Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens (born April 4, 1792 in Danville , Caledonia County , Vermont ; † August 11, 1868 in Washington, DC ), also known as "The Great Commoner" (literally translated "The great commoner" or "The great member of the lower house") , was an American politician , abolitionist, and lawyer .
After studying at Dartmouth College, Stevens trained as a lawyer and practiced in Gettysburg and Lancaster . In the 1820s he was politically more and more active and elected several times for the Anti-Masonic Party ("Anti-Freemason Party") in the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania . After the demise of that party, he joined the Whigs and won a seat in the United States House of Representatives . Increasingly isolated by his abolitionist leitmotif, he left this party after a few years. After a short-term connection with the Know-Nothing Party ("Not-Knower Party") he finally belonged to the radical, abolitionist wing of the Republicans and was again a member of Congress .
During the American Civil War , he continually urged President Abraham Lincoln to enforce the emancipation of slaves, which paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment . As chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means , he held a very powerful position during the Civil War and was not only considered a spokesman for the radical Republicans, but also for the House of Commons as a whole. In the Committee on Ways and Means he was involved in important measures to finance the war, which, in addition to the increase and introduction of new taxes and duties, included the issue of paper money in the form of “greenbacks” and a new banking system. After the Civil War, he worked on the Reconstruction Committee on drafting the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Reconstruction Acts . In the confrontation between President Andrew Johnson , who pursued pro-southern politics, and Congress, Stevens became a key figure. Stevens was the main pioneer for the impeachment proceedings against Johnson, which failed in the Senate because of a two-thirds majority .
Throughout his life he viewed the Democrats as political opponents and in particular fought against the programs pursued by Andrew Jackson . He was feared for his sarcastic and caustic speeches with opponents and had a polarizing effect on public opinion. In addition to the civil rights of Afro-Americans and the liberation of slaves , he campaigned for the construction of railways, protectionism , paper money in the form of “greenbacks” , liberalization of criminal law and free education. He is considered the father of free schools in Pennsylvania . In addition to his political career, he worked successfully as a lawyer, so that he gained national fame even before his political career. One focus was the defense of escaped slaves . He was also a member of the Underground Railroad .
Life
Education and training
Stevens was born in April 1792, the second of four children to Joshua Stevens and Sarah Morril, who had moved from Methuen, Massachusetts to Danville a few years earlier . Born with a clubfoot , Thaddeus was named after the Pole Tadeusz Kościuszko , who fought alongside George Washington in the American War of Independence . As a controversial political figure that he later was, his opponents even used the date of birth to discredit him. So they spread the rumor that he was born the illegitimate son of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord in 1793 , who at the time was in the United States and also suffered from a clubfoot. Although this claim was proven false, it stayed with Stevens throughout his life. Joshua Stevens was a shoemaker and surveyor who, among other things, created a new, authoritative map of Danville. He was considered rampant and reputed to be the strongest wrestler in the county . When Stevens was twelve years old, the father left the family. He was killed in the Battle of Fort Oswego in 1814 during the British-American War . After the father's disappearance, Stevens built a particularly close bond with the single mother, which kept the family afloat with a small farm and work as a nurse. When he later became wealthy, he gave her a larger dairy farm. Although she was a very religious Baptist , Stevens did not become a member of any Christian community in his life.
Sarah Morril moved to Peacham, south of Danville, in 1807, probably to give her second-born son Thaddeus a good education . There he attended the Caledonia Grammar School , also known as the Peacham Academy . Stevens showed a good performance there and soon led the "political" student faction facing the "scholastic" group of Wilbur Fisk , who later became the first president of Wesleyan University . In 1811, Stevens first enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire , but quickly moved to the University of Vermont . Here, too, he turned out to be a hard-working student; shortly before the graduation ceremony in 1813, a three-act drama he had written was performed. On the other hand, he was once close to the end of his academic career when he and a fellow student killed a farmer's cow, which was grazing on campus despite a corresponding ban. When an innocent student was suspected and threatened to be dismissed, they went to the farmer and came to an agreement: They paid him twice the value of the loss and in return he stated that the cow had been killed by soldiers. At this time he saw a friend die after heavy alcohol abuse, which is why he drank very rarely and later sat on the board of the Gettysburg Temperance Movement. The university had to cease operations in 1814 due to the British-American War, so Stevens returned to Dartmouth to complete his studies.
During his senior year in Hanover, Stevens focused on metaphysics , theology and "political law". He successfully completed his studies in August 1814 and left Dartmouth College with a very good level of education, which he continuously expanded through diligent reading. However, he was already making his first enemies here, which was mainly due to his peculiarity in dealing with his opponents with pronounced sharpness and sarcasm. Nevertheless, he was in completely informal correspondence with his fellow students. He was later accused of being hostile to Freemasonry because he had not been accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity at Dartmouth College . Probably this attitude is simply due to the fact that the Masonic lodges at the time refused membership to disabled people like him. Another hoax about Stevens, echoed in 1955 by the respected writer Ralph Korngold , was that he was expelled from college without a degree. This error is based on a mix-up with Stevens nephew, who was also called Thaddeus.
After graduation, Stevens first returned to Peacham, where he taught at his previous school. In addition, he began his first legal studies with a judge who lived in the neighborhood. He fell in love with a pastor's daughter, but was too reserved and penniless to make serious advances to her. In February 1815, Stevens moved to York, Pennsylvania , where his fellow student and friend Samuel Merrill had already established a professional footing. Already at this time he had the convictions for which he would later become famous, namely his contempt for the aristocracy and in return a great concern for all poor and disadvantaged social groups. To what extent the own disability, of which Stevens was always aware, was decisive is an unresolved question. These attitudes were further characterized by his pronounced cynicism, which, however, did not target religious beliefs, but rather had an extremely negative image of man as its content, and his uncompromising honesty. According to Edward McPherson , a party colleague of Stevens, he never threw himself in front of the biggest enemies to spread untruths.
In York, Stevens worked as a teacher at the York Academy and studied law with the local lawyer David Cassat. In August 1816, he believed the time had come to obtain his license to practice law. Since he did not meet a formal entry requirement in York, he traveled to Harford County in mid-September to take his exam here in Bel Air . After answering questions and answers to the satisfaction of the committee there and also ensuring its spiritual well-being with several bottles of Madeira , the next morning Stevenson Archer handed him the license to practice law. Immediately thereafter, Stevens went looking for a suitable city to open his own law firm. Considering Lancaster too expensive to start with, he decided on Gettysburg . Here he moved into his first law firm in October. The premises were located within the Gettysburg Hotel, which is still in the immediate vicinity of the County Courthouse .
Lawyer in Gettysburg
The first year as a lawyer was difficult. Stevens got only a few, mostly minor, cases and was already considering giving up the practice. The turning point brought a murder trial in the summer of 1817, in which he represented the accused farm worker. Ultimately, he could not prevent the death penalty, but his plea for insanity made such an excellent impression on the court and audience that there was no shortage of clients afterwards. Soon he was one of the premier attorneys in Adams County and one of the most capable attorneys in the state . He shone in the courtroom with clear language, argumentative persuasiveness and great skill in questioning witnesses. Of the first ten appeals he brought to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania by 1830 , he won nine cases and never again suffered from a shortage of clients. Later on, his appearance on the political stage had a positive effect on Stevens, which gave his legal practice ever greater prominence. In 1821, he took on a case that likely had a lasting impact on his stance on slavery when he represented Maryland slave owner Norman Bruce and helped him enforce his tenure claims against the Pennsylvania African American Charity Butler and her children. Stevens, who had never commented on this matter before, condemned slavery, euphemistically referred to as “peculiar institution” (“special institution”) in the southern states , after this trial, possibly because of his bad conscience, and has since represented escaped slaves.
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In addition to his legal practice, Stevens was active as an investor in numerous business areas. Within nine years of his arrival in Gettysburg, he was the largest property owner in town. From 1826 he financed several iron smelting companies in the form of blast furnaces in the nearby mountains. The most important of these was the Caledonia Forge, named after his homeland . In the long run, however, this investment caused him more trouble than profit. Nevertheless, he stuck to the blast furnaces in times of lack of profit, as he was very concerned with the welfare of his employees. During his time in Gettysburg, Stevens became close friends with banker John B. McPherson and law firm partner George Smyser. In his spare time he was a die-hard gambler who did not let himself be deterred by large losses, and he regularly went fox hunts . In May 1822 he won the election to the city council. In the political debates at the time, he clearly positioned himself as an opponent of Andrew Jackson . Unlike the Jacksonian Democrats , he advocated protective tariffs and federal funding for transportation construction projects . He was also in opposition to the Democrats for the continued existence of the Second Bank of the United States , with whose President Nicholas Biddle he was in legal dealings. This bank-friendly, protectionism and infrastructure stance soon became known as the American System . Accordingly, Stevens was involved in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election of 1823 for the candidate of the Jackson opponents, Andrew Gregg . In the following year he worked in the presidential election as a campaign assistant for John Quincy Adams , in this case with more success. During a case in 1827 he had to do with James Buchanan , who tried in vain to win Stevens over to the Jacksonian Democrats .
In the presidential election in 1828 he got involved again for Adams and the National Republican Party , in which the Jackson opponents rallied without being able to prevent his victory. He was also involved in a prominent position in a petition to the State Legislature , which demanded a railway line from Gettysburg to the Monocacy River . In the course of his further political career he always campaigned for railroad construction . Another area in which Stevens was involved was education. Since 1824 he sat on the board of directors of the Gettysburg Academy, a boarding school, and was also involved financially in the establishment and operation of the Pennsylvania College, today's Gettysburg College . When, in September 1824, a young African American woman rumored to be pregnant by a white man was found dead in a pond in Adams County, years later his opponents tried to link Stevens to the alleged murder without explicitly mentioning his name the local press. In June 1831, he successfully brought both criminal and civil law suits against the editor of the Gettysburg Compiler , Jacob Lefever, when this incident was alluded to again in the reports on him. Although the murder allegations were devoid of substance, Stevens' biographer Fawn Brodie devoted an entire chapter to the incident in his book Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South . Other opponents accused Stevens of unfair business practices, but the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania exonerated him in a corresponding case.
Political beginnings in the Anti-Masonic Party
From the late 1820s onwards, Stevens became active in the Anti-Masonic Party ("Anti-Freemason Party") that formed after the kidnapping and likely murder of William Morgan in 1826. Against the background of the decline of the Federalist Party into political insignificance, there was an increasing number of opponents of Jackson, alongside citizens who deeply mistrusted the Freemasons as an elitist secret organization. Stevens, who since his studies rejected the lodges as only groups serving the interests of the powerful, became even more aggressive in his rhetoric against this organization after the Morgan case, for which he received more and more criticism. Perhaps underlying the zeal against the Freemasons, in addition to their rejection of physically challenged people like him, was personal frustration over his hair loss , which began just as the anti-Freemasons emerged as a political force. Although this ailment probably offended his pride, he cared so little for his appearance that he typically wore ill-fitting wigs. The Pennsylvanian Anti-Masonic Party met for the first time in June 1829 in Harrisburg and shortly afterwards in Gettysburg, where Stevens became a member of the decision-making committee. In the elections to the state legislature that year they won Adams County for their gubernatorial candidate Joseph Ritner , who was defeated in the end by the Democrat George Wolf . In January 1830, the county's anti-Freemasons decided to start a newspaper and commissioned Stevens to find an editor for the anti-Masonic star . In September of that year, Stevens was selected at the Pennsylvania Party Convention to attend the federal convention in Philadelphia , which was his first national appearance.
