It’s unlikely you know much about Thaddeus Stevens. Unless you enjoyed his portrayal by Tommy Lee Jones in the 2012 movie Lincoln, you may not recognize his name at all. This is unfortunate and deserves to be rectified. Thaddeus Stevens is, in fact, one of the great American statesman of the mid-19th century.
Before the Civil War began his career was like that of several other political figures of his day. It began as a member of the Whig Party. (The Whigs were the opponents of the Democratic Party before 1854. Maybe someday I’ll write a post on why they took such a seemingly strange name.) As such, he supported classic Whig positions like banking and internal improvements (what we would call infrastructure) and, like many Northern Whigs, opposed slavery.
It is this last position that would later lead Stevens to his historic importance. He hated the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Compromise of 1850. When the Republican Party formed in the mid-1850s, he joined it because of its opposition to the extension of slavery. (Yes, strange as it may sound today, the Republican Party when first organized favored civil rights rather than opposing them. The ideas and values of political parties do change, however much the parties like to deny the fact.)
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Thaddeus Stevens as an Anti-Slavery Figure
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Thaddeus Stevens was a member of the House of Representatives. During the war he became an important member of the House. He chaired two committees and was a skilled parliamentarian. At times, however, he resorted to what one colleague termed “sarcastic eloquence” to carry his points.
But his great contribution came after the war. He helped secure the adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments. The Thirteenth ended slavery throughout the US. The Fourteenth, which some have named the Citizenship Amendment, clarified and expanded the rights possessed by all US citizens. He would have supported the Fifteenth as well but died in 1868 before it passed. (The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote to all male citizens.)
That was not all. Thaddeus Stevens also favored a substantial reconstruction of the South after the war. That is, he realized that southern attitudes toward African Americans needed to change. If not, the former slaves would have no justice no matter what rights government tried to guarantee. He felt military occupation was a legitimate way to pursue this goal. Likewise, Stevens favored a plan to confiscate land from Confederate plantation owners. The former slaves would get some of the land. The rest would be sold to help pay the costs of the Civil War. This plan did not become law, however.
Was Thaddeus Stevens Right?
One could make a very good argument that Stevens was on point with his ideas about Reconstruction. As it played out, Reconstruction treated the rebellious southern states very leniently. As a result, African Americans there had little protection from predatory southerners both inside and outside of government. Between the Black Codes, segregation, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, sharecropping, and the prison labor system, southern Blacks faced horrible treatment for decades to come. It wasn’t slavery. But in many cases their lives weren’t much better.
Would a more extensive military occupation, or some other combination of drastic measures, have worked better? No one can say, of course. It didn’t happen. But the Southern response to Reconstruction was disastrous for most people in the South. The South was the poorest and least educated part of the nation for decades to come. Racial hostility blighted Southern life. Poor Whites hated poor Blacks while ignoring the reasons both remained poor. Southern states offered the fewest public services and the greatest hostility to organized labor. Industrial development was generally weak outside of a few industries like textiles and iron. Environmental damage to the land was significant as cotton fields eroded in quality.
Calling for a lengthy military occupation of the South might sound distasteful today. But, honestly, could it have turned out worse than what really happened? Perhaps. But things may also have turned out a good deal better. We’ll never know. (I’m unaware if anyone has ever compared the aftermath of the Civil War to the aftermath of World War 2. Recall that after 1945 the US engaged in a temporary occupation of Japan. Significant changes to Japanese society resulted from that occupation. But those events were 80 years apart, making the comparison somewhat less than apples-to-apples.)
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The End of the Story
Thaddeus Stevens was also among those who wanted to impeach President Andrew Johnson in 1868. But his health was poor by that time. When he died in August, his friends buried Stevens at his request in a graveyard for African Americans. His tombstone reads: “I repose in this quiet and secluded spot not from any natural preference for solitude. But finding other cemeteries limited as to race by charter rules, I have chosen that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life: Equality of man before his Creator.”
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