The Rebellion Inexcusable: / Warning and Protest Against It. / By Alexander Stephens. / [followed by seven paragraphs of text, printing a fraudulent version of Stephens's address to the Georgia Convention of January, 1861, on the question of secession]

Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, [1863?]. Narrow printed broadside, 16 x 5 1/4 inches, the title separated from the text by two thin rules. At the time of the convention, Stephens, who only a short time later would be elected vice-president of the Confederacy, opposed immediate secession, and, in his only address to the convention, a short one, he declared "[secession] cannot receive the sanction of my vote ... [but] if a majority of the delegates dissolve the compact of union ... I shall bow in submission to that decision." The fraudulent version offered here is one of a number of printings, in separate printings and as part of compilations, that first appeared in 1863, thinly-veiled propaganda giving the impression that Stephens spoke forcefully, and at length, about the folly of secession. He denounced the publication in his memoirs (A Constitutional View of the War Between the States, 1868, Vol. I, p. 23). OCLC locates two copies (New York Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society). Folded, but a very good example. (#4995). Item #58050

Price: $300.00