Thaddeus Stevens

In Pennsylvania, Stevens taught school at the York Academy and continued his studies for the bar.[8] Local lawyers passed a resolution barring from membership anyone who had "followed any other profession while preparing for admission,"[4] a restriction likely aimed at Stevens. Undaunted, he reportedly (according to a story he often retold) presented himself and four bottles of Madeira wine to the examining board in nearby Harford County, Maryland. Few questions were asked, but much wine was drunk. He left Bel Air the next morning with a certificate allowing him, through reciprocity, to practice law anywhere. Stevens then went to Gettysburg, the seat of Adams County,[8][9] where he opened an office in September 1816.[10]

Stevens knew no one in Gettysburg and initially had little success as a lawyer. His breakthrough, in mid-1817, was a case in which a farmer who had been jailed for debt later killed one of the constables who had arrested him. His defense, although unsuccessful, impressed the local people, and he never lacked for business thereafter.[10] In his legal career, he demonstrated the propensity for sarcasm that would later mark him as a politician, once telling a judge who accused him of manifesting contempt of court, "Sir, I am doing my best to conceal it."[11]

Many who memorialized Stevens after his death in 1868 agreed on his talent as a lawyer. He was involved in the first ten cases to reach the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from Adams County after he began his practice and won nine. One case he later wished he had not won was Butler v. Delaplaine, in which he successfully reclaimed a slave on behalf of her owner.[12]

In Gettysburg, Stevens also began his involvement in politics, serving six one-year terms on the borough council between 1822 and 1831 and becoming its president.[13] He took the profits from his practice and invested them in Gettysburg real estate, becoming the largest landowner in the community by 1825, and had an interest in several iron furnaces outside town.[12] In addition to assets, he acquired enemies; after the death of a pregnant black woman in Gettysburg, there were anonymous letter-writers to newspapers, hinting that Stevens was culpable. The rumors dogged him for years;[14] when one newspaper opposed to Stevens printed a letter in 1831 naming him as the killer, he successfully sued for libel.[15]

Stevens's first political cause was Anti-Masonry, which became widespread in 1826 after the disappearance and death of William Morgan, a Mason in Upstate New York; fellow Masons were presumed to be the killers of Morgan because they disapproved of his publishing a book revealing the order's secret rites. Since the leading candidate in opposition to President John Quincy Adams was General Andrew Jackson, a Mason who mocked opponents of the order, Anti-Masonry became closely associated with opposition to Jackson and his Jacksonian democracy policies once he was elected president in 1828.[16]

Jackson's adherents were from the old Democratic-Republican Party and eventually became known as the Democrats. Stevens had been told by a fellow attorney (and future president) James Buchanan that he could advance politically if he joined them. However, Stevens could not support Jackson, out of principle.[17] For Stevens, Anti-Masonry became one means of opposing Jackson; he may also have had personal reasons as the Masons barred "cripples" from joining. Stevens took to Anti-Masonry with enthusiasm and remained loyal to it after most Pennsylvanians had dropped the cause. His biographer, Hans Trefousse, suggested that another reason for Stevens's virulence was an attack of disease in the late 1820s that cost him his hair (he thereafter wore wigs, often ill-fitting), and "the unwelcome illness may well have contributed to his unreasonable fanaticism concerning the Masons."[18]

By 1829, Anti-Masonry had evolved into a political party, the Anti-Masonic Party, that proved popular in rural central Pennsylvania. Stevens quickly became prominent in the movement, attending the party's first two national conventions in 1830 and 1831. At the latter, he pressed the candidacy of Supreme Court Justice John McLean as the party's presidential candidate, but in vain as the nomination fell to former Attorney General William Wirt. Jackson was easily reelected; the crushing defeat (Wirt won only Vermont) caused the party to disappear in most places, though it remained powerful in Pennsylvania for several years.[19][20]

