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Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792 – August 11, 1868), of Pennsylvania, was a Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a witty, sarcastic speaker and flamboyant party leader, Stevens dominated the House from 1861 until his death and wrote much of the financial legislation that paid for the American Civil War. Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner were the prime leaders of the Radical Republicans during the American Civil War and Reconstruction.
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Quotations
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
If their whole country (the South) must be laid waste and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction, so be it.
He that hath a trade, hath an estate.
Encyclopedia
Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792 – August 11, 1868), of Pennsylvania, was a Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a witty, sarcastic speaker and flamboyant party leader, Stevens dominated the House from 1861 until his death and wrote much of the financial legislation that paid for the American Civil War. Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner were the prime leaders of the Radical Republicans during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. A biographer characterizes him as, "The Great Commoner, savior of free public education in Pennsylvania, national Republican leader in the struggles against slavery in the United States and intrepid mainstay of the attempt to secure racial justice for the freedmen during Reconstruction, the only member of the House of Representatives ever to have been known, even if mistakenly, as the 'dictator' of Congress."
Historians' views of Stevens have swung sharply since his death as interpretations of Reconstruction have changed. The Dunning School, which viewed the period as a disaster and held racist views of blacks, saw Stevens as a villain for his advocacy of harsh measures in the South, and this characterization held sway for most of the 20th Century. Austin Stoneman, the naive and fanatical congressman in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, was modeled on Stevens. Additionally, he was portrayed as a villain in The Leopard's Spots, the first novel in the trilogy upon which "Birth of a Nation" was based. He was also portrayed (by Lionel Barrymore) as a villain and fanatic in Tennessee Johnson, the 1942 MGM film about the life of President Andrew Johnson. The congressman's reputation has been rehabilitated since the rise of the neo-abolitionist school in the 1960s, and Stevens has been praised for his far-sighted views on race relations.
Early life
Stevens Italic textwas born in Danville, Vermont on April 4, 1792. His parents had arrived there from Methuen, Massachusetts around 1786. He suffered from many hardships during his childhood, including a club foot. The fate of his father Joshua Stevens, an alcoholic, profligate shoemaker who was unable to hold a steady job, is uncertain. He may have died at home, abandoned the family, or been killed in the War of 1812; in any case, he left his wife, Sally (Morrill) Stevens, and four small sons in dire poverty. Having completed his course of study at Peacham Academy, Stevens entered Dartmouth College as a sophomore in 1811, and graduated in 1814; before doing so, he spent one term and part of another at the University of Vermont. He then moved to York, Pennsylvania, where he taught school and studied law. After admission to the bar, he established a successful law practice, first in Gettysburg, then in Lancaster in 1815. He later took on several young lawyers, among them Edward McPherson, who later became his protegé and ardent supporter in Congress.
Stevens never married but he did adopt two nephews. He shared his home and parental responsibilities with his mixed-race housekeeper of twenty years, Lydia Hamilton Smith, but historians are unsure whether the relationship was sexual, as was widely rumored. In any case, Stevens fathered no children with Lydia.
Political life
At first, Stevens belonged to the Federalist Party, but switched to the Anti-Masonic Party, then to the Whig Party, and finally to the Republican Party. In 1833, he was elected on the Anti-Masonic ticket to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, where he served intermittently until 1842. He introduced legislation to curb secret societies, to provide more funds to Pennsylvania's colleges, and to put a constitutional limit on state debt. He refused to sign the new state constitution of 1838 because it did not give the vote to black citizens. He also came to the defense of a new state law, passed on April 1, 1834, providing free public schools. Newly elected members of the Pennsylvania state senate tried to repeal the public education act, while the lower house tried to preserve it. Although Stevens had been reelected with instructions to favor repeal, in a great speech, he defended free public education and persuaded the Pennsylvania Assembly to vote 2-1 in favor of keeping the new law.
Stevens devoted most of his enormous energies to the destruction of what he considered the Slave Power, that is the conspiracy he saw of slave owners to seize control of the federal government and block the progress of liberty. In 1848, while still a Whig party member, Stevens was elected to serve in the House of Representatives. He served in congress from 1849 to 1853, and then from 1859 until his death in 1868.
He defended and supported Native Americans, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and women. However, the defense of runaway or fugitive slaves gradually began to consume the greatest amount of his time, until the abolition of slavery became his primary political and personal focus. He was actively involved in the Underground Railroad, assisting runaway slaves in getting to Canada. An Underground Railroad site has been discovered under his office in Lancaster, PA. This office, along with Lydia Smith's home, is located next to the new conference center in the center of Lancaster. The office, along with Lydia Smith's home, may soon become a museum open to the public.
During the American Civil War Stevens was one of the three or four most powerful men in Congress, using his slashing oratorical powers, his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, and above all his single-minded devotion to victory. His power grew during Reconstruction as he dominated the House and helped to draft both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Reconstruction Act in 1867.
