Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice

 

Just finished reading Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine.  As Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Halm noted in his review of the book,

“Often reviled and generally misunderstood, Thaddeus Stevens has been relegated to a dark corner of the American historical stage. The distinguished historian Bruce Levine not only brings Stevens back into the light but also reveals his significance to the revolutionary dynamic of the Civil War and Reconstruction.”

When many modern readers think of Thaddeus Stevens what may come to mind first is the curmudgeonly Congressman played by Tommy Lee Jones in Steven Spielberg’s great bio-pic, Lincoln.  While Jones apparently got the personality of Stevens right in the film, Stevens role in the nation’s struggle over slavery was much greater than most people understand.  In order to properly tell about Stevens’ contribution to American life, Levine gives us a detailed history of how issues of emancipation and racial equality evolved in the decades leading up to the American Civil War and during—and after—the war itself and of Stevens’ central role in shaping our concepts of racial equality that resulted.  It is a remarkable story—one not given much time in our high school history classes—of how American politics and culture dealt with the issues surrounding slavery while fighting what many now see as the Second American Revolution.

Stevens was born in Vermont in 1792 and suffered from a club foot all his life.  His father abandoned the family when Stevens was six, and he grew up in poverty.  However, his mother encouraged him to read and to get a good education.  Thanks to a New England culture that provided access to education for poor students, he was able to attend Dartmouth College and then taught school while he studied for his law degree.  In 1816, he moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he established himself as a lawyer.  He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1833, where he advocated for public school system, and served as a delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1836-37.  After losing re-election, he moved to Lancaster to build his law practice and was elected to the U.S. Congress. Over the next three decades, until his death in 1868, Stevens was an outspoken advocate for full emancipation of slaves and their acceptance as full citizens. 

What is intriguing about Levine’s book is the detail that he provides on how emancipation and related issues gradually developed in the years leading up to the Civil War and during the war itself.  Politicians were so concerned to attract the Confederates back into the Union that they were reluctant to make any demands on the slave-holding states, even to the point of being reluctant to allow escaped slaves to serve in the military.  The result is a fascinating look at this aspect of our history that few of us got in high school or college American history classes.  Given today’s climate, where we again as a nation are struggling to overcome the idea of racial distinctions, it is a powerful bit of historical narrative.

Stevens was in the midst of the debate over these issues and championed freedom throughout his career.  He wrote this epitaph for himself, which was carved into his monument in 1868 at the Shriner-Concord Cemetery, then the only racially integrated cemetery in Lancaster, Pa:

I repose in this quiet and secluded spot not from any natural preference for solitude.  But, finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life: EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR.

Thaddeus Stevens is a great read and a great lesson for our times.