In September 1833, Stevens was elected to a one-year term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as an Anti-Mason. Once in the capital Harrisburg, he sought to have the body establish a committee to investigate Masonry. Stevens gained attention far beyond Pennsylvania for his oratory against Masonry and quickly became an expert in legislative maneuvers. In 1835, a split among the Democrats put the Anti-Masons in control of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the legislature. Granted subpoena powers, Stevens summoned leading state politicians who were Masons, including Governor George Wolf. The witnesses invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and when Stevens verbally abused one of them, it created a backlash that caused his own party to end the investigation. The fracas cost Stevens reelection in 1836, and the issue of Anti-Masonry died in Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Stevens remained an opponent of the order for the rest of his life.[21][22]

Beginning with his early years in Gettysburg, Stevens advanced the cause of universal education. At the time, no state outside New England had free public education for all. In Pennsylvania, there was free education in Philadelphia, but elsewhere in the state, those wishing to have their children educated without paying tuition had to swear a pauper's oath. Stevens opened his extensive private library to the public and gave up his presidency of the borough council, believing his service on the school board more important.[23] In 1825, he was elected by the voters of Adams County as a trustee of Gettysburg Academy. As the school was failing, Stevens got county voters to agree to pay its debt, allowing it to be sold as a Lutheran seminary. It was granted the right to award college degrees in 1831 as Pennsylvania College, and in 1921 became Gettysburg College. Stevens gave the school land upon which a building could be raised and served as a trustee for many years.[24][25][26]

Portrait of Stevens by Jacob Eichholtz now owned by Gettysburg College

In April 1834, Stevens, working with Governor Wolf, guided an act through the legislature to allow districts across the state to vote on whether to have public schools and the taxes to pay for them. Gettysburg's district voted in favor and also elected Stevens as a school director, where he served until 1839. Tens of thousands of voters signed petitions urging a reversal. The result was a repeal bill that easily passed the Pennsylvania Senate. It was widely believed the bill would also pass the House and be enacted despite opposition by Stevens. When he rose to speak on April 11, 1835, he defended the new educational system, stating that it would actually save money, and demonstrated how. He stated that opponents were seeking to separate the poor into a lower caste than themselves and accused the rich of greed and failure to empathize with the poor. Stevens argued, "Build not your monuments of brass or marble, but make them of everliving mind!"[27][28] The repeal bill was defeated; Stevens was given wide credit. Trefousse suggested that the victory was not due to Stevens's eloquence, but due to his influence, combined with that of Governor Wolf.[29]

In 1838, Stevens ran again for the legislature. He hoped that if the remaining Anti-Masons and the emerging Whig Party gained a majority, he could be elected to the United States Senate, whose members until 1913 were chosen by state legislatures. A campaign, dirty even by the standards of the times, followed. The result was a Democrat elected as governor, Whig control of the state Senate, and the state House in dispute, with several seats from Philadelphia in question. Stevens won his seat in Adams County, and sought to have those Philadelphia Democrats excluded, which would create a Whig majority that could elect a Speaker and himself as a senator. Amid rioting in Harrisburg – later known as the "Buckshot War" – Stevens's ploy backfired, with the Democrats taking control of the House. Stevens remained in the legislature for most years through 1842 but the episode cost him much of his political influence. The Whigs blamed him for the debacle and were increasingly unwilling to give leadership to someone who had not yet joined their party. Nevertheless, he supported the pro-business and pro-development Whig stances.[30] He campaigned for the Whig candidate in the 1840 presidential election, former general William Henry Harrison. Though Stevens later alleged that Harrison had promised him a Cabinet position if elected, he received none, and any influence ended when Harrison died after a month in office, to be succeeded by John Tyler, a southerner hostile to Stevens's stances on slavery.[30][31]

Although Stevens was the most successful lawyer in Gettysburg, he had accrued debt due to his business interests. Refusing to take advantage of the bankruptcy laws, he felt he needed to move to a larger municipality to gain the money to pay his obligations. In 1842, Stevens moved his home and practice to Lancaster. He knew Lancaster County was an Anti-Mason and Whig stronghold, which ensured that he retained a political base. Within a short period, he was earning more than any other Lancaster attorney; by 1848, he had reduced his debts to $30,000 and paid them off soon after. It was in Lancaster that he engaged the services of Lydia Hamilton Smith, a housekeeper, whose racial makeup was described as mulatto, and who remained with him the rest of his life.[32]

