25148

Alexander Stephens' Wheelchair.

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:2,000.00 - 3,000.00 USD
Alexander Stephens' Wheelchair.
<B>Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens' Personal Wheelchair.</B></I> This 96 pound, shrill voiced man was once dubbed "The Strongest Man in the South" due to his intelligence and prominence. Coming from humble, impoverished origins, Stephens raised himself up and became a wealthy Southern lawyer with all the outward displays of wealth which were characteristic of Southern opulence; land and....slaves. While Stephens was an advocate of slavery, even being quoted as saying that inferring that the Constitution held that all races were equal was fundamentally wrong. He said: "Our new [Confederate] government is founded...upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition." <BR><BR>Despite these strong views which he expressed vocally in his famous "Cornerstone Speech" given on March 21, 1861, in Georgia, Stephens opposed secession and even after he relented and voted for it along with his other Georgia companions, he was still a member of a more moderate Confederate group, who favored a peaceful resolution and end to the war all together. Stephens was an avid state's rights supporter and the methods and actions of Jefferson Davis soon drove the President and Vice President of the Confederacy into political opposition. Despite his position against his own Commander in chief and government, he was still imprisoned for five months after the Civil War, but was never barred from federal office unlike Jefferson Davis. <r<rThe lot offered here is a tangible reminder of the Confederacy, and the fact that some of our most powerful leaders were often not in the strongest of bodies. There was once a newspaper reporter who described Stephens as such: "A little way up the aisle sits a queer-looking bundle. An immense cloak, a high hat, and peering somewhat out of the middle aË