Most famous for serving as the vice president of the Confederacy during the Civil War (1861-65), Alexander Hamilton Stephens was a near-constant force in state and national politics for a half-century. Born near Crawfordville, in Taliaferro County, on February 11, 1812, to Margaret Grier and Andrew Baskins Stephens, the young Stephens was orphaned at fourteen, which intensified his already melancholic disposition. He graduated from Franklin College (later the University of Georgia) in 1832 and gained admittance to the bar two years later. There followed a steady and uninterrupted rise to political prominence.
Founder Of Mother’s Day Anna Marie Jarvis is the founder of the Mother’s Day holiday in the United States. Her birthplace, known as the Anna Jarvis House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It was built in 1854 and is a two-story, frame dwelling, which is also notable as General…
Summary George Mason was a wealthy planter and an influential lawmaker who served as a member of the Fairfax County Court (1747–1752; 1764–1789), the Truro Parish vestry (1749–1785), the House of Burgesses (1758–1761), and the House of Delegates (1776–1780). In 1769, he helped organize a nonimportation movement to protest British imperial policies, and he later…
The worst maritime disaster in American history occurred on April 27, 1865, when the steamship Sultana exploded and burned on the Mississippi River while dangerously overloaded with passengers. The Sultana, a typical side-wheeler coal-burning steamer, was built in 1863. It made frequent trips up and down the Mississippi River between New Orleans and St. Louis…
The hard-fighting brigade of Kentucky Confederates etched a remarkable chapter in Civil War history as the ultimate example of divided loyalties. On April 15, 1861, three days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteer troops. Their purpose was to augment the Federal Army that would put…
American soldier, lawyer, and politician from Paris, Texas, United States. He was a Major General for the Confederacy in the Civil War and later represented Texas in the U.S. Senate. Early life Samuel was born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, to Rice and Lucy (Bell) Maxey. His father was a lawyer, and in 1834 he moved the…
George Wythe Randolph was a lawyer, Confederate general, and, briefly, Confederate secretary of war during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The grandson of former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, Randolph hailed from an elite Virginia family but largely shunned public life until John Brown‘s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. He supported secession, founded the Richmond…
Moses Jacob Ezekiel was one of the most celebrated sculptors of his day, his works appearing in civic spaces, art museums, and universities across the world. Born in Richmond to a family of Spanish-Jewish origin, Ezekiel was the first Jewish cadet to attend the Virginia Military Institute, and he fought at the Battle of New Market (1864) during the American Civil War (1861–1865). He later considered a career in medicine but studied sculpture instead. In 1869 Ezekiel relocated to Berlin and won admittance to the royal academy there; four years later he became the first non-German to win the school’s prestigious art competition. For the rest of his life, working out of a studio in Rome, Ezekiel created sculpture, often by the commission and for public display. He generally modeled in clay and either sculpted from marble or cast in bronze, creating heroic lifelike portraits that meditated on such themes as religion, religious freedom, and patriotism for both the United States and the Confederacy. He fashioned a bronze of Thomas Jefferson for the city of Louisville, Kentucky, that was replicated for the University of Virginia. He also created a memorial to his fellow cadets who fought at New Market as well as a memorial to the Confederate soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Ezekiel was buried beneath it after his death in 1917.
John Tyler is famous for being the first vice president in the history of the United States to assume the full power of the presidency upon the death of a sitting president. In what became known as the “Tyler Precedent”, John Tyler’s rise to the presidency happened rather fortuitously, as some may describe. It is…