In the 1830s, few sought the immediate eradication of slavery. The abolitionist movement was young and only recently had figures such as William Lloyd Garrison taken on the fight.[33] Stevens's reason for adopting slavery as a cause has been disputed among his recent biographers. Richard Current, in 1942, suggested it was out of ambition; Fawn Brodie, in her controversial 1959 psychobiography of Stevens, suggested it was out of identification with the downtrodden, based on his handicap.[34] Trefousse, in his 1997 work, also suggested that Stevens's feelings towards the downtrodden were a factor, combined with remorse over the Butler case, but that ambition was unlikely to have been a significant motivator, as Stevens's fervor in the anti-slavery cause inhibited his career.[35]

Stevens's home on Queen Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

At the 1837 Pennsylvania constitutional convention, Stevens, who was a delegate, fought against the disenfranchisement of African-Americans (see Black suffrage in Pennsylvania).[36] According to historian Eric Foner, "When Stevens refused to sign the 1837 constitution because of its voting provision, he announced his commitment to a non-racial definition of American citizenship to which he would adhere for the remainder of his life."[37] After he moved to Lancaster, a city not far from the Mason–Dixon line, he became active in the Underground Railroad, not only defending people believed to be fugitive slaves, but coordinating the movements of those seeking freedom.[38] A 2003 renovation at his former home in Lancaster disclosed that there was a hidden cistern, attached to the main building by a concealed tunnel, in which escaped slaves hid.[39][40]

Until the outbreak of the American Civil War, Stevens took the public position that he supported slavery's end and opposed its expansion. Nevertheless, he would not seek to disturb it in the states where it existed, because the Constitution protected their internal affairs from federal interference.[33] He also supported slave-owning Whig candidates for president: Henry Clay in 1844[41] and Zachary Taylor in 1848.[42]

In 1848, Stevens ran for election to Congress from Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district. There was opposition to him at the Whig convention. Some delegates felt that because Stevens had been late to join the party, he should not receive the nomination; others disliked his stance on slavery. He narrowly won the nomination. In a strong year for Whigs nationally, Taylor was chosen as president and Stevens was elected to Congress.[43]

When the 31st United States Congress convened in December 1849, Stevens took his seat, joining other newly elected slavery opponents such as Salmon P. Chase. Stevens spoke out against the Compromise of 1850, crafted by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, that gave victories to both North and South, but would allow for some of the territories of the United States recently gained from Mexico to become slave states.[45] As the debates continued, in June he said, "This word 'compromise' when applied to human rights and constitutional rights I abhor."[46] Nevertheless, the pieces of legislation that made up the Compromise passed, including the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which Stevens found particularly offensive.[47] Although many Americans hoped that the Compromise would bring sectional peace, Stevens warned that it would be "the fruitful mother of future rebellion, disunion, and civil war."[48]

Stevens was easily renominated and reelected in 1850, even though his stance caused him problems among pro-Compromise Whigs.[49] In 1851, Stevens was one of the defense lawyers in the trial of 38 African-Americans and three others in federal court in Philadelphia on treason charges. The defendants had been implicated in the so-called Christiana Riot: an attempt to enforce a Fugitive Slave Act warrant had resulted in the killing of the slaveowner. Justice Robert Grier of the U.S. Supreme Court, as circuit justice, tried the case, and instructed the jury to acquit because though the defendants might be guilty of murder or riot, they were not charged with that and were not guilty of treason. The well-publicized incident (and others like it) increased polarization over the issue of slavery, and made Stevens a prominent face of Northern abolitionism.[49][50]

Despite this trend, Stevens suffered political problems. He left the Whig caucus in December 1851, when his colleagues would not join him in seeking the repeal of the offensive elements of the Compromise. Nevertheless, he supported its unsuccessful 1852 candidate for president, General Winfield Scott. His political opposition, and local dislike of his stance on slavery and participation in the treason trial, made him unlikely to win renomination, and he sought only to pick his successor. His choice was defeated for the Whig nomination.[51]

