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Alexander Hamilton Stephens and George Bush

Alexander Hamilton Stephens and George Bush “A little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man just concluded the very best speech of an hour’s length I ever heard.” So said Congressman Abraham Lincoln about Alexander Hamilton Stephens.1 Stephens was born near Crawfordsville, Georgia on February 11, 1812. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father died when Stephens was only 14. Even in childhood he was amazingly bright and his brilliant mind was noticed by many mentors who paid for him to attend college. Stephens graduated at the top of his class from Franklin College and then went on to become a lawyer. Soon after he was admitted to the bar, he entered politics and began to construct an exceedingly prominent place in Alexander Hamilton Stephens was only five feet seven inches and never weighed more than one-hundred pounds- even in adulthood. As a young man he was given the nickname “Little Aleck”. He was pale, odd-bodied, had lustrous eyes, and was often described as cadaverous. From the time of his birth he was sickly and puny and was continuously wrapping himself in many layers of clothes and coats to keep warm. Late in his life he defined happiness as “To be warm.”2 Little Aleck was voted into the state legislator in 1836 and continued to remain there until 1841 when he declined re-election. But, in 1942 he was chosen State senator. Then, in 1943 he entered the U.S. House of Representatives and served there for sixteen years. In 1859 he returned to private life by his own choice. He had been a firm advocate of the compromise measures of 1850, and having participated in the settlement of the Kansas troubles, accepted the result as an end of sectional strife During the presidential campaign of 1860, Stephens was an advocate of the election of Stephen A. Douglas. The election of Mr. Lincoln shocked him and he thought it was a disturbance of the settlement and a menace to the Union. But with his impassioned devotion to the republic of States under the Constitution, he attempted to avoid secession, by proposing to fight the Republican administration inside the He was elected a member of the Georgia convention in 1861, and after a strenuous effort to delay State secession, and when the act was passed he gave his support to his state and the Confederacy. His objections were to the appropriateness of immediate secession and not to the right When the Confederate Congress met in February 1861 he was chief contender for the presidency. But, Jefferson Davis won and Alexander Hamilton Stephens was quickly made vice president- an office which also made him the President of the Confederate Senate. His talents and commanding influence throughout the South caused his services to be put to immediate use, not only in assisting in the organization of the Confederate government, but in the general effort to induce all Southern States to join those which had already seceded. He was commissioned to consult with Virginia on behalf of the Confederacy and succeeded in gaining Virginia before its ordinance of secession had been formally ratified His statesmanship and profound experiences with the principles of government were of great value in the formation of the Confederation Constitution. The constitution was an improvement, in his opinion, on the Constitution of the United States. He said of it, "The whole document utterly negatives the idea which so many have been active in endeavoring to put in the enduring form of history, that the convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set of 'conspirators' whose object was the overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and the erection of a great ' slave oligarchy' instead of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed. This work of the Montgomery convention, with that of the Constitution for a provisional government, will ever remain not only as a monument of the wisdom, foresight and statesmanship of the men who constituted it, but an everlasting refutation of the charges which have been brought against them."3 As the war progressed the Vice-president was often called upon to make addresses to the people at critical periods, in all of them he characterized the invasion of the South as an unjust war. Stephens was an excellent public speaker despite his high-pitched girlish voice. Often his views on slavery were questioned. He was a humanitarian, so his slaves were treated very fairly. Stephens never jailed of whipped them, and he never separated families. In fact, none of his slaves ever tried to run away. Also during his term as Vice-president, he centered his official duties on aiding soldiers in hospitals and prisons because he emphasized with them. He himself suffered from angina, bladder stones, colitis, migraine headaches, pneumonia, pruritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and sciatica. He was a leader of the moderate faction of Confederates and an advocate of a peaceful resolution of the war. After the war, he was imprisoned at Fort Warren in Boston for five months in 1865, then released. He was then reelected by Georgians to the U. S. Senate under the terms of President Johnson’s lenient Reconstruction plan. But, Radical Republicans, refused to recognize the new state governments in the South, so Stephens was not allowed to take his seat. When Reconstruction had finally ended, he returned to Congress and served there from 1877 until 1882. He was then elected governor of Georgia. But, during his term he got sick and died on March 4, 1883. Incredible funeral honors were paid to Alexander Hamilton Stephens at the capitol and in the state of Georgia he is remembered as one of the great Born about forty-one years after the death of Alexander Hamilton Stephens was George Herbert Walker Bush- future President of the United States of America. Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts on July 12, 1924 and then grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. He came from a family of tradition in public services, so, he felt responsible to carry on the tradition. He enlisted in the armed forces on his 18th birthday and soon became the youngest pilot in the Navy when he received his wings. During World War I he flew in fifty-eight combat missions. in 1945 Bush was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in action when he was shot down by Japanese antiaircraft on a mission over the After his service in World War I, George Bush turned his focus in life towards a family and an education. He married Barbara Pierce and together they had six children- George, Robin, John, Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy. He also attended Yale University and excelled in sports and academics. He graduated in 1948 with a degree in economics and then moved to Texas where he became wealthy in the oil George became interested in politics. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964, but was unsuccessful. From 1966 until 1970 he served in the House of Representatives, but then quit to try and run for Senator again. Once again, he was unsuccessful. President Richard M. Nixon then appointed him ambassador to the United Nations from 1971 through 1972 and he next held a series of posts that made him familiar with both the domestic and international politics of the United States: chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1973 until 1974; chief liaison officer in Beijing from 1974 through 1975, before the United States established full diplomatic relations with China; and director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 until 1977. Bush competed for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1980 but lost to Ronald Reagan. He accepted Reagan's invitation to be his running mate, and became vice president in 1981. After he won reelection on the Reagan ticket in 1984, Bush won the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. He chose Dan Quayle, a U.S. senator from Indiana, to be his running mate. During the campaign Bush accused his opponent, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, for “liberalism” and promised no new taxes. He became the first incumbent vice president since 1836 to win election to the presidency. Also, George Bush became the first rated military combat pilot to be elected President of the United Bush's his first year in office in 1989 was full of measures to rescue the nation's savings and loan system and to toughen U.S. efforts against illegal drugs. He responded to rapid political changes in Eastern Europe by offering economic assistance to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland and by encouraging the unification of East and West Germany into a country that would remain a Western ally. He also with Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR and they agreed to negotiate an end to production of chemical weapons, cut long-range missiles by up to 50 percent, and reduce conventional forces in Europe. Bush ordered more than 24,000 U.S. troops into Panama to eject the government of General Manuel Antonio Noriega. In 1990 Bush and the Congress disputed over the size of the federal budget. In the end, Bush retreated from his “no new taxes” pledge and signed a deficit-reduction bill that slowed the growth of spending but also increased some taxes. In foreign affairs Bush's leadership was strong. Bush immediately sent U.S. troops to protect Saudi Arabia in 1990 and began a campaign for an international effort to reverse the Iraqi conquest. A U.S.-led coalition launched a major offensive. Five weeks of air warfare led to a ground attack that drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait in less than 100 hours. Bush's popularity soared after the victory and remained high as he met with Gorbachev in July and signed a strategic arms reduction agreement. Both unemployment and the budget deficit increased steadily in 1991. By January 1992 Bush's approval rating in opinion polls was half what it had been in early 1991. During the 1992 Campaign, Bush was able to stand up against Pat Buchanan in the Republican primaries. But, in the general election he was beaten by Bill Clinton and Al Gore who attacked the Bush administration's performance on the economy, health care, and the environment. During his last weeks in office, Bush remained active in foreign policy. He sent troops to restore order and feed the starving in Somalia, ordered new air strikes against Iraq, and signed a wide-ranging arms reduction treaty with Today George Bush lives in Kennybunkport, Maine where he has a compound there. His oldest son George W. Bush, Jr. is currently in the process of campaigning for the President George Bush brought to the White House a dedication to traditional American values and a determination to direct them toward making the United States "a kinder and gentler nation." In his Inaugural Address he pledged in "a moment rich with promise" to use American strength as "a force for good." 4 He strove to keep his promised and was mostly successful in doing so. Alexander Hamilton Stevens and George Herbert Walker Bush have very little in common. They were born in entirely separate centuries and one had already passed on by the time the other came into this world, so therefore Both however, were vice presidents at one time in their lives although for two different governments- the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America. Bush went on to become President of the U.S., but Stephens did not achieve his hope of becoming President of the Confederacy. They both represented their southern states in the U.S. House of Representatives. Bush served in the military and was quite remarkable, but Stephens had no noted service with any military. Bush was noted for his family-man appearance, but there is barely Both men are remembered as great for their individual reasons. They were two of the men who shaped our country- the United States of America- in the past and led it into the future. They helped to fill our history books with pride and accomplishment and will forever go down in Bibliography: 1.“Alexander Hamilton Stephens”. http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/PoliticsAnd Politicians/alexanderhamiltonstephens.html. Online. 2. Bush, George. Looking Forward- An Autobiography. Doubleday Publishing, New York, 1987. 3. “Bush, George”. Encarta Encyclopedia. 1996. CD-ROM. 4. “Bush, George”. World Book Encyclopedia. 1991. Volume 2, p. 732. 5.“Stephens, Alexander Hamilton”. Academic American Encyclopedia. 1989. Volume 18, p. 254. 6. “Stephens, Alexander Hamilton”. Encarta Encyclopedia. 1996. CD-ROM. 7. “Alexander Hamilton stevens”. http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/PoliticsAnd Politicians/alexanderhamiltonstephens.html. Online. 8. “The Political Graveyard: Index to Politicians: Stephens”. http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/stephens.html. Online. 9. “Alexander Hamilton Stephens Biography”. http://www.civilwarhome.com/stephens.htm. Online. 10. “George Bush”. http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/ presidents/html/gb41.html. Online. 11.“PRESIDENT GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH”. http://www.firstflight.org/shrine/ george_bush.html. Online. 12. “Alexander Stephens”. http://www.impeach-andrewjohnson.com/ 11BiographiesKeyIndividuals/AlexanderStephens.htm. Online. 13. “George Bush”. http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/burke/ bush.html. Online. 14. “George Bush”. http://www.interlink-cafe.com/uspresidents/ 41st.htm. Online.

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