At the Anti-Masonic National Convention , he met politicians like William H. Seward and Francis Granger , who soon afterwards developed into significant leaders. For his main request, the nomination of his own presidential candidate and running mates for the elections in 1832 , Stevens did not find a majority for the time being. He pursued this endeavor the following year and tried in vain to persuade former federal judge and minister John McLean to run. Although the national party congress in 1831 finally nominated William Wirt , his own presidential candidate, Stevens was dissatisfied with this person, as he was a former Freemason. Nevertheless, he participated intensively in the election campaign in the following year, the outcome of which was unsuccessful, since both President Jackson and Governor Wolf were confirmed in their offices. Steven's own candidacy for the office of city attorney in Gettysburg had already failed in the spring of 1832.
Shortly after the presidential election, the nullification crisis rocked the country when South Carolina, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, refused to recognize the 1832 Customs Acts passed by Congress . In view of the associated endangerment of the American Union, Stevens showed solidarity with Jackson, who took action against the nullifiers. Nevertheless, he continued to fight the Democrats and, as chairman of a commission of inquiry, published a report in June 1833 accusing them of having harmed the governor's candidate Ritner with a forged letter. In September 1833, the anti-Freemasons nominated him for a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and Stevens won the election shortly thereafter. In December 1833 he found himself at the beginning of the session of the Pennsylvania General Assembly in Harrisburg, which lasted until April of the following year . Stevens became a member of the Judiciary Committee and later the "Committee on Lands".
In the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Fight against Freemasonry and Father of Pennsylvania's Free Schools
In Congress, too, his main concern was the fight against Freemasonry. Stevens became chairman of a committee of inquiry, but was denied permission to summon people and inspect documents. In the end, it was only enough for a final report in which Stevens pointed out the dangerousness of the lodges and criticized the insufficient powers of his committee. Although largely unsuccessful, his campaign found support in many cities in Pennsylvania and received press coverage nationwide. He is also trying to ban the death penalty and convene a constitutional convention for Pennsylvania. He also continues to campaign against the Jacksonian Democracy and tried in vain to prevent a resolution condemning the Second Bank of the United States. Possibly the most important project for Stevens in the House of Representatives was to win financial support for Pennsylvania College, thereby running against the party line of the anti-Freemasons.
In May 1834, Stevens was a delegate to a convention of Jackson opponents in Harrisburg that marked the birth of the Whigs in Pennsylvania. Although he refused to found a new party, he entered into an alliance with it, which proved to be tense because of his pronounced hostility towards Freemasons. Nonetheless, the anti-Freemasons selected him to invite leading Whig Daniel Webster to Gettysburg. Despite bitter internal party opponents, who held him up for the commitment to Pennsylvania College and free education in the House of Representatives, Stevens was re-elected to the Lower House of Pennsylvania, with the votes of the farmers and German-Americans benefiting him in particular . Now he was already considered one of the most prominent members of the Assembly. During this session, he primarily devoted himself to the issue of education with the aim of enabling all children to attend school free of charge. For this purpose he even entered into an alliance with Governor Wolf, who was not only a democrat but also a Freemason.
After the previous Congress of the Assembly passed a law for the creation of free schools at Wolf's insistence, a majority in the House of Representatives for a repeal of this legislation became apparent. To stop this, Stevens gave a speech on April 11, 1835. He cited, among other things, that even a conservative monarchy like the Kingdom of Prussia offered its subjects free education and criticized the fact that while the citizens of Pennsylvania are willing to pay taxes for courts and prisons, they are not ready for education. He referred to the exemplary nature of the educational system of New England , which, for example , had produced Benjamin Franklin for the later benefit of Philadelphia . Stevens' two-hour speech was so convincing that the House of Representatives upheld the law and he has since been considered the father of free schools in Pennsylvania. He also campaigned for the abolition of guilty prisons during this session and continued to oppose Jackson’s policies.
In the fall of 1835 elections, Whigs and the Anti-Masonic Party benefited from the split in the Democrats who had fallen out over the School Act, backed by Governor Wolf. Stevens was re-elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Ritner was elected governor. Whigs and anti-Freemasons now had a majority in the Assembly. Stevens was appointed chairman of a committee of inquiry into the "evil of Freemasonry". After meeting in the Chamber of the Supreme Court , the hearings soon had to be moved to a boardroom of the State Legislature due to the large number of visitors. Stevens chaired the sessions in an authoritarian manner, summoning respected politicians including Wolf, George M. Dallas, and Francis Rawn Shunk . He was quickly confronted with the charge of conducting the investigative committee in the style of a witch trial . Although he succeeded in getting a legal ban on secret societies through the assembly, the passage against Masonic judges was deleted. In the end, Stevens hurt himself more with this campaign than it brought him political gain. He was successful in founding the Second Bank of the United States, whose license as the central bank of Washington was not renewed, as a private bank in Pennsylvania, for which the state received bonus payments in return.
Constitutional Convention and "Buckshot War"
Stevens' relationship with the Whigs was not easy at the time. In view of the upcoming presidential election , he contacted the Whigs' most promising candidate, William Henry Harrison , to find out his attitude towards Freemasonry without receiving a definitive answer. In December 1835, the Anti-Masonic Party split when a camp wanted to forego its own nomination convention and support the election of Harrison. Therefore, Stevens and his supporters decided at their own party congress in May 1836, neither for Harrison nor for the Democrat Martin Van Buren to make an election recommendation, but demanded from both that they appoint no Freemasons as ministers. Shortly before election day, they decided to support Harrison. Regardless, Stevens mostly voted in the House of Representatives with the Whigs' legislative initiatives. In the reorganization of constituencies during this legislature, Stevens was able to achieve a layout that was beneficial to Whigs and anti-Freemasons. The fight against slavery emerged as the main political concern at this time. In 1835 he condemned the abolitionists as too provocative, rejected interference in the affairs of the slave states and earlier advocated the repatriation of blacks to Africa, but from 1836 he supported the abolitionist movement. As with many other abolitionists, his struggle against slavery radicalized in the 1850s. In the early summer of 1836, for example, he introduced a resolution that was ultimately rejected in the Assembly, which established the right of the federal congress to outlaw slavery in the District of Columbia .
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The split of December 1835 had seriously weakened the anti-Freemasons and deterred Stevens with his behavior so many Whigs that in September 1836 he lost his seat in the Assembly to the comparatively unknown William McCurdy. After a rapprochement with the Whigs, he was elected to the constitutional convention of the state in May 1837. Stevens' refusal to cooperate fully with the Whigs prevented him from finding fertile ground for his ideas there. Ultimately, he could only achieve significant success in protecting the Second Bank of the United States, which the Democrats sought to disband. A committee of inquiry initiated by the Democrats at the same time, which was supposed to prove Steven's corruption in connection with the establishment of Biddles Bank in Pennsylvania, did not find a majority in the Assembly with its recommendations. With his main concerns - African American civil rights and free education - Stevens could get nowhere. At the constitutional convention he appeared for the first time as the most important political leader in the fight against slavery and thus triggered outrage in the anti-metabolism-minded convention. For example, he exposed the democratic plan to prohibit free blacks from entering Pennsylvania by constitution with clear expletives. Ultimately, however, he could not prevent African Americans from being denied the right to vote. With the powers of the governor, which the Democrats wanted to curtail, he was able to achieve a partial success and secure him the right to appeal from district judges and attorneys. In the end, he refused to sign the adopted constitutional document.
The poorly attended convention of the anti-Freemasons of Pennsylvania in May 1837 revealed the dwindling importance of this movement. She remained very active in Adams County, nominating Stevens for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in September 1837. In a heated election campaign, his opponents tried in vain to discredit him as a candidate for the banks. Back in Harrisburg, Stevens found that his influence in the democratically controlled House of Commons had diminished. The Democrats set up a committee to investigate a rail project they funded. In difficult terrain, the route had been planned so curvy that it passed Stevens' blast furnace and was derisively referred to as "the Tapeworm" ("the tapeworm"). Although he managed to save the project for a year, he could not get rid of this stigma. One of Stevens' few accomplishments during this session was founding a state art school in Philadelphia. He came to an effective position of power when Ritner appointed him President of the Canal Commission . Here Stevens was able to exercise office patronage to a large extent and thus campaign support for the anti-Freemasons.
In the gubernatorial election campaign of 1838, the Democrats concentrated their attacks on Stevens, who was considered to be Ritner's most important advisor. In the election campaign, he mainly campaigned for the votes of the German-Americans. In the end, both Stevens and Ritner were confirmed in office. The majority in the Assembly depended on eight Philadelphia Counties whose election results were legally controversial. When the Whigs and Anti-Freemasons, with the support of the Secretary of State , wanted to host a majority congress in early December, a democratically organized mob stopped them. Ultimately, competing speakers in the House of Representatives were elected and, as a result, different conference venues, while in the Senate of Pennsylvania the situation escalated to such an extent that Stevens and two other people who were there, only jump out of the window to flee the violent crowd could. General Robert Patterson then ordered the militia to arm themselves with shotgun ammunition, which is why this incident went down in history as the "Buckshot War". The situation cleared at Christmas when the exasperated House of Lords awarded the controversial seats to the Democrats. Stevens stayed away from the now democratically controlled assembly, whereupon his opponents took the opportunity and, among other things, stopped his railway construction project. When he wanted to resume his seat in the House of Representatives at the insistence of the party and electorate, he was denied this and a special election was scheduled in Adams County shortly before the end of the session. Hence, Stevens was MP for only a few days after his victory.
Demise of the Anti-Masonic Party
This victory did not hide Stevens about the loss of importance of the Anti-Masonic Party , so that he again approached the Whigs and renounced a renewed candidacy for a seat in the Assembly. At the National Anti-Freemasons Convention in May 1839 he had already successfully campaigned for the nomination of the two Whigs Harrison and Webster as candidates for the presidential election next year . At the Whigs nomination convention in December 1839, he cleverly managed to avert a victory for the freemason and slave owner Henry Clay. Perhaps because of Harrison's promise to appoint him as minister, Stevens was heavily involved in the election campaign and gave the Whigs victory in Pennsylvania. Soon afterwards, he was very disappointed to learn that he had not been considered in the new cabinet . When Harrison died just weeks after taking office, and the slave owner John Tyler succeeded him, his chances of holding a prominent position in the presidential executive had sunk to zero.