Out of office, Stevens concentrated on the practice of law in Lancaster, remaining one of the leading attorneys in the state. He stayed active in politics, and in 1854, to gain more votes for the anti-slavery movement, he joined the nativist Know Nothing Party. The members were pledged not to speak of party deliberations (thus, they knew nothing), and Stevens was attacked for his membership in a group with similar secrecy rules as the Masons. In 1855, Stevens joined the new Republican Party. Other former Whigs who were anti-slavery joined as well, including William H. Seward of New York, Charles E. Sumner of Massachusetts, and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.[52]

Stevens was a delegate to the 1856 Republican National Convention, where he supported Justice McLean, as he had in 1832. However, the convention nominated John C. Frémont, whom Stevens actively supported in the race against his fellow Lancastrian, the Democratic candidate James Buchanan. Nonetheless, Pennsylvania helped elect Buchanan.[53] Stevens returned to the practice of law, but in 1858, with the President and his party unpopular and the nation torn by such controversies as the Dred Scott decision, Stevens saw an opportunity to return to Congress. As the Republican nominee, he was easily elected. Democratic papers were appalled. One banner headline read, "Niggerism Triumphant."[54]

Stevens took his seat in the 36th United States Congress in December 1859, only days after the hanging of John Brown, who had attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry hoping to cause a slave insurrection. Stevens opposed Brown's violent actions at the time, though later, he was more approving. Sectional tensions spilled over into the House, which proved unable to elect a Speaker of the United States House for eight weeks. Stevens was active in the bitter flow of invective from both sides; at one point, Mississippi Congressman William Barksdale drew a knife on him, though no blood was spilled.[55]

Southern view of the proposed compromises of 1860 and 1861, with "Dr. North" (Stevens) proposing to cut the South's legs off using a constitutional amendment. Stevens actually opposed such measures.

With the Democrats unable to agree on a single presidential candidate, the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago became crucial, as the nominee would be in a favorable position to become president. Prominent figures in the party, such as Seward and Lincoln, sought the nomination. Stevens continued to support the 75-year-old Justice McLean. Beginning on the second ballot, most Pennsylvania delegates supported Lincoln, helping to win him the nomination. As the Democrats put up no candidate in his district, Stevens was assured of reelection to the House and campaigned for Lincoln in Pennsylvania. Lincoln won a majority in the Electoral College. The President-elect's known opposition to the expansion of slavery caused immediate talk of secession in the southern states, a threat that Stevens had downplayed during the campaign.[56][57]

Congress convened in December 1860, with several of the southern states already pledging to secede. Stevens was unyielding in opposing efforts to appease the southerners, such as the Crittenden Compromise, which would have enshrined slavery as beyond constitutional amendment.[58] He stated, in a remark widely quoted both North and South, that rather than offer concessions because of Lincoln's election, he would see "this Government crumble into a thousand atoms," and that the forces of the United States would crush any rebellion.[59] Despite Stevens's protests, the lame-duck Buchanan administration did little in response to the secession votes, allowing most federal resources in the South to fall into rebel hands. Even in the abolition movement, many were content to let it be so and let the South go its own way. Stevens disagreed, and the congressman was "undoubtedly pleased" by Lincoln's statement in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, that he would "hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the Government."[60][61]

When the war began in April 1861, Stevens argued that the Confederates were revolutionaries to be crushed by force. He also believed that the Confederacy had placed itself beyond the protection of the U.S. Constitution by making war, and that in a reconstituted United States, slavery should have no place. Speaker Galusha Grow, whose views placed him with Stevens among the members becoming known as the Radical Republicans (for their position on slavery, as opposed to the liberal or moderate Republicans), appointed him as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. This position gave him power over the House's agenda.[62]

In July 1861, Stevens secured the passage of an act to confiscate the property, including slaves, of certain rebels. In November 1861, Stevens introduced a resolution to emancipate all slaves; it was defeated.[39] However, legislation did pass that abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and in the territories. By March 1862, to Stevens's exasperation, the most Lincoln had publicly supported was gradual emancipation in the Border states, with the masters compensated by the federal government.[64]

