This maiden legislative effort of the young representative from Taliaferro was characterized by far-sighted statesmanship as well as by ringing eloquence.

In those days the iron horse was an innovation; and there were countless conservatives in Georgia who looked with distrust upon this swarthy interloper, declaring that "live stock" was good enough for them. However, the war upon the bill was mainly led by those who doubted the wisdom of permitting the State to undertake by legislative enactment what properly belonged to individual enterprise.

But Mr. Stephens, who was less than twenty-four years of age at this time, nevertheless possessed the shrewd business insight to see that this proposed line meant the initial impulse to the future material and industrial development of upper Georgia, which had just been wrested from the Indian population; and he thought that, rather than delay matters, the State, which was then prosperous and financially able to prosecute an undertaking which promised to yield such handsome returns, should improve the opportunity which was thus offered.

The subsequent history of the Western and Atlantic Railroad has amply justified the position which Mr. Stephens took at this time and the views which he then held. Not only have the profits arising from the rental of the road put back into the State treasury what it cost, many times over, but the prosperity which it began to bring at once to the whole of Cherokee Georgia, now the wealthiest portion of the State, immediately increased the values of property represented on the tax digest. First under the able initiative of Governor Herschel V. Johnson and afterwards under the skillful supervision of Governor Jo

seph E. Brown, who became the president of the leasing company, with Major Campbell Wallace as superintendent, the road became one of the handsomest assets in the State, and to-day yields an annual rental of four hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which goes into the common-school fund and helps to educate the children of Georgia. Dr. Wm. H. Felton, of Bartow, was largely responsible for the advantageous terms upon which the existing lease was made.

Where the stake was driven to mark the southern terminus of this line near the eastern banks of the Chattahoochee river two other lines subsequently met, forming connections with Macon and Augusta; and at this point of triple convergence there sprang up a settlement which was christened Terminus. Two years later this settlement budded into Marthasville, and when eventually it blossomed into full maturity it became Atlanta, the present capital city of the State and the wide-awake and puissant young metropolis of the South.

Judge Iverson L. Harris, who was a member of the State Legislature of 1836 and heard Mr. Stephens make his great speech, says that he not only electrified the house but completely turned the scales and that undoubtedly he did more than any one else to bring about the success of the measure whose defeat seemed imminent.

But to show the sort of opposition which Mr. Stephens had to meet there was an imaginative youngster in the house who argued with facetious rhetoric that "the road would have to pass through a country filled with mountains so steep that a spider would break his neck in trying to scale the cliffs."

This amusing incident was recalled after the lapse of

many years by old Professor Rutherford, long the professor of mathematics at the State University, who naively remarked in telling the anecdote that, "if such shortsighted counsels had prevailed in the General Assembly, Cherokee Georgia, instead of being the most populous and wealthy portion of the State, would still be a gymnasium for insects."

While the emergence of Mr. Stephens at this critical moment upon the scene of legislative activity seems somewhat providential, it was very much against his wishes that he was prevailed upon to offer himself in the preceding county election. He was just beginning to achieve his earliest victories at the bar in Middle Georgia and was more intent upon gathering the outstretched laurels of his chosen profession than upon chasing the evanescent rainbow of political illusions. But the patriot in Mr. Stephens even at this early stage of his career was far more distinctly marked than was the man of selfish greed; and, realizing that service was transcendently more honorable than gain, he relinquished his cherished ambition for distinction at the bar and yielded to the solicitations of his countrymen.

Of course he did not entirely abandon the practice of the law, and frequently at intervals when released from public obligations he appeared in the courts for the purpose of arguing some of the most important cases of the day; but his public duties were such that he could conveniently devote only the smallest fraction of his time to his professional interests; and in meeting his legislative obligations no man in Georgia was more scrupulously honest than Mr. Stephens.

Though he was kept constantly poor by reason of his loyal adherence to this principle of honest dealing, when he might, without criticism, have increased his legal income, nothing could induce him to act otherwise. He felt that his time and his talents belonged to the people who had honored him in the counsels of the State and nation; and he remained steadfastly at his post of duty like the sentinel of Herculaneum.

But he carried the knowledge of the law into his legislative work and was at all times recognized as the lawyer preeminent whose opinions, especially on great constitution questions, were deeply profound and almost invariably correct.

Another convincing proof of Mr. Stephens's patrotism is found in his weak physical organism. Frail from his youth he enjoyed hardly an hour's exemption from bodily distress, and most men afflicted with such an inherently weak constitution would have preferred the ease of private life to the harness of official station, however lucrative or honorable; but Mr. Stephens permitted no such thought of self to lull him into indolent repose, and his sleepless nights as well as his pain-tortured days were alike devoted to his country's weal.

Burdened as he was by infirmities and cares, such as fall to the lot of few men, the delicate invalid never lost the sunny sweetness of his temper, but preserved unchangeably through life the golden charm of childhood; and he marvelously managed in spite of all his handicaps to find enough leisure for writing that monumental work, "The War Between the States"; and this single literary achievement will blend his name immortally with the memories of that great struggle, entirely apart from

the distinguished place he filled as the Vice-President of the "storm-cradled" Confederate nation.

Some of the members of the bar of Middle Georgia with whom Mr. Stephens came in contact at this time, most of them his seniors, but with whom he broke more than one polished lance in forensic tilts, were Eli H. Baxter, Nathan C. Sayre, Garnett Andrews, Daniel Chandler, Robert Toombs, William C. Dawson, Francis H. Cone, and Joseph Henry Lumpkin.

The vandal years have marred the bright tinsel with which many of these names once glittered; but those who are now forgotten as well as those who are still remembered, were legal giants who wielded the club of Hercules and bore the armor of Saul.

Inheriting no rich patrimonial acres because of financial losses which his father had sustained, Mr. Stephens was early left an orphan dependent largely upon his own exertions; but sympathetic friends supplied him with funds with which to secure an education, all of which he returned dollar for dollar.

The generosity of which he was the grateful recipient bore fruit in similar benefactions when he in turn was able to be generous; and no public man in Georgia ever defrayed out of his own meager pocket-book the college expenses of so many boys whom he took it upon himself to educate.

In the impulsive desire born of an early conversion he first chose the ministry; but before he left Athens the law had become so attractive to his legal bent of mind