Stevens did not turn his back on politics, but began a correspondence with General Winfield Scott , who showed sympathy for the abolitionists and in which he recognized the suitable candidate for the next presidential election. In 1841 he was nominated for election by the anti-Freemasons for his old seat in the House of Representatives, and his popularity in Adams County ensured him success. Since the Assembly had a democratic majority, Stevens' legislative initiatives, which in addition to the fight against slavery aimed at the liberalization of criminal law, were largely unsuccessful. At that time he felt obliged by the United States Constitution to allow the states to rule on slavery. So he looked suspicious of William Lloyd Garrison and other advocates of immediate slave liberation and did not respond to Salmon P. Chase's attempts to win him over to the newly formed Liberty Party .
After the end of the session, Stevens moved for economic reasons to the larger and more affluent Lancaster, which was also the birthplace of the Anti-Masonic Party in Pennsylvania. His blast furnaces had been unsuccessful, so he only kept the Caledonia Forge . The economic crisis of 1837 turned it into a disastrous company, so that Stevens went into debt and hoped for more sales for his legal practice in Lancaster. There he quickly became the area's best-paid legal representative. In early 1843 he bought a new house and hired the African American Lydia Hamilton Smith as a housekeeper, who accompanied him until the end of his life. Their relationship gives cause for speculation to this day, although the view is widespread that she was his lover. What is certain is that she was of great help to Stevens and was treated with the greatest respect by his family.
In 1843 he failed with the restructuring of the Anti-Masonic Party in Lancaster County and tried in vain to establish an anti-Masonic faction supporting General Scott within the Whigs. Stevens ran one last time in the fall elections with the anti-Freemasons and lost to the Whigs. When Scott could not prevail in the nomination, Stevens reluctantly got involved in the presidential election in 1844 for Clay. At that time he resigned himself to the fact that the Anti-Masonic Party could no longer be saved and concentrated on the legal work. He often represented escaped slaves and was involved in the Underground Railroad . As archaeological evidence suggests, he hid fugitive slaves in a cistern on his property. The presidency of James K. Polk and the related Mexican-American War drove the abolitionists to increased commitment, as they saw in this conflict an attempt to extend slavery to the conquered territory.
With the Whigs
To win in the Whig Party influence and so step up the fight against slavery, which was now his political leitmotif, he went off in 1845 an alliance with the anti-Catholic nativist one whose xenophobia especially against the massively increasing immigration from Ireland taught . This group particularly addressed former anti-Freemasons. He even supported the nativist Reigart, who ran against Whigs and Democrats in the elections to the federal congress and governor in 1846 and 1847, respectively. He demonstrated his political flexibility in June 1848 when he not only accepted the nomination of Zachary Taylor as presidential candidate, but also spoke out in public for him during the election campaign . Taylor was a slave owner, but a promising candidate and was open to the limitation of the “peculiar institution”. Stevens was aiming for election to the American House of Representatives at the time, which was no easy undertaking because Democrats, like Whigs, had split the slave issue into two camps. When parts of the "Conscience Whigs" ("Conscience Whigs"), which formed the abolitionist wing, founded the Free Soil Party with like-minded Democrats and nominated former President Martin Van Buren for the White House , Stevens proved to be the suitable candidate, to keep abolitionist and nativist voters engaged in Lancaster County. In August he won the party nomination for a seat in the 31st United States Congress against the candidate of the "Cotton Whigs" ("Cotton Whigs"), who advocated the preservation of slavery, and won the October 1848 congressional election clear lead.
Until he took his seat in the House of Representatives in December 1849, he took care of family matters in addition to his work. So he took on the two orphaned nephews Alanson and Thaddeus Jr. and got them employment in the Caledonia Forge and in his legal office. Although a newcomer to Washington, DC political business , he was recognized as an upcoming leader immediately upon his arrival. He was nominated for election as Speaker of the House of Representatives and a member of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary, which was entrusted with legal issues . Congress was deeply divided over abolitionist California's application for membership , as its admission into the American Union ended the balance between free and slave states in the Senate . Equally controversial were the legal regulations governing escaped slaves and slavery in the District of Columbia. In this conflict, which could only be temporarily calmed down by the compromise of 1850 rejected by Stevens , he emerged from February 20, 1850 as the most vicious speaker against slavery. Among other things, he highlighted the economic and demographic backwardness of Virginia compared to New York and Pennsylvania and blamed slavery and the resulting absence of a middle class . Furthermore, he sharply condemned the so-called “doughfaces” (“dough faces”), which were Northerners who sympathized with the southern states. In June he drew attention to himself with another Philippika, which among other things derived the equality and freedom of all people from the Bible and denounced the new slave flight law because it disregarded the habeas corpus . Both speeches were widely used. In August, he fiercely defended the decision of President Millard Fillmore, the late Taylor's successor, not to recognize Texas's claims to the New Mexico Territory .
Despite opposition within the party, Stevens managed to secure a renewed nomination for the House of Representatives. On October 11, 1850, he was elected to the 32nd United States Congress. Here the group of opponents of slavery grew and from 1851 included, among others, the Senators Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade . During the session from December 1850 to March 1851, to the annoyance of many Whigs, Stevens introduced a number of resolutions revoking the 1850 compromise. In June, the Cotton-Whigs, taking advantage of increasing displeasure with him, managed to prevent Stevens from attending the Pennsylvania Convention. In September 1851, Stevens defended two Quakers in a criminal trial in the Philadelphia District Court . They were potentially guilty of the new slave escape law of 1850 when they refused to help a marshal arrest two escaped slaves. Stevens managed to convince Judge Robert Cooper Grier to acquittal despite his bias. Meanwhile in Lancaster he founded the Independent Whig newspaper with others to promote the abolitionist cause and to counter the opposition within the party. In the session of 1851/52 he once again aroused the wrath of the conservative Whigs when he and others demonstratively left the caucus to finally pass the compromise of 1850. Although Scott, his favorite, finally made it to the presidential election in 1852 , Stevens was less than enthusiastic about his electoral program, which fully supported the compromise. Although he was most recently widely acclaimed in Congress with a speech in favor of protectionism , the Whigs did not nominate him for the upcoming Congress .
About the know-nothing party to the Republicans
Despite his departure from the political scene, Stevens continued to secure prominence as a lawyer throughout the state. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 changed the political mood considerably. The associated lifting of the Missouri Compromise and the principle of “popular sovereignity” taking its place made it possible, to the indignation of a large part of the northern population, to spread slavery north of the 36 ° 30 'latitude. This subsequently led to the dissolution of the Whigs, weakening of the Democrats and the emergence of the Republicans . Stevens, who campaigned against the Kansas-Nebraska Act in his newspaper and at public appearances, formed an alliance with the nationwide nativist Know-Nothing Party , which attracted many anti-Freemasons in Pennsylvania. The decisive factor was less sympathy for the content of this party, which had the characteristics of a secret organization, but the pragmatic expectation of finding a platform for its abolitionist program. In the congressional elections in 1854 , Stevens campaigned with the Know-Nothings for the independent candidate Anthony Ellmaker Roberts , who left the Whig Isaac Ellmaker Hiester and the Democratic candidate behind and entered the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, politics was not the main focus in Stevens' life during this phase, but the legal work. He was involved in almost every lawsuit in the county that went to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania , and was able to pay off his debts.
In 1854, the Republicans consolidated in Pennsylvania, winning many former Whigs and Democratic anti-slavery opponents as supporters, soon including Stevens. In the summer of 1855 he helped prepare the first Pennsylvania Congress, which was held in Pittsburgh in September . In the presidential election in 1856 he tried to forge an alliance of the most diverse parties against the Democrats, playing his hands that the Know-Notings had split in February. As the best candidate in this sense and with the most chances against Buchanan in Pennsylvania, he saw McLean. After his rejection, the nomination congress decided in favor of the discovery researcher John C. Frémont , whom Stevens gave little chance of success. When the rumor spread that the presidential candidate was a Catholic, he could not get him to dispel this suspicion in a letter. Despite Stevens' efforts to win the votes of the Know-Nothings, Pennsylvania Republicans narrowly lost to the Democrats, but became the second largest party in the country. He had more success in January 1857, when he was able to win enough votes in the state legislature for the election of Simon Cameron as Federal Senator.
The following year he focused on his legal practice, but was able to gain attention as a Republican leader when he filed a lawsuit against a Democrat's victory in a local election. The party nominated him for a seat in the House of Representatives in the 1858 congressional elections . Since the Democratic Buchanan government over the Dred Scott v. Sandford , known as Bleeding Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas") was under pressure to civil war-like conditions in the Kansas Territory and the economic downturn of 1857 , had good prospects for Republican success. In Adams County, the rural population, especially the Mennonites, sympathized with Stevens. During the election campaign, he was exposed to such harsh attacks in the democratic press that he instituted a lawsuit against the Lancaster Intelligencer . In the end, he won by a large margin over the democratic candidate. Even before Stevens arrived in the capital at the beginning of the session in December 1859, after the attack by abolitionist John Brown on Harpers Ferry , he was confronted with the charge that he was responsible for this crime because of his incendiary speeches against slavery.
Stevens was under discussion as a possible candidate for election as Speaker of the House of Representatives; Joshua Reed Giddings , among others, made himself strong for him. But since it was considered too radical by many Republicans, it was not set up. During the lengthy vote, which was only decided in the 44th round of voting, there was a heated argument in the plenary chamber between Stevens and the southerner Martin Jenkins Crawford , with the only intervention of Edward McPherson preventing Crawford from taking up arms. Stevens became a member of the important Committee on Ways and Means , but did not attend its meetings regularly. During the 1859/60 session, he was mainly concerned with the upcoming presidential election . Although he did not make any of his notorious incendiary speeches against slavery, he was feared by the representatives of the southern states. At the Republican nomination convention in 1860, he supported McClean until the end, although McClean was a clear outsider and the other delegates from Pennsylvania turned to Abraham Lincoln after a few rounds of voting.
Although he stood up for Lincoln in the subsequent election campaign in which the divided Democrats ran with several candidates, a close relationship never developed between the two. Like most, he failed to recognize Lincoln's extraordinary political talent and completely underestimated him. Stevens was nominated again for the congressional election, while the hopeless Democrats in his constituency refrained from running an opposing candidate. After Lincoln's victory, the secession of the southern states quickly became apparent, beginning with South Carolina . While a compromise solution for the preservation of the American Union was popular among the population, he rejected it and saw treason in the passivity of the incumbent President Buchanan towards the south. On December 31, 1860, Stevens introduced a resolution in the House of Commons requiring the White House to provide information on the state and occupation of federal military facilities in the Charleston area and planned countermeasures in the event of a secession in that state. In January , when Cameron was initially reluctant to accept the post , he briefly hoped for an appointment as Treasury Secretary in the Lincoln cabinet . At the end of January, in a widely received speech to Congress, he spoke out sharply against any compromise with the southern states, which he accused of open rebellion. As a suitable means to combat secession, to which he gave the federal government every right, he proposed the blockade of the ports in the south by the United States Navy . This should secure the customs revenue of the breakaway states and cut them off from postal traffic.