Stevens and other radicals were frustrated at how slow Lincoln was to adopt their policies for emancipation; according to Brodie, "Lincoln seldom succeeded in matching Stevens's pace, though both were marching towards the same bright horizon."[65] In April 1862, Stevens wrote to a friend, "As for future hopes, they are poor as Lincoln is nobody."[66] The radicals aggressively pushed the issue, provoking Lincoln to comment: "Stevens, Sumner and [Massachusetts Senator Henry] Wilson simply haunt me with their importunities for a Proclamation of Emancipation. Wherever I go and whatever way I turn, they are on my tail, and still in my heart, I have the deep conviction that the hour [to issue one] has not yet come."[67] The President stated that if it came to a showdown between the radicals and their enemies, he would have to side with Stevens and his fellows, and deemed them "the unhandiest devils in the world to deal with" but "with their faces ... set Zionwards."[68] Although Lincoln composed his proclamation in June and July 1862, the secret was held within his Cabinet, and the President turned aside radical pleadings to issue one until after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September. Stevens quickly adopted the Emancipation Proclamation for use in his successful re-election campaign.[69] When Congress returned in December, Stevens maintained his criticism of Lincoln's policies, calling them "flagrant usurpations, deserving the condemnation of the community."[70] Stevens generally opposed Lincoln's plans to colonize freed slaves abroad, though sometimes he supported emigration proposals for political reasons.[71] Stevens wrote to a nephew in June 1863 saying, "The slaves ought to be incited to insurrection and give the rebels a taste of real civil war."[72]

During the Confederate incursion into the North in mid-1863 that culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederates twice sent parties to Stevens's Caledonia Forge. Stevens, who had been there supervising operations, was hastened away by his workers against his will. General Jubal Early looted and vandalized the Forge, causing a loss to Stevens of about $80,000. Early said that the North had done the same to southern figures and that Stevens was well known for his vindictiveness towards the South.[74] Asked if he would have taken the congressman to Libby Prison in Richmond, Early replied that he would have hanged Stevens and divided his bones among the Confederate states.[75]

Stevens pushed Congress to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure, did not apply to all slaves, and might be reversed by peacetime courts; an amendment would be slavery's end.[39] The Thirteenth Amendment[lower-alpha 1] – which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime – easily passed the Senate but failed in the House in June; fears that it might not pass delayed a renewed attempt there.[77] Lincoln campaigned aggressively for the amendment after his re-election in 1864, and Stevens described his December annual message to Congress as "the most important and best message that has been communicated to Congress for the last 60 years".[78] Stevens closed the debate on the amendment on January 13, 1865. Illinois Representative Isaac Arnold wrote: "distinguished soldiers and citizens filled every available seat, to hear the eloquent old man speak on a measure that was to consummate the warfare of forty years against slavery."[79]

The amendment passed narrowly after heavy pressure exerted by Lincoln himself, along with offers of political appointments from the "Seward lobby". Democrats made allegations of bribery;[80][81] Stevens stated: "the greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America."[82] The amendment was declared ratified on December 18, 1865. Stevens continued to push for a broad interpretation of it that included economic justice in addition to the formal end of slavery.[83][84]

After passing the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress debated the economic rights of the freedmen. Urged on by Stevens,[50] it voted to authorize the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, with a mandate (though no funding) to set up schools and to distribute "not more than forty acres" [16 ha] of confiscated Confederate land to each family of freed slaves.[85]

Stevens worked closely with Lincoln administration officials on legislation to finance the war. Within a day of his appointment as Ways and Means chairman, he had reported a bill for a war loan. Legislation to pay the soldiers Lincoln had already called into service and to allow the administration to borrow to prosecute the war quickly followed. These acts and more were pushed through the House by Stevens. To defeat the delaying tactics of Copperhead opponents, he had the House set debate limits as short as half a minute.[86]

Stevens played a major part in the passage of the Legal Tender Act of 1862 when for the first time, the United States issued currency backed only by its own credit, not by gold or silver. Early makeshifts to finance the war, such as war bonds, had failed as it became clear the war would not be short.[87] In 1863, Stevens aided the passage of the National Banking Act, which required that banks limit their currency issues to the number of federal bonds that they were required to hold. The system endured for half a century until supplanted by the Federal Reserve System in 1913.[88]

