After several unhappy years teaching in school, Stephens began legal studies, was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1834, and began a successful career as a lawyer in Crawfordville. During his 32 years of practice, he gained a reputation as a capable defender of the wrongfully accused. None of his clients charged with
capital crimes were executed. As his wealth increased, Stephens began acquiring land and
slaves. By the time of the Civil War, Stephens owned 34 slaves and several thousand acres. He entered politics in 1836 and was elected to the
Georgia House of Representatives, serving there until 1841. In 1842, he was elected to the
Georgia Senate. Stephens served in the U.S. House of Representatives from October 2, 1843, to March 3, 1859, during the 28th through the 35th Congresses. In 1843, he was elected to the House as a
Whig, in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of
Mark A. Cooper. This seat was at-large, as Georgia did not have U.S. House Districts until the following year. Stephens was re-elected from the 7th District as a Whig in 1844, 1846, and 1848, as a
Unionist in 1850, and again as a Whig (from the 8th District) in 1852. In 1854 and 1856, his re-elections came as a
Democrat. As a national lawmaker during the crucial decades before the Civil War, Stephens was involved in all of the major sectional battles. He began as a moderate defender of slavery but later accepted the prevailing Southern rationale utilized to defend the institution. Stephens quickly rose to prominence as one of the leading Southern Whigs in the House. He supported the annexation of Texas in 1845. Along with his fellow Whigs, he vehemently opposed the
Mexican–American War, and later became an equally vigorous opponent of the
Wilmot Proviso, which would have barred the extension of slavery into territories that were acquired after the war. He also controversially tabled the
Clayton Compromise, which would have excluded slavery from the
Oregon Territory and left the issue of slavery in New Mexico and California to the
U.S. Supreme Court. This would later nearly kill Stephens when he argued with Georgia Supreme Court Justice
Francis H. Cone, who stabbed him repeatedly in a fit of anger. Stephens was physically outmatched by his larger assailant, but he remained defiant during the attack, refusing to recant his positions even at the cost of his life. Only the intervention of others saved him. Stephens's wounds were serious, and he returned home to Crawfordville to recover. He and Cone reconciled before Cone's death in 1859. Stephens and fellow Georgia Representative
Robert Toombs campaigned for the election of
Zachary Taylor as president in 1848. Both were chagrined and angered when Taylor proved less than pliable on aspects of the
Compromise of 1850. After Taylor supported the ratification of
New Mexico's anti-slavery
state constitution and threatened to send troops to defend it against Texas's territorial claims, Stephens published an open letter in the
National Intelligencer calling for Taylor's
impeachment, and he warned that if the United States were to fire the first shots against Texas it would lead to the Southern states to secede from the Union. Stephens and Toombs both supported said compromise between
slave and free states, though they opposed the exclusion of slavery from the territories on the theory that such lands belonged to all of the people. The pair returned from the District of Columbia to Georgia to secure support for the measures at home. Both men were instrumental in drafting and approving the
Georgia Platform, which rallied Unionists throughout the
Deep South. Stephens and Toombs were not only political allies but also lifelong friends. Stephens was described as "a highly sensitive young man of serious and joyless habits of consuming ambition, of poverty-fed pride, and of morbid preoccupation within self," a contrast to the "robust, wealthy, and convivial Toombs. But this strange camaraderie endured with singular accord throughout their lives." By this time, Stephens had departed the ranks of the Whig party, whose Northern wing generally was not amenable to some Southern interests. Back in Georgia, Stephens, Toombs, and Democratic U.S. Representative
Howell Cobb formed the
Constitutional Union Party. The party overwhelmingly carried the state in the ensuing election, and, for the first time, Stephens returned to Congress no longer a Whig. Stephens spent the next few years as a Constitutional Unionist. He vigorously opposed the dissolution of the Constitutional Union Party as it began to crumble in 1851. Political realities soon forced the Union Democrats in the party to affiliate once more with the national party, and, by mid-1852, the combination of both Democrats and Whigs, which had formed a party behind the Compromise, had ended. The sectional issue surged to the forefront again in 1854, when
Senator Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois moved to organize the Nebraska Territory, all of which lay north of the
Missouri Compromise line, in the
Kansas–Nebraska Act. This legislation aroused fury in the North because it applied the
popular sovereignty principle to the Territory, in violation of the Missouri Compromise. Had it not been for Stephens, the bill probably never would have passed in the House. He employed an obscure House rule to bring the bill to a vote. He later called this "the greatest glory of my life." From this point on, Stephens voted with the Democrats. Until after 1855, Stephens could not properly be called a Democrat, and even then, he never officially declared it. In this move, Stephens broke irrevocably with many of his former Whig colleagues. When the Whig Party disintegrated after the election of 1852, some Whigs flocked to the short-lived
Know-Nothing Party, but Stephens fiercely opposed the Know Nothings both for their secrecy and their anti-immigrant and
anti-Catholic position. Despite his late arrival in the Democratic Party, Stephens quickly rose through the ranks. He even served as
President James Buchanan's floor manager in the House during the fruitless battle for the slave state
Lecompton Constitution for
Kansas Territory in 1857. He was instrumental in framing the failed
English Bill after it became clear that Lecompton would not pass, in order to secure its approval. Stephens did not seek re-election to Congress in 1858. As sectional peace eroded during the next two years, Stephens became increasingly critical of Southern extremists. Although virtually the entire South had spurned Douglas as a traitor to Southern rights because he had opposed the Lecompton Constitution and broken with Buchanan, Stephens remained on good terms with Douglas and even served as one of his
presidential electors in the
election of 1860. On November 14, 1860, Stephens delivered a speech titled "The Assertions of a Secessionist." He said: On the eve of the outbreak of the American Civil War, Stephens counseled delaying a military move against U.S.-held
Fort Sumter and
Fort Pickens so that the Confederacy could build up its forces and stockpile resources. ==Vice President of the Confederate States (1861-1865)==