American Civil War
Funding the Union Army
The ensuing indignant reactions from the southern MPs affected Stevens at most peripherally, but they did affect Foreign Minister Seward's suggestion that territories with slavery should be recognized as federal states. In the following vote he nevertheless voted for the organization of the federal territories of Colorado , Dakota and Nevada , although the slave question was excluded from the resolution. On March 4, he was pleased to note that Lincoln showed no willingness to make concessions to the Confederate States of America in his inaugural address . He saw the outbreak of the American Civil War on April 12 in Lancaster, where a few days later a joint gathering of Republicans and Democrats stood behind President Lincoln. Right at the beginning of the 1861-62 session, Stevens got the means to establish himself as leader of the House of Representatives when he was appointed chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means after the rejection of Francis Preston Blair, Jr. and Schuyler Colfax . As one of the most important heads of the radical Republicans , according to his biographer Trefousse the “radical among the radicals”, he was able to put pressure on Lincoln from this position and constantly urge him to emancipate the slaves. The President himself used this dynamic to achieve his own goals, which in the end were not very different from them. In August, Stevens defended the first act of confiscation, which provided for the release of all slaves used against the northern states , against legal concerns. He asserted that the breakaway southern states were no longer governed by the American Constitution, but by international law . Stevens also spoke out passionately for the confiscation of the plantations in the southern states, even if it were to devastate the region.
Many of his contemporaries and later historians ascribed to him an almost dictatorial power during this phase because of the chairmanship of the Committee on Ways and Means . So he was compared to William Pitt the Elder and referred to as "The Great Commoner" (literally translated "The great commoner" or "The great member of the House of Commons"). Nevertheless, the radical faction around him never had a majority and was unable to implement many of their plans. On the other hand, Stevens soon enjoyed a legendary reputation for his ability to get laws through Congress and was considered the leader in the House of Representatives. Overall, his work during the Civil War can be seen as important for the financial success of the northern states. As the first measure of the Committee on Ways and Means to increase revenue, Congress passed new tariffs on coffee, tea, sugar and other imported goods at the beginning of August, after making some adjustments. A few days later, he passed a credit law through the House of Commons, which provided for the issuance of government bonds on a large scale and authorized the president to use unauthorized federal funds because of the emergency. In view of this achievement, for which he was widely recognized by the population, various cabinet members quickly took advantage of his help to finance their departments.
When Lincoln forbade General Frémont in September 1861 to free the slaves in his Missouri jurisdiction, Stevens again had doubts about the president's attitude. When the latter dismissed the general two months later, he reacted indignantly and, for other reasons, particularly towards Foreign Minister Seward, developed a personal disgust. In the session of 1861/62, the interaction between Lincoln and the radical faction around their spokesman Stevens intensified, with the emancipation of slaves being an issue above all. In order to get this through, Stevens intended to expel all members of the southern states who were still in Congress. While the government viewed secession as an illegal act and thus the breakaway states as legally still part of the Union, he viewed them as hostile nations. At the opening of the session in December, he presented a resolution declaring all runaway slaves and those who helped to suppress the rebellion free, which was rejected by a clear majority in the House of Commons. He had more success for the cause of abolitionism in postponing the resubmission of the Crittenden Compromise , which excluded the emancipation of slaves as a war goal, indefinitely.
Annoyed by the appointment of Democrat George B. McClellan to command of the Potomac Army , he attacked Lincoln in public towards the end of the year. Regardless, he cooperated fully with the President on financial matters. At the end of January 1862, Stevens gave a sensational speech on emancipation in Congress. In this he underlined that the liberation of slaves was essential for a victory in the civil war. Furthermore, it is better to devastate the south and repopulate it with freed people than to lose it to the Union. In view of the growing pressure from the radicals, in March Lincoln unsuccessfully introduced a resolution, which Stevens did not go far enough, on gradual emancipation in the border states - the northern states with slavery. The following month, however, Stevens managed to get a law outlawing slavery in the District of Columbia. Another victory for the radicals followed with the second act of confiscation, which outlawed slavery in the federal territories and allowed the drafting of African American troops, but Stevens did not go far enough. He devised a more radical and comprehensive program of confiscation, which he repeatedly revised in the following years and never weakened in its most important point, the expropriation of plantation owners in favor of their former slaves. In addition, Stevens campaigned for a reinstatement of Frémont during this period and spoke regularly with Sumner and Henry Wilson at the White House to urge the president to free the slaves. This in turn used the radicals as a protective shield against attacks by the conservative republicans and prepared the emancipation proclamation in the summer of 1862 , which came into effect as an executive order on January 1, 1863 , but Stevens did not go far enough, as it only covered slavery in the Confederate States abolished. To Stevens' annoyance, Lincoln refrained from levying African American military units, as the second act of confiscation had made possible. The president's plans for the settlement of freedmen in the Chiriquí province of Panama in August 1862 were thwarted by Stevens by the Committee on Ways and Means not approving any federal funding.
After the federal government got into financial difficulties in December 1861 due to a coin shortage , Stevens made sure that Congress increased the tariffs on coffee, sugar and other goods. The most effective measure taken by the Committee on Ways and Means to finance war was the Currency Act of 1862, which introduced the issue of paper money in the form of the “greenback” . Initially an opponent of Elbridge G. Spaulding's proposal , he quickly became a lifelong advocate of the “greenbacks” and led the legislative initiative through Congress in February 1862, with the Senate making some changes. A second currency law followed a few months later to further increase the money supply. By July of the same year, he managed to pass another law that introduced production taxes on iron, steel, paper and other goods as well as an income tax. In addition, Stevens was involved in the Pacific Railroad Acts that year, which prepared the construction of the first transcontinental railroad . Among other things, this connection to the Pacific West was intended to counter fears that California might switch to the Confederate camp.
Crisis of the Union and pillage of the Caledonia Forge
Stevens, who was more pessimistic than ever after the Union's defeat by the Confederate Army in the Second Battle of the Bull Run , used the congressional elections to make his views even better known to the public. The Democrats in Lancaster County sided with the president, while campaigning for Stevens as a fanatical abolitionist. He benefited from the fact that Lincoln published a preliminary emancipation proclamation at the end of September 1862 after the Battle of Antietam and was thus moving in abolitionist waters. Despite a clear victory in Lancaster County on October 14, Stevens was concerned about the Republican chances of winning next month's congressional elections, particularly in the important state of New York, which he proved right in the end. In addition to New York, the Democrats won the majority of representatives in Illinois on November 4th, after they had won the congressional elections in Ohio and Indiana in October. In addition, there were health problems in the form of rheumatism , which had bothered him for a long time and was now more often bedridden, as well as worries about the two nephews who fought in the civil war.
At the beginning of the session in 1862/63 he supported Lincoln, who claimed the executive right to override the habeas corpus, with the "Indemnity Bill". With this Habeas Corpus Act , which came into effect at the beginning of March 1863 , Congress gave the President a corresponding power of attorney. In December 1862, Stevens was disappointed to learn that a caucus calling for Seward to be dismissed after the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg had been ignored by the President. In the same month he voted for the admission of West Virginia , whose opposing parliament had declared its exit from Virginia because of the secession, into the Union, but emphasized that this should be done according to martial law and not according to the American constitution. The most important piece of legislation in this session, in which Stevens participated despite initial opposition, was the National Bank Act . This created a system of private central banks , which were equipped with appropriate federal reserves and were entitled to issue banknotes . This network of financial institutions existed until the Federal Reserve System was introduced in 1913. Furthermore, Steven's help in the House of Representatives was essential to the passage of the Conscription Act of 1863, which introduced universal conscription for the first time in United States history . However, his attempt to remove the possibility of buying himself free from this obligation from the law failed.
When he arrived in Lancaster after the session, he was greeted by a meeting of voters outside his house. He took the opportunity to give a speech that received widespread national recognition. Among other things, he emphasized that the conscription law would have been unnecessary if his demands for the recruitment of African American soldiers had been granted, and accused the Democrats of prolonging the war with their policies. After the Union's defeat in the Battle of Chancellorsville , he took command of Joseph Hooker , who was himself an abolitionist, to protect himself against attacks. The civil war met Stevens in the summer of 1863 in person, as shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg of June 26 troops Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Jubal Anderson Early the Caledonia Forge burned and took away all movable property. Early justified his actions by pointing out Stevens' "vengeful" policy towards the southern states. For him this meant a considerable economic loss, on top of which was added concern for the well-being of his employees. When his nephew Alanson fell in the Battle of Chickamauga , he feared for the life of Thaddeus Jr. and was transferred to Lancaster as Provost Marshal at the Cameron .
At the beginning of the 1863/64 session, Stevens, in coordination with Lincoln, played a key role in nipping in the bud a possible intrigue of the House Secretary of Representatives, Emerson Etheridge . According to rumors, he wanted to prevent the entry of some Republican MPs by questioning their legitimacy. Steven now dealt with the question of reconstruction , i.e. how to deal with the southern states after their defeat. The President reacted with horror to a proclamation by the President, who promised amnesty to all rebels who swore allegiance to the American Constitution, except for the high-ranking Confederates. Still convinced that martial law and not the constitution should be applied to the southern states as hostile nations, he spoke out against their direct admission as members of Congress after the Civil War and the delegates from Louisiana already present in the House of Representatives . At the end of February, he proposed changes to the radical Henry Winter Davis's legislative initiative that included extreme reparations and banned the southern states from Congress and from voting on constitutional amendments. Even when the Wade-Davis Bill was tightened and stipulated an oath of allegiance of 50% and not 10% of the voting population as a condition for resumption as a state, Stevens stayed away from the vote in the House of Commons.
abolition of slavery
He was granted more success with the fact that he was able to achieve equal pay for all Union soldiers regardless of their skin color, as well as the formal repeal of the slave flight law of 1850. In the debate about the 13th Amendment to the Constitution for the Abolition of Slavery, he presented his text at the end of March 1864, but it did not get to the vote, while that of Senator John B. Henderson failed because of the necessary two-thirds majority. The legislature made progress in strengthening the United States Army , which was ensured, among other things, by an improved conscription law, for which Stevens strongly advocated, although he was critical of the reintroduction of the rank of lieutenant general intended for Ulysses S. Grant . In the Committee on Ways and Means , in which Justin Smith Morrill proved to be one of the most accomplished members as in the last Congress , the difficult financing of the armed forces was the main task. In the course of the controversial increase in the whiskey tax, Stevens, as a representative of the spirits producing Pennsylvania, exposed himself to the charge of bribery because he negotiated a later effectiveness of the tax in a political swap. In June, a legislative package on revenue policy was passed, which introduced new taxes and generally increased existing ones. As a most important measure, Stevens, in coordination with Treasury Secretary Chase, supported a change in the national banking system that increased the financial hurdles for the formation of private central banks and gave the Treasury Secretary the authority to decide in which financial institutions the federal funds were kept. A law he pushed to combat problematic gold speculation had no effect and was soon withdrawn. Pursuing his own financial interests in this matter, he became chairman of the Special Committee for Pacific Railways and, among other things, ensured that only metals from domestic production could be used in their construction.
