Alexander Stephens was a lawyer and politician, serving in the U.S. Congress and most well-known as the Vice-president of the Confederacy.

He was born on Feb. 11, 1811, in a log cabin on a farm near Crawfordville, Ga. His mother died not long after giving birth to him, and his father, who had remarried, died when young Alexander was 12. (His stepmother died a week after that, orphaning the boy.) He and his brother moved in with a nearby uncle, and their other siblings moved in with other relatives. A sickly child, he suffered numerous ailments as an adult, leading to the moniker "Little Aleck."

Stephens attended schools both private and public and then went to Franklin College, graduating in 1832. He was a schoolteacher and then entered study of the law, passing the bar in 1834. He augmented his Crawfordville law practice with a strong interest in politics, and he won election to the Georgia state legislature in 1836. He served in that capacity for five years and then won election to the state senate. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843 and served in that chamber until 1859, representing in turn the Whig Party, the Democratic Party, and the Constitutional Union Party. A Unionist who opposed secession, he was one of the drafters of the Compromise of 1850 and an enthusiastic supporter of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, four years later. He was, at the same time, a strong defender of the rights of states to enact their own policies, including countenancing slavery.

When his home state of Georgia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, Stephens found himself Vice-president of that Confederacy. He helped draft the Confederate constitution and then, on March 21, delivered what came to be known as the "Cornerstone Speech," in which he put forward arguments detailing what he viewed as the fundamental differences between the Confederacy and the United States, namely that the former was founded on the philosophical principle that African-Americans were fundamentally inferior to European-Americans.

Stephens and Confederate President Jefferson Davis began the war consulting each other on the affairs of state. Stephens, however, had little to contribute in terms of military experience or expertise and so was increasingly shut out of the dealings that Davis had with Robert E. Lee and his other generals.

As the war dragged on, Stephens looked for ways in which diplomacy could prevail. He pushed for a prisoner exchange in 1863, but the two sides could not agree on terms. When Davis and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln did arrange a meeting to discuss ending the war, Stephens represented the Confederacy in the Hampton Roads, Va., conference, which took place on Feb. 3, 1865.

Stephens, as a senior government official of the Confederacy, was imprisoned after the war. He served five months at Fort Warren, in Boston, and was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson.

In 1866, Stephens won election to the U.S. Senate. However, congressional Republicans refused to allow Stephens to take his seat in the Senate. He turned to writing, producing A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States in 1870. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives three years later and was able to serve, leaving in 1882, when he was elected governor of Georgia.

Stephens died in office, on March 4, 1883; he was 71.