Radical Republicanism
He was one of two Congressmen in July 1861 opposing the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution stating the limited war aim of restoring the Union while preserving slavery; he helped repeal it in December. In August, 1861, he supported the first law attacking slavery, the Confiscation Act that said owners would forfeit any slaves they allowed to help the Confederate war effort. By December he was the first Congressional leader pushing for emancipation as a tool to weaken the rebellion. He called for total war on January 22, 1862:
"Let us not be deceived. Those who talk about peace in sixty days are shallow statesmen. The war will not end until the government shall more fully recognize the magnitude of the crisis; until they have discovered that this is an internecine war in which one party or the other must be reduced to hopeless feebleness and the power of further effort shall be utterly annihilated. It is a sad but true alternative. The South can never be reduced to that condition so long as the war is prosecuted on its present principles. The North with all its millions of people and its countless wealth can never conquer the South until a new mode of warfare is adopted. So long as these states are left the means of cultivating their fields through forced labor, you may expend the blood of thousands and billions of money year by year, without being any nearer the end, unless you reach it by your own submission and the ruin of the nation. Slavery gives the South a great advantage in time of war. They need not, and do not, withdraw a single hand from the cultivation of the soil. Every able-bodied white man can be spared for the army. The black man, without lifting a weapon, is the mainstay of the war. How, then, can the war be carried on so as to save the Union and constitutional liberty? Prejudices may be shocked, weak minds startled, weak nerves may tremble, but they must hear and adopt it. Universal emancipation must be proclaimed to all. Those who now furnish the means of war, but who are the natural enemies of slaveholders, must be made our allies. If the slaves no longer raised cotton and rice, tobacco and grain for the rebels, this war would cease in six months, even though the liberated slaves would not raise a hand against their masters. They would no longer produce the means by which they sustain the war."
Stevens led the Radical Republican faction in their battle against the bankers over the issuance of money during the Civil War. Stevens made various speeches in Congress in favor of President Lincoln and Henry Carey's "Greenback" system, interest-free currency in the form of fiat government-issued United States Notes that would effectively threaten the bankers' profits in being able to issue and control the currency through fractional reserve loans. Stevens warned that a debt-based monetary system controlled by for-profit banks would lead to the eventual bankruptcy of the people, saying "the Government and not the banks should have the benefit from creating the medium of exchange," yet after Lincoln's assassination the Radical Republicans lost this battle and a National banking monopoly emerged in the years after.
Stevens was so outspoken in his condemnation of the Confederacy that Maj. Gen. Jubal Early of the Army of Northern Virginia made a point of burning much of his iron business, at modern day Caledonia State Park, to the ground during the Gettysburg Campaign. Early claimed that this action was in direct retaliation for Stevens' perceived support of similar atrocities by the Union Army in the South.
Stevens was the leader of the Radical Republicans who had full control of Congress after the 1866 elections. He largely set the course of Reconstruction. He wanted to begin to rebuild the South, using military power to force the South to recognize the equality of Freedmen. When President Johnson resisted, Stevens proposed and passed the resolution for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868.
Stevens told W. W. Holden, the Republican governor of North Carolina, in December, 1866, "It would be best for the South to remain ten years longer under military rule, and that during this time we would have Territorial Governors, with Territorial Legislatures, and the government at Washington would pay our general expenses as territories, and educate our children, white and colored and both."
Death
Thaddeus Stevens died at midnight on August 11, 1868, in Washington, D.C., less than three months after the acquittal of Johnson by the Senate. Stevens' coffin lay in state inside the Capitol Rotunda, flanked by a Black Honor Guard from Massachusetts. Twenty thousand people, one-half of whom were African-American, attended his funeral in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He chose to be buried in the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery because it was the only cemetery that would accept people without regard to race.
In November, he was nominated by his party and elected by a landslide, for a term of two more years, as a tribute to his memory.
Stevens wrote the inscription on his head stone that reads:
"I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, equality of man before his Creator."
Stevens monument is at the intersection of North Mulberry Street and West Chestnut Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Legacy
Stevens dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. He believed from his personal experience that being different or having a different perspective can enrich society. He believed that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed but celebrated.
In his will he left $50,000 to establish Stevens, a school for the relief and refuge of homeless, indigent orphans.
"They shall be carefully educated in the various branches of English education and all industrial trades and pursuits. No preference shall be shown on account of race or color in their admission or treatment. Neither poor Germans, Irish or Mahometan, nor any others on account their race or religion of their parents, shall be excluded. They shall be fed at the same table."
This original bequest has now evolved into Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. The College continually strives to provide underprivileged individuals with opportunities and to create an environment in which individual differences are valued and nurtured.
In Washington, D.C., the Stevens Elementary School was built in 1868 as one of the first publicly funded schools for black children and is now the city's oldest school in continuous operation. (President Carter's daughter Amy went there.)
Buildings associated with Stevens are currently being restored by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster, PA with an eye toward focusing on the establishment of a $20 million dollar museum. These include his home, law offices, and a nearby tavern. The effort also celebrates the contributions of his housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith who was involved in the underground railroad.
See also
Primary sources
- Palmer, Beverly Wilson and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds. The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens 2 vol (1998), 900pp; his speeches plus letters to and from Stevens
- Stevens, Thaddeus, et al. Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, at the First Session ...by United States Congress. Joint Committee on Reconstruction, (1866) 791 pages;
- Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Thaddeus Stevens: Delivered ...by United States 40th Cong., 3d sess., 1868-1869. (1869) 84 pages;
External links
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