Still considering Lincoln too conservative, he shared with other radicals reservations about his re-running in the 1864 presidential election , but spoke out in public for him. At the Republican National Convention in Baltimore in June 1864 , he protested against delegates loyal to the Union from the southern states of Louisiana and Arkansas and managed to have their voting rights withdrawn. According to the decision of the Lancaster County's party assembly, he voted for Lincoln and with great reluctance for his running mate Andrew Johnson , who came from the Confederate state of Tennessee . To his satisfaction, the election manifesto of the National Union Party , to which Republicans and Democratic advocates of war had come together, contained the demand for an abolitionist constitutional amendment . In July, Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill with a pocket veto and resulted in him questioning the power of Congress to end slavery. Stevens was furious, although the president had signaled his support for an amendment to the constitution for the emancipation of African Americans. Unlike other radicals who were now trying to replace Lincoln as a presidential candidate, he was still loyal to him. Instead, he called for the White House to dismiss the conservative Montgomery Blair , who held the post of United States Postmaster General and had plotted against Chase without being able to convince Lincoln. In early September, the Republicans' election chances improved significantly with the successful conclusion of the Atlanta campaign and the victorious battle in Mobile Bay . Stevens himself won the October congressional elections in his district and then became heavily involved in Lincoln's election campaign. He accused the Democratic candidate McClellan of wanting to take the southern states back into the union while maintaining slavery. In the end, as Stevens predicted, Lincoln won by a narrow margin in Pennsylvania and the presidential election overall.
In contrast to the emancipation, which both Stevens and Lincoln were striving for and which differed only with regard to the way to get there, they took up fundamentally opposing positions on the reconstruction question, which was becoming increasingly urgent in view of the looming end of the war. Sherman's March to Sea , victory at the Battle of Nashville, and Chase's appointment as Chief Justice of the United States towards the end of the year made him more lenient with the president. Although averse to any concessions to the southern states, he defended Lincoln when the latter was negotiating peace with Confederate emissaries in Hampton Roads in early February 1865 . Stevens, in turn, as announced by the President in the State of the Union Address in 1864, had the full support of the White House in the renewed vote for the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which for him was the culmination of his decades-long fight against slavery. Speaking before Congress, he praised the president for stating that the civil war could not be ended without the abolition of slavery. His passionate advocacy of the amendment met with opposition from the Democrats in the House of Representatives. In the decisive vote on January 31, 1865, the 13th Amendment was passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, with the Republicans voting in favor. After this triumph he approached the administration in a more benevolent manner and defended the president and minister of war in response to critical questions from Congress. He also stood before General Benjamin Franklin Butler when he came under pressure in Congress after the failed capture of Fort Fisher. Nevertheless, he fought against Lincoln's plan to regain Louisiana, which had now banned slavery, as a state. Admission in the Senate initially failed due to the issue of voting rights for African-American citizens and was postponed to the next Congress. The Committee on Ways and Means came under fire for its constant tax increases, and Stevens' legislative initiative to curb gold speculation by means of restrictions on coin traffic clearly failed in Congress in January 1865. The inadequate practicability of the proposal was ridiculed by the public. In the committee itself, he was unable to get his way with his request to pay off the interest on government bonds with “greenbacks”. Shortly before leaving for Lancaster for break, he was visiting Lincoln as their last meeting was.
Reconstruction
Lincoln's death and succession
Shortly before the assassination attempt on Lincoln , the latter had accommodated the radicals with some demands by signing a law introducing the Freedmen's Bureau ("authority for freed slaves") and demanding the right to vote for educated African American and dark-skinned Union soldiers in Louisiana. Upon learning of Lincoln's assassination, Stevens reminded his friend who brought the news about the disastrous presidencies of Tyler and Fillmore, each succeeding a deceased president. Overall, he showed little sign of grief and stayed away from the official memorial service in Lancaster. Stevens' premonition about the new president was quickly confirmed. The union-loyal Democrat Johnson had advocated emancipation because he considered it necessary for the preservation of the United States, but coming from an impoverished family in North Carolina , he shared all the racist prejudices prevailing there . So by the beginning of 1866 he disempowered the Freedmen's Bureau , which administered expropriated plantations, and pardoned almost 13,000 rebels, which gave them back their land. This resulted in the expulsion of former slaves who had settled there. Like the majority in Congress, he still saw the secession states as part of the American Union and wanted to give them back the status of full-fledged states as soon as possible, as he underlined in early May with the recognition of the Virginia government. Even for the conservative Republicans, the right to vote for African-Americans now became a central issue, because without it, in the southern states, which with the abolition of the three-fifths clause already had more MPs than before the civil war, Democrats would almost exclusively have a chance to vote.
Stevens tried unsuccessfully to persuade the President to convene the Congress early because of the clarification of the Reconstruction, the session of which did not start until December 1865/66. Instead, in late May, Johnson announced a comprehensive amnesty for all previous rebels and gave North Carolina the green light to organize as a state with the State Legislature elected in 1861. Stevens was now convinced that a restrictive reconstruction with the President was not possible, but that the initiative would have to come from the radicals themselves in the form of a majority in Congress, for which the help of the moderate Republicans was needed. So he went to the Pennsylvania Congress in August to seek approval for his move. In the end, in addition to a declaration on equality for African Americans before the law, the convention passed a resolution demanding that Congress control the reconstruction. In coordination with Sumner, he developed the strategy of initially only accepting the southern states as federal territories and only recognizing them as federal states when they met all conditions, the most important of which was the right to vote for blacks. In a nationwide speech in Lancaster at the beginning of September, Stevens demanded the confiscation of the property of the wealthiest 10% of the former slave owners in order to repay the national debt and compensate for the losses of citizens loyal to the Union . He ruled out executions as sanctions, but for the crimes of the southern states, such as those in the prisoner of war camp in Andersonville , the guilty should be held responsible. Furthermore, the foundations of southern society should be smashed, otherwise the civil war would have been waged for nothing. Many Republicans have felt alienated by the wording demanding punishments. After a speech of similar content in Gettysburg the following month, he was reputed to be a vengeful Jacobin . The young Georges Clemenceau , then working as a foreign correspondent in America, equated Stevens' attitude towards the southern states with the anger-driven zeal of Maximilien de Robespierre . However, this contradicts the fact that he was an opponent of the death penalty and that both Lincoln and Johnson repeatedly advocated pardoning those convicted. In addition, on a personal level, he was on friendly terms even with outspoken political opponents such as the former Confederate Crawford. Overall, Stevens was not interested in revenge, but a democratic transformation of the society of the southern states dominated by the planter aristocracy.
Increasing confrontation with Johnson and the 14th Amendment
Meanwhile, in all of the southern states that Johnson led into the Reconstruction, a conservatively dominated state legislature was elected and former Confederate decision-makers were often sent to the federal congress. Black codes were passed in these areas , which restricted the rights of African Americans to such an extent that their status was not much better than that of former slaves. Carl Schurz , sent by the president to the southern states for observation , came to the conclusion that the former Confederates were returning to power and, following this negative assessment, was no longer received in the White House. With the beginning of the 1865/66 session, Stevens tried harder than ever before to exercise leadership of the House of Representatives and became a key figure in the conflict between Congress and President, who had affirmed his line in the State of the Union Address in December 1865. Stevens was elected by a Republican caucus in a preparatory body for the formation of a joint reconstruction committee of the two Houses. In addition, he prevented through his ally McPherson, who was now chief secretary of the House of Commons, the placement of representatives from the southern states in the election for speaker of the House of Representatives. When the 15-member community committee was formed, Stevens became the leader of the House subgroup, but the Radicals only had five members. In the now three-part Committee on Ways and Means , he chaired the Committee on Expenses, which on the one hand consolidated his leadership position in the House of Commons, and on the other hand relieved him of the workload in the former large committee. On the second day of the session, Stevens brought legislative initiatives against the presidential reconstruction program, including compensation for Union soldiers and land grants to all freed slaves from confiscated rebel property. In a debate two months later, he cited the land grants to former serfs in the course of the great reforms of Tsar Alexander II as a historical example. Before the Congress he reaffirmed his convictions on emancipation and confiscation; He also spoke out against the participation of the southern states in votes on new constitutional amendments and said in this context: “This is not a white man's government” (“This is not a white man's state”).
In January there was an inconclusive meeting between members of the Reconstruction Committee and the President; subsequently the gap between Congress and the White House widened. At that time, the joint committee mainly discussed the calculation basis for the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives and the tax collection after the completion of the reconstruction. A statement was agreed that the number of seats depended on the size of the state's population, deducting those citizens who were the victims of systematic discrimination because of their skin color. This was in, this Congress already the decision and by Republican James G. Blaine introduced, 14th Amendment integrated. As Stevens admitted in his closing speech on this law, which he preferred for practical reasons over a hardly enforceable provision on the right to vote for blacks, before the Congress at the end of January 1866, this was intended to prevent former Confederate and Democratic Northerners from dominating the House of Commons. When the president vetoed two bills proposed by the moderate Republican Lyman Trumbull in mid-February , which, among other things, stipulated the continued operation of the "authority for liberated slaves", and a few days later gave a rant about Stevens and other radicals in a public speech, he turned the party against him. At a caucus on the occasion, Stevens recommended that the next party congress praise the work of Congress and not mention Johnson at all.
At the beginning of March, he responded to the condemnation by the president in a manner typical for him in front of Congress: he had the greatest respect for Johnson, unlike the democratic press, which now supports him. Then he had a newspaper article read from the New York World about the inauguration of Johnson, who spoke in the most disrespectful manner of the president. Blaine's constitutional amendment failed in the Senate because of opposition from Sumner, who demanded a guarantee of the right to vote for African Americans and who did not let Stevens change his mind. The Reconstruction Committee then discussed several new proposals, until it agreed in late April on a text that contained five points and was based on a draft by Robert Dale Owens . He determined that no person should be treated unequally because of their ethnicity or skin color, and that the number of seats in the House of Representatives would have to be recalculated if certain sections of the population were deprived of the right to vote, to exclude Confederate supporters from congressional elections by July 4, 1870, as well as war-related Confederate national debts were void and gave Congress the appropriate powers. In addition, a second part of the amendment stipulated, among other things, that the southern states get their full rights as states after the article has been signed. In the House of Commons debate Stevens admitted that the addition did not go far enough for him and that he still demanded the right to vote for blacks and land grants to the freed slaves, but that more was not available at the moment. Because of the widespread opposition to the provisions on the right to vote, he only achieved a majority with the help of the Democrats. After some text changes by the Senate, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was finally passed in mid-June. Although the article fell short of Stevens' ideas, it prevented Johnson's plan for a swift reconstruction of the southern states. A few days later the Reconstruction Committee published a report on the situation in the southern states, which clearly shows the influence of Stevens. He stated that due to the secession there was no longer a valid constitution, former rebels were elected to important offices and the freedmen were denied their basic rights. From his private correspondence, Stevens knew beforehand about expulsions of union-loyal citizens from their homeland and lynching of African-Americans. In May there had been race riots in Memphis for several days , which ended in a massacre, and at Stevens' initiative led to the establishment of a congressional committee. Therefore, the recommendation of the subcommittee was to allow the southern states only after constitutional improvements in Congress.
