as well as others, responded to such straightforward uprightness. History records few finer things than Stephens's manly stand against the rush of secession in his State. Protesting in the face of angry thousands, he almost swept the current back. And what is perhaps most impressive of all, he so far retained the confidence and affection of his opponents that they elected him a chief officer of their government when they had established it.
The same qualities that made Stephens acceptable in general social and political circles made him deeply beloved in the more intimate relations of life. He never married. Yet children were very dear to him and he was keenly susceptible to the charm of women's society. Twice at least he was in love. In the first case poverty as well as ill-health obliged him to control his passion. On the second occasion, he was already in Congress and well-to-do in the world. The match was suitable and the lady, it seems, not unwilling. But he would not ask her to marry so frail a bit of humanity. "A woman's due," he thought, "was a husband on whom she could lean and not an invalid whom she must nurse." 23 it was, perhaps, a mistake, for both him and her. At any rate, it added to his bitterness of spirit. Once again one is reminded of Leopardi.
In every way Stephens was a man to whom affection meant much. He had the deepest love for home, for Georgia, her hills, and streams, and forests. His outcry for her from his Northern prison is poignant in its pathos
