"The Cause of the South..."

Featuring the Life and Works of Alexander Stephens

As his state's and country's constitutions were being "reconstructed" by the sole authority of Yankee cannon and bayonet, Alexander Stephens predicted that both North and South would eventually realize that "The cause of the South is the cause of us all."

Alexander Stephens

Although a strong advocate of state rights, Stephens had argued and voted against secession in Georgia's convention, and had accurately predicted the devastation of the War Between the States. After serving as Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, he devoted himself to restoring goodwill between the sections, writing history, and arguing for the "inestimable right ... of local self-government." His predictions of the increased centralization and growth of government power have been chillingly accurate, and his analysis of their cause is of great importance to freedom-loving Americans in any age.

Stephens' private life was as remarkable as his public, and although not well known, he deserves to be counted among the greatest of American statesmen, orators, and even heroes. This collection contains every public-domain document by or about him and his brother Linton that we are aware of.

Robert Toombs

The robust and tempestuous Robert Toombs is a stark contrast with the frail and even-tempered Stephens, but the two Georgians were close friends and associates. Stephens asserts that but for a misunderstanding at the election, Toombs would probably have been the President of the Confederate States of America, instead of Jefferson Davis. Instead, he spent the war as Secretary of State and Brigadier General. After the war, he escaped prison by fleeing the country. After returning, he refused to apply for the restoration of his civil rights, and proudly remained unreconstructed. He was a remarkable businessman, lawyer, orator and statesman. While Stephens remained optimistic about the future, believing that Americans would eventually come to their senses, Toombs had almost no interest in getting along with the post-War order, nor in persuading others to his view. Consequently and regrettably, the body of work by him is a great deal smaller.

Contents

The following is a list of the content. Where the book is available, we have included a link to it for immediate download. All files are published in the Adobe® Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF), which retains the look and feel of a tangible book, with precise page formatting and the ability to print a hardcopy on your local printer. In order to view PDF documents, you must have a PDF viewer. The most popular of these is the Adobe Acrobat® Reader, which is freely available. Click here to download the Adobe Acrobat® Reader.

Life and Works of Alexander H. Stephens

• A Constitutional View of the War Between the States - volume 1 (by Alexander Stephens)
• A Constitutional View of the War Between the States - volume 2 (by Alexander Stephens)
• The Reviewers Reviewed (by Alexander Stephens)
• Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens while a Prisoner at Fort Warren (by Alexander Stephens, edited by Myrta Lockett Avary)
• A Compendium of the History of the United States (by Alexander Stephens)
• A Comprehensive and Popular History of the United States (by Alexander Stephens)
• Life of Alexander H. Stephens (by Richard Malcolm Johnston & William Hand Browne)
• Alexander H. Stephens in Public and Private (includes his letters and speeches) (by Henry Cleveland)
• The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb (edited by Ulrich B. Phillips)
• Alexander H. Stephens (by Louis Pendleton)
• Life of Linton Stephens (Alexander Stephens' brother) (by James D. Waddell)

Life of Robert Toombs

• The Life of Robert Toombs (by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips)
• Robert Toombs: Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage (by Pleasant A. Stovall)

Supporting Works

• Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution - Volume 1 (edited by Jonathan Elliot)
• Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution - Volume 2 (edited by Jonathan Elliot)
• Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution - Volume 3 (edited by Jonathan Elliot)
• Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution - Volume 4 (edited by Jonathan Elliot)
• Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution - Volume 5 (edited by Jonathan Elliot)
• The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution, by Friedrich Gentz, translated by John Quincy Adams.
• The Federal Government: Its True Nature and Character, by Abel Upshur.
• A Defence of Virginia, by Robert L. Dabney.
• A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, by William Rawle.
• A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, by John C. Calhoun, edited by Richard K. Cralle.
• Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson), by Robert L. Dabney.

Contrasting Works

• The Civil War in the United States (Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, edited by Richard Enmale, reprinted with permission from International Publishers Company, Inc., New York)

Other Information

• We are releasing individual books for download as they become available.
• We hope to add other documents in future editions of this product.
• We hope to make the entire collection available on CD-ROM at some time in the future for a reasonable media fee.

The following is a list of works that we would like to publish as part of this collection, but which are not yet in the public domain, listed in chronological order:

• Acceptance and Unveiling of the Statue of Alexander Hamilton Stephens Presented by the State of Georgia, United States Government Printing Office, 1929.
• Little Aleck; a Life of Alexander H. Stephens, the Fighting Vice-President of the Confederacy, by Eudora Ramsay Richardson, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1932.
• Alexander H. Stephens, A Biography, by Rudolph Radama Von Abele, Knopf, 1946.
• Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography, by Thomas Edwin Schott, Louisiana State University Press, 1988.

Target Audience

This content is suitable for both the casual and serious student of the War Between the States. One of the consequences of the War Between the States is the federalization of our educational system. Even children of the South are taught to be ashamed of their patriot fathers. Stephens thoroughly and methodically debunks the dizzying array of myths about the War. For those who were taught that the War was waged by the North to free the slaves, please ask yourselves the following questions:

• Would a society that was 94% non-slaveholding enthusiastically take 40% casualties and have its entire economic infrastructure either destroyed or stolen for the sake of defending slavery?
• If slavery was the fundamental issue of the War, why was it necessary not only to legally abolish slavery with the 13th Amendment (which the South willingly submitted to after the War), but also to de facto destroy state sovereignty and the principle of local self-government with the 14th and 15th Amendments (which were never legally ratified)?
• Is your knowledge of the War Between the States based on the teachings of a government-controlled school? Even if you were schooled in a private setting, were your teachers taught in government-controlled schools?

If these questions interest you, this content is must-have material.

Click here to take a Quiz on the War Between the States.

Other Resources

• League of the South. From its home page: "[The goal of the LS is] To advance the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honourable means." This site contains many useful resources, including hardcopy reprints (including some books listed on this page), and modern books.