At the height of power
With the exception of the White House, Stevens, who became even more prominent through his confrontation with Johnson, became a sought-after guest of Washington society. At that time, his health deteriorated so much that it was not hidden from the environment. Despite leadership in Congress, the results fell short of Stevens' expectations. So he was committed to foreign policy as a staunch supporter of the republic against the French intervention in Mexico , where Napoleon III. had established a monarchy in the form of the Empire of Mexico . To this end, he met the ambassador of the Republic of Mexico several times from November 1865 and brought some resolutions in support of the government of Benito Juárez by June 1866 . Before the Congress he accused France of violating the Monroe Doctrine by intervening . Foreign Minister Seward, however, stuck to his cautious course towards Paris, with which he was ultimately successful. When the Mexican Emperor Maximilian I was finally executed, Stevens was the only Congressman to approve of this measure. In domestic affairs, he could not prevent a funding bill that gave the new Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch more authority and contradicted his beliefs about monetary policy. He had more success with a request, supported by the House of Commons, to the White House about the number and handling of wealthy rebels. He also succeeded in initiating the right to vote for African-Americans in the District of Columbia, which was passed in the Senate in 1867, as well as securing the Sherman confiscations in favor of 40,000 freed slaves against the expropriated plantation owners in South Carolina and Georgia, with a veto of the President was outvoted. He also campaigned for the rights of the Indians by demanding a report from the Minister of the Interior on his spending policy in this regard. Concerning the railway construction, he was particularly committed to the Union Pacific Railroad and ensured a law that gave the company more time to complete the transcontinental route. In the field of labor law, he was one of only a few MPs who voted for the introduction of the eight-hour day in the capital. In economic policy he continued to pursue a protectionist line in favor of Pennsylvania and acted against the southern states by demanding taxes on cotton and refusing federal funding for dike construction in Mississippi , Arkansas and Louisiana.
In the summer of 1866, Johnson planned to host a convention to found a new party made up of conservative Republicans and former "War Democrats" - the Democrats who had been behind Lincoln in the Civil War. At a caucus in mid-July, Stevens reached a resolution obliging all Republicans to prevent the President's undertaking by all means. This requirement determined the following congressional election campaign . The resignation of several ministers from the Johnson cabinet and severe race riots in New Orleans at the end of July favored the radicals' prospects. The president's convention, with its warm welcome from former Confederates, hurt him, as did a trip to Chicago that responded inappropriately to heckling from the audience. So he accused the radical Republicans of bearing responsibility for the dead in New Orleans. The party convention in Lancaster not only nominated Stevens again for the House of Representatives, but also spoke out in favor of his candidacy for the Senate. During the election campaign, he once again emphasized the equality of all before the law and pointed out that under the American Constitution, sovereign power lies solely with Congress. In October, Stevens was elected to the House of Representatives by a large majority.
The 1866/67 session showed Stevens at the height of his power, but it also had some disappointments in store. His appearances in the House of Representatives were still energetic, even though he was now more often ill due to health reasons. Stevens' main concern remained to stop the rapid reconstruction of the southern states proposed by Johnson; Despite the clear defeat in the congressional elections, the president did not give way in this dispute. For a short time there was a chance for a seat in the Senate for Stevens. The term of office of the previous electorate Edgar Cowan was expiring and as a member of the Johnson camp he had no prospect of re-election, which was then carried out by the State Legislature. With Republicans in Pennsylvania divided between Cameron and Andrew Gregg Curtin , Stevens offered himself as a compromise candidate. He traveled late and reluctantly to Harrisburg to promote himself and ended up defeating Cameron very clearly. After he had assured himself of support on a caucus, Stevens presented the Tenure of Office Act (" Term of Office Act ") directed against Johnson at the beginning of the session in 1866/67 , according to which important government officials only with the consent of the Senate and not by the Presidents could be fired alone. On his initiative, the Congress decided to start the session 1867/68 in March, i.e. immediately after its adjournment, and not to accept any elected representatives from the southern states as members. When the southern states refused to sign the 14th Amendment after the elections, the question of how to deal with their delegates became obsolete, but strengthened Stevens' conviction that stricter measures had to be taken against them. After the United States Supreme Court with the ex parte Milligan decision overturned the verdict of a military tribunal against a Copperhead - those were Democrats in the northern states who opposed the civil war - Stevens saw his plans, the reconstruction of the southern states, in jeopardy to ensure through military rule.
Reconstruction Acts and preparation for impeachment proceedings against Johnson
At the beginning of January 1867, he therefore introduced a legislative proposal that provided for the state reorganization of the southern states constitutional conventions, whereby the respective delegates were determined on the basis of universal suffrage and former incumbents of the Confederate lost theirs for the next five years. The law, which was to replace the 14th Amendment, met with strong opposition and was referred back to the Reconstruction Committee for revision. At the beginning of February he introduced a proposal by committee member George H. Williams in the House of Commons, which subordinated the states up for reconstruction to martial law and placed them under the general-in-chief as the highest authority. This project was also not a majority in the House of Representatives, but Stevens was able to prevent a delegation to the judiciary committee . In this case, the Democrats voted with him to further divide the Republicans. To Stevens' chagrin, the Senate amended the first Reconstruction Act , passed in mid-February, so that the President, not the General-in-Chief Grant, appointed the commanders of the five military districts. Furthermore, it obliged the southern states to host constitutional conventions and guarantee universal suffrage in order to be able to complete the reconstruction. In March Stevens unsuccessfully proposed an amendment to the Reconstruction Act calling for land confiscations, which modern proponents of reparations payments to African Americans see as the first attempt in this direction. In this context, he called the “peculiar institution” the most barbaric form of slavery in human history. Once again he denied the southern states protection by the American constitution, referring to the main work of the international lawyer Emer de Vattel . The first Reconstruction Act was nevertheless the most important result of this session and survived the presidential veto. In addition, to the satisfaction of Stevens, the Tenure of Office Act was passed. With others, he thought intensely at this time to initiate impeachment proceedings against Johnson, but without being able to identify a sufficiently serious violation. He ignored the evidence that impeachment was less popular than the radical Republicans assumed, counting on the votes of the newly-added state of Nebraska . In early January, a caucus gave the go-ahead and launched a multi-month investigation into the president in the judiciary committee.
At the beginning of the session in March 1867/68, which started without any delay, Stevens failed to continue the Reconstruction Committee. Also in vain did he introduce a law that expropriated all public lands of the southern states and that of the rebellious landowners and distributed them to the freed slaves in parcels of 16 hectares per family. From the middle of 1867, however, the question of confiscation began to lose importance and was ultimately discarded as a means of compensating the freedmen. The focus of the 40th Congress was to equip the first Reconstruction Act with additional provisions for scheduling and conducting elections in the southern states. The chances of successful impeachment melted when Wade became President pro tempore of the Senate and thus acting Vice President . Because of his radical views, including on inflation , he enjoyed so little trust that they even preferred the unpopular Johnson to him. Opposition to the Johnson administration did not stop him from cooperating with Secretary of State Seward on the purchase of Alaska . As a supporter of Manifest Destiny, Stevens was a proponent of this territorial expansion, which was exposed to widespread criticism, with the area to be acquired as "Walrussia" ( suitcase word from "Walrus" ("Walrus") and Russia ("Russia")) or " polar bear garden ”(“ polar bear garden ”) was ridiculed. In this case, he successfully argued contrary to his usual line, by locating the power to conclude state treaties not in the lower house but with the president and senate. He also urged Seward to buy Samaná Bay from the Dominican Republic . After Steven's death, Seward claimed that the Russian ambassador Eduard von Stoeckl bribed Stevens, along with other people in the Capitol , for buying Alaska. Because of Steven's general approval of the territorial expansion and the personal antipathy between him and Seward, the biographer Trefousse considers this accusation to be “obviously unjustified”. During the short break from the session in May 1867, Stevens arrived in Lancaster so badly ill that he had to rely on the help of others to climb stairs. The doctor's letters, which were inaccurate in describing the symptoms at the time, do not allow an exact diagnosis from today's perspective.
Meanwhile, Henry Stanbery , the United States Attorney General , interpreted the Reconstruction Acts as giving local officials plenty of leeway in deciding who to put on the electoral roll. Stevens denied that Stanbery had the right to override the laws passed by Congress in this way. While still in Lancaster, he gave a sensational interview with the New York Herald . He was very negative about Republican members of Congress and pessimistic about the prospect of impeachment. He later found himself compelled to deny his statements about John Bingham , Robert Cumming Schenck , Butler and others in a statement to the House of Representatives . When Congress convened again in early July, a special committee on Reconstruction was set up and Stevens was appointed chairman. Within a few days he was preparing a third Reconstruction Act, which authorized the commanders of the five military districts to intervene in the personnel of the civil administration. In addition, civil courts were prohibited from interfering with the military regime to which the provisional governments of the southern states were subordinated. The legislative package was passed by both Houses in mid-July and survived a presidential veto. To Stevens' dissatisfaction, Congress adjourned in July without waiting for a final report from the committee of inquiry against the president. No sooner had he left for Lancaster than Johnson dismissed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who was constantly opposed to him, in accordance with the provisions of the Tenure of Office Act, and installed Grant as acting successor. With the simultaneous dismissal of General Philip Sheridan as commander of one of the five military districts, the president offered a possible lever for impeachment, especially since he replaced other district chiefs with Generals George Henry Thomas and Daniel E. Sickles . Nonetheless, Stevens was unconcerned about the prospects of impeachment, and his pessimism was confirmed when the Democrats took advantage of widespread racist reservations about African-American suffrage in the State Legislature elections and recorded significant votes. Arriving in the capital in mid-November at the beginning of the session, his critical health was so evident that the newspapers assumed this Congress would be his last.
Impeachment proceedings against the President
To the surprise of many who had already written him off for reporting on his illness, his will to lead was unbroken. Right at the beginning of the session, he introduced several legislative proposals, including the breaking up of Texas into several states. In late November, the Committee of Inquiry made a recommendation to initiate impeachment proceedings without any serious violations by Johnson. The charges were therefore threadbare in some respects. Two weeks later, to Stevens' disappointment, the House of Commons refused to initiate an impeachment, although his advocacy for inflationary monetary policy had recently driven moderate Republicans into the president's camp. The split between the Republicans did not last long, as both factions jointly supported the fourth Reconstruction Act, which required a majority of voters to ratify the new constitution in the southern states, and set up a new Reconstruction Committee in accordance with Stevens' demands. However, his attempts to legally introduce universal suffrage remained unsuccessful. The chances of impeachment rose in January 1868 when the Senate refused to approve Stanton's dismissal and asked Johnson to reappoint him as Secretary of War. Although ordered differently by the President, Grant subsequently handed over the offices to Stanton. Stevens now convinced the House of Commons to transfer impeachment proceedings to the Reconstruction Committee, which he chaired. The hearings started immediately and the first witnesses were summoned. In mid-February, he opened his charges to the committee, which accused Johnson, among other things, of disregarding Congress, of operating a system of patronage for the purpose of corruption and of trying to usurp full governance. He reacted with indignation when the committee voted against submitting this statement to the House of Commons. He then accused Grant of using his influence to stop the charges.
