Alexander Stephens was the Confederate Vice President who said that slavery was the “Cornerstone” of the Confederacy. After the Confederacy was defeated and slavery was ended, he became a leading apologist for The Lost Cause, and particularly for the idea that the Civil War was not waged by the Confederacy to defend slavery, but instead was a conflict in which the Confederates defended human freedom against a tyrannical Federal government! In 1868 and 1870 he published two volumes entitled A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results, presented as a series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall defending the actions of the Confederates.
The book includes long dialogues between himself and men arguing the Union point of view. The dialogues and even the “Unionists” themselves are fake, they are entirely the product of Stephen’s imagination! As other Confederate apologists did, rather than quoting actual opponents of secession and slavery, Stephens invented men to argue against and then supplied them with arguments of his own invention that he of course demolished!
In its 1870 review of Alexander Stephens’s books, the New York Times called bullshit on him and asked “What about the slavery, Mr. Stephens?” At the end of the review, the newspaper responds to Stephens’s claim that post Emancipation America was a tyranny. If the Federal government was really a tyrant, why was a former leader of a bloody insurrection against that government allowed to write a brutal attack on that very government? Here is the review.
September 12, 1870 New York Times page 2
You can read Stephens’s two volume apologia for the Confederacy for free online:
- A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results, presented as a series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall. 1. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company. 1868. ISBN 978-0608399591.
- A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results, presented as a series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall. 2. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company. 1870.
Feature Illustration: Alexander H. Stephens. Oil painting by John White Alexander. Published as cover of “Harper’s Weekly,” 27:145 (March 10, 1883).
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Pat, Did you just state that… “The book includes long dialogues between himself and men arguing the Union point of view. The dialogues and even the “Unionists” themselves are fake, they are entirely the product of Stephen’s imagination! As other Confederate apologists did, rather than quoting actual opponents of secession and slavery, Stephens invented men to argue against and then supplied them with arguments of his own invention that he of course demolished!”
You know Stephens stated in his INTRODUCTION.
Judge Bynum, from Massachusetts, represents, througbout, that class of visitants who belong to what is called the Radical branch of the Republican Party.
Professor Norton, from Connecticut, represents, in like manner, those of that class known as the Conservative branch of the same Party ; while-
Major Heister, from Pennsylvania, represents those of that class known as War Democrats.
The living prototypes of each of these fictitious representatives were in the actual conversations had; and the writer trusts, when the real characters shall see, if they ever do, the reports, now given to the public, of the actual Colloquies which took place, and the parts they took in them, that they will not feel that any injustice has been done to them or their positions. ”
What evidence do you have proves your position against the factual positions that are stated by Stephens? He admits the use pseudonyms and his reasoning for using them. Can you prove none of the colloquies in question are untrue? Are the sentiments of Stephens Characters opposition no less common among those he makes references to?
My evidence is Stephen’s own descriptions of them as fictitious! There was plenty of actual writing from actual Northerners, but Stephens chose to use these straw men of his own construction.