He was an officer in the Confederate States Army and a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church who also served as 4th superintendent of the South Carolina Military Academy (now The Citadel).

He returned to the Citadel Academy as a professor of belles lettres and French the next year; promoted to the rank of major in the South Carolina Militia, he became head of the department of engineering and astronomy.

[2] In January 1861, South Carolina Governor Francis Wilkinson Pickens ordered a detachment of SCMA cadets under the command of Stevens to man a battery of cannons on Morris Island, South Carolina with orders to fire on any vessel flying the American flag entering Charleston harbor; on January 9, the battery shelled the Union steamship Star of the West, which was attempting to resupply Fort Sumter, it is considered to be the first shots of the American Civil War.

He was directed by Governor Pickens to organize the Holcombe Legion which consisted of infantry and cavalry units which were assigned to the "Evans Brigade" in the Army of Northern Virginia with Stevens as its first commander.

[7][8][9] In 1877, Stevens spearheaded an effort to reopen the South Carolina Military Academy which had been closed and occupied by Union forces at the end of the Civil War, he called a meeting of graduates who drafted a resolution which was presented to the state legislature and the school resumed operations in 1882.