Stevens, firmly convinced that the progress made through the civil war could only be secured with the ousting of Johnson, only a few days later got a tailwind for his undertaking: On February 21, the President informed the Senate that he would become General Lorenzo Thomas Appointed Minister of War and deposed Stanton. Congress received the news with indignation, while Stanton barricaded himself in his offices. Stevens saw himself confirmed in his fight against Johnson and said in this matter: “If you don't kill the beast, it will kill you” (“If you don't kill the beast, it will kill you”). The representative John Covode then asked that the President should be dismissed because of this serious offense of his office, which was forwarded to the investigative committee of Stevens. On the very next day, he submitted a resolution to the House of Representatives for voting, with the English kings Charles I , James II and George III in the ensuing debate . as historical cues for Johnson's behavior fell. Stevens gave the last speech in the debate on March 2nd and was so affected by his illness that his voice failed him and McPherson had to read it. He proposed two commissions for further action, one of which worked out the specific charges and the other served to reach an understanding with the Senate. The House of Commons agreed, and Stevens and Bingham became members of both bodies. The committee drafted ten counts listing Stanton's dismissal, Thomas's appeal, and the personnel actions regarding the district commanders as violations. According to Trefousse, the indictment was repetitive and not very convincing. Stevens was no longer in the constitution to take his usual active role in the committee, which is why he asked Butler for support. On the basis of Stevens' remarks, James F. Wilson drafted the charge that would later be considered in the decisive Senate vote. This was based on Johnson's declaration that the 40th Congress was not in conformity with the law because of the expulsion of elected representatives from the southern states, and accused him, among other things, of disregarding the Reconstruction Acts. On March 2, 1868, the House of Representatives approved impeachment proceedings and designated a staff for further prosecution, including Stevens. Due to his serious illness, George S. Boutwell and a short time later Bingham was appointed Chief of Staff instead of his . Meanwhile, the Senate converted its hall into a court of law.
In early March 1868, in Steven's absence, the staff asked the Senate to summon the president. Johnson had put together a team of several lawyers, which originally included former Secretary of State Jeremiah S. Black . Stevens was embarrassed by this move, as Black, representing a group of investors, had demanded the United States buy an island off the Dominican coast. To this end, his son had presented President Johnson with a list of signatures from supporters, including Stevens. He was later accused of offering Johnson to drop the lawsuit against him if he bought the island. Stevens asserted in his defense that he did not know that his signature would be presented to Black and Johnson. To Stevens' disappointment, the President did not appear on the scheduled subpoena. After consultation in the Senate, the latter granted Johnson a ten-day extension. Finally, on March 23, the President defended himself before the Senate, claiming that Stanton had not been protected by the Term of Office Act because he had been appointed before Lincoln passed it. He also considers the Tenure of Office Act to be unconstitutional and is seeking a judicial clarification of this issue. The next day the law enforcement staff rejected the defense's arguments and set the actual trial to begin on March 30th. Butler took charge of the prosecution because Stevens was unable to do so due to health issues. Butler treated the cause as a simple legal case without going into the political dimensions, which harmed the matter. This carelessness was reflected both in his opening speech, which was generally perceived as unconvincing, and in the interview with witnesses he conducted. Many historians later attributed the unfavorable course of impeachment to Stevens' failure for the prosecution.
Stevens testified in the Senate on April 27. Severely weakened, he could hardly be heard, so that he finally gave Butler the manuscript of his speech to read. His statement stated that for him the eleventh count, formulated by Wilson after his remarks, was the decisive one. According to the constitution , the president has legislative but not legislative power . Historian James Ford Rhodes later saw in that speech the strongest argument on the part of the prosecution. Nevertheless, the success of the Johnson opponents became increasingly dubious in the further proceedings, as the radical Republicans were under political pressure because of poor election results at the state level and the necessary passage of a fourth Reconstruction Act. From mid-March on, Stevens was pessimistic about the outcome of the proceedings. In the alphabetical roll-call vote in the Senate on May 16, following the vote of the undecided Edmund Gibson Ross, it became apparent that the two-thirds majority required for impeachment had not been achieved, even if only one vote was missing in the end. Stevens, like the other prosecutors, suspected corruption as the cause of this outcome, which the Senate upheld on two other counts ten days later before adjourning the court indefinitely. Therefore, they opened an unsuccessful investigation in this regard, during which they called witnesses and looked into bank accounts. One of the witnesses was detained in the Capitol basement for disobeying the body. The Republican National Convention suspended this process for a few days; there Grant was nominated for a presidential nomination. Contrary to what Stevens had hoped, there was no demand for universal suffrage in the election manifesto. In early July, he presented five new charges against the president to the prosecution, accusing him, among other things, of exploiting patronage to abuse power, attempting to persuade future Senators from Colorado to perjury, and restoring confiscated property in the southern states. Despite his hope of being able to proceed with the indictment in the coming session of 1868/69, he was aware that the matter was lost. Trefousse sees the fact that in the event of Johnson's impeachment, the even less popular Wade would have become president as the cause of the defeat of the prosecutors in the Senate.
Meanwhile, as chairman of the Reconstruction Committee, in mid-May he had proposed to the House of Commons that Arkansas, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama be recognized as states because they now fulfilled the conditions of the four Reconstruction Acts, i.e. the right to vote for African Americans in theirs Constitutions guaranteed. In this context, Stevens spoke out against a change in the law that allowed the states to later modify universal suffrage. He predicted the following legal measures in the southern states relatively precisely later, with which African Americans were denied entry on the electoral roll. After Congress voted to accept these states, the legislative package was vetoed by the President in late June. In the context of the accession debate, Stevens spoke out several times unsuccessfully in favor of anchoring universal suffrage in law throughout the nation, claiming that the founding fathers only failed to do so because of the existence of the “peculiar institution”. In the presidential election campaign he supported Grant, although he did not appreciate him because of his lack of political experience and obvious closeness to Johnson. With a speech in which he again expressed his preference for inflationary monetary policy and announced that he would vote against any candidate who demanded the disbursement of government bonds in hard money , he caused a sensation and received a lot of criticism from within the party. In a public letter he defended himself and made it clear that he did not want to take sides with the Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour and his running mate Francis Preston Blair Jr. He spoke for the last time in the House of Representatives in late July, signaling his support for federal grants to the Department of Alaska and the purchase of Samana Bay.
death
By the time the session ended after his last speech, he was too weak to return to Lancaster and was bedridden in Washington. It was clear to all observers that the end was imminent. For the past few days, his housekeeper, Smith, has been tending to him while the medication prescribed by his family doctor in Lancaster has stopped helping and his nephew Thaddeus Jr. has come to see him one last time. On August 9, he suffered a severe relapse after brief relief from treatment by a local doctor. Two days later he was able to regroup and received his former apprentice lawyer, Simon Stevens, with whom he discussed political matters. Later his housekeeper, a pastor, and others joined them. He reiterated his hope of traveling to Lancaster soon before his condition rapidly deteriorated. After two Methodist ministers prayed with him and two Sisters of Mercy baptized him, although it was questionable whether Stevens was aware of this fact, the doctor informed him that he was about to die. Stevens died around midnight between August 11 and 12. With his last words he had previously asked for ice cubes, chewing them had calmed him.
News of his death spread quickly and soon large crowds came to his house to see his body laid out in the reception room. Eventually it was moved to the rotunda of the United States Capitol , accompanied by African-American Zouaves . A funeral ceremony was held here on the morning of August 14th and Stevens' remains were then transferred to the train station, from where they were transported in a special train via Baltimore and Harrisburg to Lancaster, where the Lutheran rite was buried the following day . Stevens had deliberately chosen the cemetery, as he was the only one in Lancaster to accept deaths of all skin colors, and this decision was thematized in his grave inscription: "I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death The Principles which I advocated Through a long life" (" I chose this [cemetery] so that in my death I might illustrate the principles that have guided me through a long life ”). His death received wide attention, even the London Times reported that America had lost one of its leading men. The moderate republican newspapers, which had always opposed him, also acknowledged his outstanding importance in their reports. The New York Times described Stevens in its obituary as "the evil genius of the Republicans". As expected, the death reports in the democratic newspapers were not very appreciative. Stevens' electorate nominated him for the upcoming congressional elections despite his death. Only after the by-election was due, his former trainee lawyer, Oliver James Dickey, was chosen as the representative for the 9th constituency. At the beginning of the session in 1868/69, he held the most extensive funeral speech on the death of Stevens. Most of the eulogies in Congress, including the Democratic, praised Stevens' accomplishments for his leadership and wit. However, some speakers blamed him for his zeal in the fight against the Freemasons and his views on inflationary monetary policy.
His last will , drawn up in July 1867, to which an appendix was added in November, determined executors to invest all proceeds from the sale of property in government bonds. He bequeathed sums of money to the city of Peacham and its cemetery, where his mother rested, and Thaddeus Jr., a niece in Indianapolis, and Simon Stevens. Smith received an annual annuity and was allowed to choose interior furnishings at her discretion. He also considered the German Baptists and the Pennsylvania College. Thaddeus Jr. also gradually got the house and the legal practice in Lancaster assigned, should he no longer touch alcohol. In the event of his previous death, the plan was to turn the property's value into an orphanage if it exceeded a certain amount. This complex arrangement led to legal disputes between the Stevens family and the executors, until in 1894 the court ruled in favor of them and an orphanage was built, which was named Stevens.
Afterlife
Historical evaluation and personality
In any discussion of Reconstruction, Stevens' role is paramount, although he died barely ten years before it was over. Its historical standing wavered along with that of the radical Republicans as a whole. In the " Dunning School" that dominated America at the beginning of the 20th century , the reconstruction and emancipation of Afro-Americans were interpreted as a great injustice perpetrated on the southern states. Accordingly, the ratings for Stevens were negative. In his work Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction , published in 1960 , Eric McKitrick sparked a movement towards a different, more positive view of Reconstruction and, related to it, Stevens. Against the background of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the radical Republicans were also viewed in a different light and, for example, referred to by Trefousse as “Lincoln's vanguard for racial justice”. Eric Foner , who is considered a leading historian on reconstruction, came to the conclusion in 1980 that the extraordinary complexity of his different motifs and the mixture of idealism and political opportunism made it almost impossible to categorize Stevens. He remains best known as a radical Republican and in popular culture for the potential love affair with his African American housekeeper.
