opposed the John Tyler treaty of ls44. but, with seven other southern Whigs, se- rmvil the passage of the Milton-Brown plan of l s l">. He bitterly opposed President James K. Polk on th': Mexican war. but adopted all its re- sults as a godsend of southern territory. In 1848 In 1 had a personal encounter with Judge Cone, of Greensboro, which illustrated the physical courage for which he had been noted from youth the courage that comes, not from principle or duty, but from utter indifference to consequences. The diffi- culty grew out of a quarrel on the Clayton com- promise of 1848. Cone cut Stephens terribly with a knife and cried : " Now, you, retract, or I'll cut your throat." The bleeding, almost dying Ste- phens said : " Never ! cut," and grasped the swift- ly descending knife-blade in his right hand. That hand never again wrote plainly. Few of the wit- nesses of the affair, which occurred on the piazza of Thompson's hotel, Atlanta, expected him to re- cover. He did, however, in time to make a speech in favor of Zacha- ry Taylor for the presidency, thecar- riagi- being drawn to the stand by the people. In 1850 Mr. Stephens op- posed the secession ninvi:ment at the south, and thought the admission of i California as a free stati- a blessing, as repealing the M is- souri restrictions and opening all the remaining ter- rituHi'- north and south to slavery. He was one of the authors of the " Georgia platform " of 1850. Its first resolve was " that we hold the American Union secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was designed to perpetuate." On the nominations of Franklin Pierce and Gen. Win- field Scott, at Baltimore, the lines of Whig and Democrat were drawn for the last time. Pierce ap- proved the settlement of 1850 ; Scott did not. Ste- phens, with Charles G. Faulkner, Walker Brooke, Alexander White, James Abercrombie. Robert Toombs, James Johnson, Christopher H. Williams, and Meredith P. Gentry, killed the Whig party for- ever by their famous card of 3 July, 1852, giving their reasons for refusing to support Gen. Scott. Stephens wrote it. Daniel Webster was nominated without a party, but died, and Toombs and Ste- phens voted for him after he was dead. In 1854 Mr. Stephens defended the principles of the Kan- sas-Nebraska act, as embodying the principle of 1850, " the people of the territories left free to form and regulate their own domestic institutions (in- cluding slavery), subject only to the constitution of the United' States." In 1859 he retired from congress, and in a farewell speech in Augusta, Ga., intimated that the only way to get more slaves and settle the territories with slave-holding voters was to reopen the African slave-trade.

Mr. Stephens seemed a bundle of contradictions, but he always acted upon reasons and principles. While a state-rights man, he supported Harrison in 1840. In 1844, though in favor of the acquisition of Texas, he supported Clay, who said it would re- open the slave issue and make war, as it did. In 1*45 he voted with the Democratic party in ad-" mitting Texas. In 1846 and 1847 he stood with Calhoim and the Whig party upon the Mexican war. His house resolutions in February, 1847. be- came the basis of the Whig reorganization, and Gen. Zachary Taylor was elected president on the same policy in 1848. In 1850 he differed with Fill- more on policy, as he had with Polk, and approved the compromise of Clay. In 1854 he was with Ste- phen A. Douglas, and in 1850 aided to elect James Buchanan, his extreme foe. In 1859 he resigned his seat in congress, saying : " I saw there was bound to be a smash-up on the road, and resolved to jump off at the first station." In 1860 he sup- ported Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency against John C. Breckinridge, the professed expo- nent of state rights, holding that the territorial views of Mr. Douglas were his life-long principles. In 1860 he made a great Union speech, and in 1861 became the vice-president of the Confederacy of se- ceded states both times on principle. By 1802 he was as much at issue with Jefferson Davis as he had been with Mr. Lincoln in 1860, and on the same matter state rights and he continued to differ to the end. Mr. Stephens, Gov. Joseph E. Brown, and Gen. Robert Toombs, one Union man and two of the bitterest of the original secessionists of 1860, formed the head of the Georgia peace par- ty of 1864, and all the three supported by speeches and letters the Linton-Stephens peace, and habeas corpus resolutions passed by the Georgia legis- lature in that year. In February, 1865, ne was at the head of the peace commission on the part of the Confederate government in the Hampton Roads conference. After the downfall of the Confederacy In- wa- arrc'strd and confined for five months in Fort Warren, Boston harbor, as a prisoner of state, but in October, 1865. he was released on his own parole. On 22 Feb., 1866, he made a strong recon- struction speech and plea for the new freedmen. He had been chosen to the senate by the legisla- ture, but congress ignored the restoration of Geor- gia to the Union under the presidential proclama- tion of Andruw Johnson, and he did not take his seat. On 16 April, 1866, he was called to testify before the congressional reconstruction committee. He both testified and spoke on his life-long theme.

In 1867 he published the first volume of his " War between the States." In December, 1868, he was elected professor of political science and history in the University of Georgia, but declined from failing health. He was kept in the house by rlh nin;i! ism iii'iirh four years. In ! s ^> I" 1 completed the second volume of " The War between the States," but in a more partisan and less hopeful tone than the first volume. Later in the year he conceived the idea of a "School History of the United States," which he carried out (1870-'l). He taught a law class in 1871 as a means of support, and edited and became in part proprietor of the Atlanta "Sun," which was published chiefly to defeat Horace Greeley for the presidency. The enterprise proved financially unsuccessful, and exhausted all the profits of his books. By 5 Sept., Charles O'Conor had declined the "straight-out" nomination in Louisville, and with that dinl Mr. Stephens's last hope. He was defeated in his canvass for a seat in the I". S. senate in November, 1871, but in 1874 was elected to congress. He opposed the civil rights bill in a speech on 5 Jan.,