nd 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,...