Politically, Steven followed the tradition of his native New England and especially Vermont, which was hostile to the Jeffersonian Republicans . Throughout his career as a politician, he remained true to the principle of always cooperating with opponents of the Democratic-Republican Party. According to historian John David Smith, he was ahead of and polarized his contemporaries in his devotion to the principles of republicanism and equality , which went hand in hand with a strict orientation towards the United States' Declaration of Independence . While his followers saw in him an "avenging angel of God", the opponents condemned him as an "agent of the devil who rose from hell". Despite negative character traits such as egoism, vindictiveness and sardonism, he understood better than any other civil war official how to combine his idealistic, egalitarian convictions with the pragmatism of a skilled politician. He was a gifted speaker and his wit and sarcasm were so feared that his opponents avoided an open debate with him. Stevens himself was dissatisfied with what he had achieved, even described his life as a failure, and looked pessimistic about the future of the United States. He considered the introduction of free education in Pennsylvania to be his greatest achievement.
According to Trefousse, his efforts to obtain more extensive confiscations were inevitably doomed to failure, as the loss of slaves for the southern states was the most extensive expropriation that an English-speaking country has ever suffered in history. Nevertheless, Stevens' political struggle, which was primarily based on his firm conviction of the equality of all before the law, did not remain fruitless. In addition to the African-Americans, he also campaigned for equality between Sino-Americans and Indians. This also applies to the Jewish Americans , although here and there he expressed himself in terms of contemporary anti-Semitic stereotypes. Although the 15th Amendment , passed after his death, did not guarantee the right of African Americans to electoral office or prohibit discriminatory electoral law provisions, the Reconstruction Acts, of which he was the main architect, remained as his legacy as a future basis for more civil rights. According to Trefousse, the political style of Stevens, the most fanatical of the radical Republicans, was marked by harshness, but it was a legacy that made many of the advances in the emancipation of the minorities in the 20th century possible. Far ahead of his time, he worked on a democracy that gave all “races” equal rights.
In addition to the liberation of the slaves, Stevens also wanted to smash the power of the planter aristocracy and bring about a social transformation in the southern states. For him, the key to this was land reform in the form of the expropriation of the plantation owners, while most radical Republicans saw the right to vote for African Americans as the means to an end. For Stevens, however, economic independence was a prerequisite for political participation. He saw in land-owning freedmen a new peasant middle class comparable to those in the northern states, whom he idealized. In this transfigured image of an agrarian society, reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson's ideals , he saw the African-American farmers as the future support of the Republicans in the southern states. His objective was a democratic society with a more widely distributed prosperity, which should replace the planter aristocracy, which is characterized by undemocratic structures and centralized economic power. Together with other radicals, such as Sumner, Butler and Schurz, he saw the smashing of the privileged classes as a conventional reaction that has followed many revolutions and wars. Ultimately, this failed not only because of opposition from Democrats and moderate Republicans, but also because of the interests of cotton processing companies from the northern states, who saw growth in a large middle class of land-owned African American smallholders as an obstacle. As a result, economic power in the southern states remained largely in the same hands during the Reconstruction as it did before the Civil War, and slave owners became large landowners who leased their land to former slaves. These were now liberated, but for the most part found themselves trapped in a form of economic bondage.
Against the background of current historical perspectives on the period after the Civil War, the historian Michael Green classifies Stevens in the process of a “greater reconstruction”, which not only encompassed the northern and southern states, but especially those of this epoch culminating territorial expansion of the United States to the Pacific. Stevens was aware of this transcontinental nation building into an industrial and agricultural great power and tried to bring this into line with his ideal of an egalitarian and democratic society. As a staunch supporter of industrialization and its state sponsorship, he brought this position, which is typical of the Whigs, into the Republican Party. He also looked at transcontinental railroad construction from an internationalist perspective, since the connection of Pacific and Atlantic ports ensured profitable advantages for America in world trade with Europe and Asia. After the civil war, Stevens supported a higher peace-keeping strength of the army not only because of the reconstruction in the southern states, but also to protect the railway construction and the advancing "frontier" in the west . Stevens recognized that this expansion posed existential problems for the Indians, who showed more understanding for their situation than most of his colleagues. In spite of all efforts for their rights, which however never reached the intensity as in the affair of the Afro-Americans, in the end he showed himself to be unable to promote both the economic development of the West and the protection of the Indian peoples. At this point, according to Green, it became apparent how intrinsic contradictions prevent the pursuit of the best of intentions, in Steven's case, egalitarianism.
Honors and monuments
Stevens County in Kansas and several schools, including the Thaddeus Stevens School in Washington, DC, the Thaddeus Stevens School of Observation in Philadelphia and the Stevens High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania , were named after him . Furthermore, the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology was named after him.
Movies
- The very negative character Austin Stoneman in the racist film classic The Birth of a Nation by DW Griffith was modeled on Stevens.
- Lionel Barrymore played him in the role of a villain in Tennessee Johnson , a film about the life of Andrew Johnson , in 1942 .
- In Steven Spielberg's feature film Lincoln , Stevens is portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones as a quick-witted and radical opponent of slavery.
Work editions
- Beverly Wilson Palmer, Holly Byers Ochoa (Eds.): The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens . Two editions. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh from 1997.
- Beverly Wilson Palmer (Ed.): The Thaddeus Stevens papers . Del .: Scholarly Resources, Wilmington 1994. [Microfilm Ed.].
literature
- Michael J. Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 2019, ISBN 978-0-8071-7081-6 .
- Steve Longenecker: Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North. Fordham University Press, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-8232-5519-1 , pp. 179-182 (= Divertimento: Thaddeus Stevens ).
- Christopher Shepard: Making No Distinctions Between Rich and Poor: Thaddeus Stevens and Class Equality. Pennsylvania History, January 2013, Vol. 80 (1), ISSN 0031-4528 , pp. 37-50.
- Charles F. Ritter: Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792 – August 11, 1868). In: Charles F. Ritter, John L. Wakelyn (Eds.): Leaders of the American Civil War: A Biographical and Historiographical Dictionary. Routledge, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-579-58112-1 , pp. 397-404.
- David G. Smith: On the Edge of Freedom, The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania 1820-1870. Fordham University Press, New York 2012, ISBN 0-8232-6396-7 , pp. 39-69 (= 2. Thaddeus Stevens' Dilemma, Colonization and the Turbulent Years of Early Antislavery in Adams County, 1835-39 ).
- Dan Monroe, Bruce Tap: Shapers of the Great Debate on the Civil War: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood, Westport 2005, ISBN 978-0-313-31745-3 , pp. 245-264 (= Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) ).
- Aaron J. Walker: "No distinction would be tolerated": Thaddeus Stevens, disability, and the original intent of the equal protection clause. In: Yale Law & Policy Review. 2000, Vol. 19 (1), ISSN 0740-8048 , pp. 265-301.
- Hans Louis Trefousse : Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1997, ISBN 0-8078-2335-X .
- Jean V. Berlin: Thaddeus Stevens and His Biographers. In: Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. April 1993, Vol. 60 (2), ISSN 0031-4528 , pp. 153-162.
- Donald Pickens: The Republican Synthesis and Thaddeus Stevens. In: Civil War History. March 1985, Vol. 31 (1), ISSN 0009-8078 , pp. 57-73.
- Fawn McKay Brodie: Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South. Norton, New York 1966, ISBN 0-393-00331-0 .
- Ralph Korngold: Thaddeus Stevens: A being darkly wise and rudely great. Harcourt / Brace, New York 1955, LCCN 55-009381
- Carter G. Woodson : Thaddeus Stevens. Negro History Bulletin, December 1949, Vol. 13 (3), ISSN 0028-2529 , pp. 51f.
- Richard Nelson Current : Old Thad Stevens: A Story of Ambition. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1942, LCCN 43-052549
Web links
- Thaddeus Stevens in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
- Thaddeus Stevens in the database of Find a Grave (English)
Remarks
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse : Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 1-3.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 3-5, 20.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 5-9.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 7f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 10-12.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 29.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 12-15.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 29.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 16-19.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 31f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 20-22, 28.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 21.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 24-28, 31.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 28-31.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 32-34.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 34-36.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 37-39.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 39-41.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 41-44.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 186.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 44-48.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 48-53.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 53-57.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 57-61.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 62-65.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 65-68.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 68-71.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 186f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 71-74.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 74-77.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 77-82.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 82-86.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 87-91.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 91-95.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 95-97.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 98-101.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 101-108, 110.
-
^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 189f.
Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 108f., 111-113, 137. - ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 112-115.
-
↑ James M. McPherson : Dying for Freedom: The Story of the American Civil War. Anaconda, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-86647-267-9 , p. 348 (English: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York 1988. Translated by Christa Seibicke).
Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 115-117. - ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: pp. 190, 192.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 117-121, 124f., 130.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 121-123.
- ↑ Michael Green: “Eastern and Western Empire”: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 215-236; here: p. 227.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 125-128.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 128-132.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 132-136.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 137-140.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 140-144.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 144-149.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 150-157.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 193.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 158f., 161-163.
-
↑ Michael Green: “Eastern and Western Empire”: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 215-236; here: p. 220f.
John David Smith, “Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision”: Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: pp. 193–195. - ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 206.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 163-172.
-
^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: pp. 194–196.
Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 172-178. - ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 178-182.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 185-188.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 192f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 189-195.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 195-199.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 200-205.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: pp. 197–202.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 205-209.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 204.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 210-215.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 215-219.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 220-223.
- ↑ Michael Green: “Eastern and Western Empire”: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 215-236; here: p. 222f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 224-228.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 227-231.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 231-235.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 235-238.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Pp. 238-241.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. S. xi, 241-243.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 243f.
- ↑ Michael Green: “Eastern and Western Empire”: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 215-236; here: p. 215f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian . P. 8.
-
^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: pp. 185f., 188.
Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian . S. xif. - ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 244f.
- ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 214.
-
^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: p. 187.
Hans Louis Trefousse: Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. P. 244f. - ↑ Michael Green: “Eastern and Western Empire”: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 215-236; here: p. 219.
- ^ John David Smith, "Like the Baseless Fabric of a Vision": Thaddeus Stevens and Confiscation Reconsidered. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 185-214; here: pp. 187-189, 191f., 204-208.
- ↑ Michael Green: “Eastern and Western Empire”: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction. In: Michael J Birkner, Randall Martin Miller, John W Quist (Eds.): The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Pp. 215-236; here: pp. 217f., 223-225, 228-233.
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↑ Charles Curry Aiken, Joseph Nathan Kane: The American Counties: Origins of County Names, Dates of Creation, Area, and Population Data, 1950-2010 . 6th edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-8762-6 , p. 290 .
Stevens, Thaddeus, School on the National Register of Historic Places , accessed February 24, 2020.
Stevens, Thaddeus, School of Observation on the National Register of Historic Places , accessed February 24, 2020.
Stevens High School on the National Register of Historic Places , accessed on February 24, 2020. - ^ Mission & Core Values. Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, accessed May 8, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stevens, Thaddeus |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American lawyer and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 4, 1792 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Danville , Caledonia County , Vermont |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 11, 1868 |
| Place of death | Washington, DC |