Alexander H. Stephens never weighed more than 100 pounds, suffered chronic illness from childhood, and was orphaned at 14 after losing his mother as an infant and his father and stepmother to pneumonia. This episode follows him from his uncle’s library to Franklin College, a brief career as a strict schoolteacher, and a law practice in Crawfordville where he never lost a client to the death penalty, before he entered the U.S. House in 1843 as a Whig and became a wealthy enslaver.

Stephens survived being stabbed by Georgia judge Francis Cone in 1848 rather than retract a statement, used an obscure procedural maneuver to force passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and compared the Union to the Garden of Eden while arguing against secession. When Georgia seceded he followed his state and became Confederate vice president, delivering the Cornerstone Speech in 1861. He then broke with Jefferson Davis over conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus, met Lincoln at the Hampton Roads conference, and after prison worked to recast the war as a constitutional dispute in multi volume histories.

• He took the middle name Hamilton from a Presbyterian mentor during his schooling.
• He later reconciled with the judge who had stabbed him.
• At Hampton Roads, Lincoln arranged the release of Stephens’ nephew from a Northern prison camp.
• Pardoned by Andrew Johnson after about five months in prison, he was elected to the Senate but refused his seat, then served in the House from 1873.
• He was elected governor of Georgia in 1882 and died in 1883, four months into his term.