Last night, while my girlfriend and I were settling in to watch the X-Factor, our conversation shifted to the email I had sent earlier in the day regarding "Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens". My girlfriend asked me if I had read the entire Wikipedia article regarding Thaddeus Stevens. I confessed to her that I had not. She then began to tear up and said that, in her mind, Stevens was greater than Lincoln because he lived a complete life of integrity that was dedicated throughout his life to the eradication of slavery. She mentioned not only his role in Congress but also his idealistic philosophy of egalitarianism. She was also amazed at the institutions of learning and inclusion that he bequeathed upon his death.
Today, I did read the full Wikipedia article on Thaddeus Stevens, and while I cannot say that Stevens was "greater" than Lincoln, I do believe that my girlfriend is right with regards to his leading a life of greater integrity. There is no ambiguity as to where Thaddeus Stevens stood, and I am reminded that when we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 2013, it would be a fitting tribute to remember Thaddeus Stevens since that too is part of his legacy.
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Historians' views of Stevens have swung sharply since his death as interpretations of Reconstruction have changed. The
Dunning School (1890s–1940s) held Stevens responsible for demanding harsh treatment of the white South and violating American traditions of
republicanism, depicting Stevens as a villain for his advocacy of harsh measures in the South. This highly negative characterization held sway into the 1950s.
[1] The rise of the neo-abolitionist school in the 1950s
[2] led to a greater appreciation of Stevens' work on civil rights for Freedmen. A recent 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 as the 'dictator' of Congress."
[3]
[edit] Early Life
Stevens's home on Queen Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Stevens was 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.
[4] 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 in 1816, then in
Lancaster, in 1842. He later took on several young lawyers, among them
Edward McPherson, who later became his protégé and ardent supporter in Congress.
[edit] Personal Life
Stevens never married, though there were rumors about his 23-year relationship (1845–68) with his widowed
quadroon[5] housekeeper,
Lydia Hamilton Smith (1813-1884),
[6] [7] Thomas Frederick Woodley's 1937 biography of Stevens,
The Great Leveler [8] examines Smith's interest in Mary Todd Lincoln and her friendship with Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker. Smith patterned her hair and dresses on Mrs. Lincoln.
Carl Sandburg described Smith as "a comely quadroon with Caucasian features and a skin of light-gold tint, a Roman Catholic communicant with Irish eyes ... quiet, discreet, retiring, reputed for poise and personal dignity."
[9] Smith had two sons, William and Isaac, by her late husband, Jacob Smith, and she and Stevens raised the latter's nephews, whom he adopted in the 1840s.
[10]
During her time with Stevens—neighbors considered her his
common law wife
[11], and she was frequently called "Mrs. Stevens" by people who knew her, according to Sandburg
[12]—she invested in real estate and other businesses and owned a prosperous boarding house.
[13]
When Stevens died, Smith was at his bedside, along with his nephews Simon and Thaddeus Stevens Jr., two African American nuns, and several other individuals.
[14] Under Stevens's will, Smith was allowed to choose between a lump sum of $5,000 or a $500 annual allowance; she was also allowed to take any furniture in his house.
[15] With the inheritance, she purchased Stevens's house, where she had lived for many years, and the adjoining lot.
[16]
[edit] 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 House of Representatives, where he served intermittently until 1842.
[17] 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 right to 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—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.
[18]
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.
[10] An Underground Railroad site has been discovered under his office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
[19]
[edit] Radical Republicanism
In July 1861 Congress passed the
Crittenden-Johnson Resolution stating the limited war aim of restoring the Union while preserving slavery; Stevens helped repeal it in December. In August 1861, he supported the Confiscation Act, which 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."
[20]
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 in effect 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 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."
[21]
Stevens's grave in Lancaster
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's coffin lay in state inside the
Capitol Rotunda, flanked by a Black Honor Guard (the Butler Zouaves from the
District of Columbia).
[22] 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.
Stevens wrote the inscription on his headstone 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's monument is at the intersection of North Mulberry Street and West Chestnut Street in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
[edit] 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.
[23] 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 of 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.
Locations named in honor of Thaddeus Stevens in Pennsylvania include the community of
Stevens,
[24] Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in
New Castle,
[24] Stevens School in York, Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in the
Chartiers neighborhood of
Pittsburgh (built in 1940 with architectural details by Charles Bradley Warren), Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in
Chambersburg, Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in
Williamsport, and
Stevens High School in Lancaster. Also, Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School which was in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, during the 1940s and ’50s until it was torn down.
Buildings associated with Stevens are currently being restored by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with an eye toward focusing on the establishment of a $20 million 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.
[edit] Cinematic portrayals
