Thaddeus Stevens

American politician

• Born: April 4, 1792
• Birthplace: Danville, Vermont
• Died: August 11, 1868
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

Although greatly disliked, both during his lifetime and by some later historians, Stevens was the leading American congressional advocate of a just policy for former slaves, and he had a larger commitment to equality for all people.

Early Life

Born with a clubfoot, Thaddeus Stevens was the last of four children of Sally and Joshua Stevens. His mother, who had the greatest influence on his personality, was a Baptist. Her Calvinism, evangelism, and piety contributed to his later devotion to principle and duty. She worked, saved money, and taught young Stevens. She wanted her son to have the finest available education, and she succeeded. Stevens’s father, Joshua, was a generally unsuccessful shoemaker. The family was poor. Thaddeus was close to his mother since she provided most of his elementary education. She discouraged him from playing or associating with the local boys because of his physical disability.

Under his mother’s guidance, Stevens learned to read the Bible at a young age. Intellectually, he was not disadvantaged. Although he had various run-ins with those in authority, at the age of twenty-two he was graduated from Dartmouth College. He was a shy young man who nevertheless often spoke his mind on issues and situations throughout his long life. Undoubtedly, his verbal skills were compensation for his physical disability; his wit and scorn became legendary.

In 1814, Stevens moved to York, Pennsylvania, to begin his law practice. He soon moved to the village of Gettysburg and became a leading lawyer in the area and a partner in the James D. Paxton Iron Works. Stevens served on the Gettysburg town council. His earlier political activity was with the Federalist Party, but as that party declined, Stevens became a leader in the Anti-Masonic movement because he distrusted the influence of secret societies in a republic. He believed that secret societies were elitist and created aristocracies of special privilege for their membership. Though the Anti-Masons generally became Whigs, Stevens was never popular with that party’s leadership despite his strong opposition to Andrew Jackson and his policies. From his first political experience, Stevens was a strong nationalist whose program included the belief that government could create opportunities for all men. He never retreated from that general belief.

In 1833, Stevens was elected to the Pennsylvania house of representatives. During the next ten years, Stevens was politically active. He opposed any propositions based on class distinctions or any discrimination based on race or color. For example, Stevens in 1835 saved the principle of free public schools for all in Pennsylvania by defeating a proposed charity or pauper-school law. He also supported state aid to higher education. Stevens was a member of the Board of Canal Commissions, a powerful state planning agency. Unfortunately, his party, the Whigs, greatly influenced by Stevens’s leadership, lost the dispute over control of the state house of representatives known as the Buckshot War. Discouraged, after another election, Stevens retired from party politics. He also needed to repair his personal fortune; his ironworks had put Stevens more than $200,000 in debt. By 1842, Stevens was practicing law in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was fifty years old, and his prospects appeared to be limited; he was, however, on the eve of his greatest contribution to American history.

Life’s Work

From 1848 to 1853, Stevens served in the House of Representatives as a Whig. His strong opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law, as part of the Compromise of 1850, contributed to his defeat. He returned to Lancaster, working to save his failing iron business. An important figure in the creation of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, he was returned to the House in 1858, where he served until his death ten years later.

Despite his age and poor health, Stevens played a major role in the dramatic Civil War decade. He opposed any concession to the threat of secession from the southern states. Early in the war, Stevens clearly stated his belief that the rebel states, by their behavior, had placed themselves beyond the pale of the Constitution; therefore Congress would determine their future status in any program of reconstruction.

In 1861, he became the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and helped formulate the government’s fiscal policy during the war, supporting the distribution of greenbacks, for example. Unlike many of his fellow Americans, Stevens recognized that slavery and the Union’s fate were intermingled. He argued that any slave used in any military capacity should be freed, and he urged confiscation of all property used for insurrectionary purposes. Despite his contemporary and historical reputation for harshness, he never advocated execution for any rebel leaders. In fact, he opposed capital punishment. Nevertheless, he pushed for a punitive program against the Confederacy.

On March 28, 1864, he introduced the Thirteenth Amendment in Congress. As chairman of the House group of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, he was a key member of the Radical Republicans. He contributed to the writing of the Fourteenth Amendment, and he supported it as part of the Reconstruction Act. He broke with President Andrew Johnson over his veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. The alienation increased as Johnson pardoned more and more Confederates. On March 19, 1867, Stevens introduced a bill to confiscate all public land in the South, including individual rebel property. He wanted “forty acres and a mule” for every freedman and planned to use the money from the sale of rebel lands to finance military pensions and to retire the national debt. The bill was not passed. A milder form of Reconstruction prevailed.

Although he personally doubted its success, Thaddeus Stevens introduced the resolution for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. He was chairman of the managers who argued for impeachment before the Senate, but his failing health limited his contribution to the proceedings. The vote for removal failed by one vote. As a practical matter, the president now controlled Reconstruction.

Exhausted by his age and his activities, Stevens died on August 11, 1868, in Washington, D.C. As a matter of honor, the Republicans in his district kept his name on the ballot in the fall election.

Significance

Praised and cursed during his lifetime and after, Stevens nevertheless was one of the few politicians to see how slavery and the Union were combined. A strong abolitionist, Stevens believed that the federal government should ensure civil rights and just economic opportunities for freedmen. Although in the minority during his lifetime because of prevalent racism and because of his contemporaries’ belief in limited government, Stevens’s ideas were later vindicated by historical developments. Without any reservation, Thaddeus Stevens was an egalitarian. He recognized that class and class origins were key elements in determining a person’s chances in life. He believed that government could balance the equitable opportunities between the rich and the poor. In his own way, Stevens’s ideas anticipated the creation of the modern welfare state. Because the cemeteries of Lancaster were for whites only, Stevens, on his deathbed, ordered that he be buried in a black graveyard. In death as in life, Thaddeus Stevens continued questioning the status quo and thereby became one of the greatest American reformers.

Bibliography

Belz, Herman. Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Good overview of the complex issues facing the United States during the Civil War.

Brodie, Fawn M. Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. The most balanced biography. The author still views Stevens’s motivation in terms of punishment and hostility.

Current, Richard N. Old Thad Stevens: A Story of Ambition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942. Highly critical. Stevens is depicted as ambitious for power and is held responsible for many evils, including the rise of big business.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. A basic study for understanding the varied ideologies that influenced Stevens’s life and thought.

Korngold, Ralph. Thaddeus Stevens: A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955. In this biography, Stevens is heroic in stature, pure in motive. Tends to overstate his many achievements.

McCall, Samuel W. Thaddeus Stevens. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899. The best of the biographies written in the nineteenth century. It dwells on the public life of Stevens.

McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. With a massive bibliography, broad chronological scope, and illuminating details, this book is the best available volume on the subject.

Trefousse, Hans L. The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. In a revision of the traditional argument, this book claims that Radicals led Lincoln to positions that he was inclined to take in the first place but had regarded as politically risky.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Balanced and comprehensive biography, portraying Stevens as an egalitarian, powerful orator, and adamant opponent of slavery who was unable to realize his political goals and personal ambitions.

Vaughn, William P. The Antimasonic Party in the United States: 1826-1843. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. An insightful history of political Anti-Masonry. Balanced. Explains why an egalitarian such as Stevens could be attracted to such a cause.