Although the Legal Tender legislation allowed for the payment of government obligations in paper money, Stevens was unable to get the Senate to agree that interest on the national debt should be paid with greenbacks.[89] As the value of paper money dropped, Stevens railed against gold speculators, and in June 1864, after consultation with Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, proposed what became known as the Gold Bill – to abolish the gold market by forbidding its sale by brokers or for future delivery. It passed Congress in June; the chaos caused by the lack of an organized gold market caused the value of paper to drop even faster. Under heavy pressure from the business community, Congress repealed the bill on July 1, twelve days after its passage.[90] Stevens was unrepentant even as the value of paper currency recovered in late 1864 amid the expectation of Union victory, proposing legislation to make paying a premium in greenbacks for an amount in gold coin a criminal offense. It did not pass.[91]

Like most Pennsylvania politicians of both parties, Stevens was a major proponent of tariffs, which increased from 19% to 48% from fiscal 1861 to fiscal 1865.[92][93] According to activist Ida Tarbell in "The Tariff in Our Times:" [Import] duties were never too high for [Stevens], particularly for iron, for he was a manufacturer and it was often said in Pennsylvania that the duties he advocated in no way represented the large iron interests of the state, but were hoisted to cover the needs of his own ... badly managed works."[94]

As Congress debated how the U.S. would be organized after the war, the status of freed slaves and former Confederates remained undetermined.[95][96] Stevens stated that what was needed was a "radical reorganization of southern institutions, habits, and manners."[97] Stevens, Sumner, and other radicals argued that the southern states should be treated like conquered provinces without constitutional rights. Lincoln, on the contrary, said that only individuals, not states, had rebelled.[98] In July 1864, Stevens pushed Lincoln to sign the Wade–Davis Bill, which required at least half of prewar voters to sign an oath of loyalty for a state to gain readmission. Lincoln, who advocated his more lenient ten percent plan, pocket vetoed it.[99]

Stevens reluctantly voted for Lincoln at the convention of the National Union Party, a coalition of Republicans and War Democrats. He would have preferred to vote for the sitting vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, as Lincoln's running mate in 1864. However, his delegation voted to cast the state's ballots for the administration's favored candidate, Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat who had been a Tennessee senator and elected governor. Stevens was disgusted at Johnson's nomination, complaining, "can't you get a candidate for Vice-President without going down into a damned rebel province for one?"[100] Stevens campaigned for the Lincoln–Johnson ticket; it was elected, as was Stevens for another term in the House.[101] When in January 1865 Congress learned that Lincoln had attempted peace talks with Confederate leaders, an outraged Stevens declared that if the American electorate could vote again, they would elect General Benjamin Butler instead of Lincoln.[102]

Before leaving town after Congress adjourned in March 1865, Stevens privately urged Lincoln to press the South hard militarily, though the war was ending. Lincoln replied, "Stevens, this is a pretty big hog we are trying to catch and to hold when we catch him. We must take care that he does not slip away from us."[103] Never to see Lincoln again, Stevens left with "a homely metaphor but no real certainty of having left as much as a thumbprint on Lincoln's policy."[104] On the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Stevens did not attend the ceremonies when Lincoln's funeral train stopped in Lancaster; he was said to be ill. Trefousse speculated he might have avoided the rites for other reasons. According to Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg, Stevens stood at a railroad bridge and lifted his hat.[105]

In May 1865, Andrew Johnson began what came to be known as "Presidential Reconstruction": recognizing a provisional government of Virginia led by Francis Harrison Pierpont, calling for other former rebel states to organize constitutional conventions, declaring amnesty for many southerners, and issuing individual pardons to even more. Johnson did not push the states to protect the rights of freed slaves, and immediately began to counteract the land reform policies of the Freedmen's Bureau. These actions outraged Stevens and others who took his view. The radicals saw that freedmen in the South risked losing the economic and political liberty necessary to sustain emancipation from slavery. They began to call for universal male suffrage and continued their demands for land reform.[106][107]

Stevens wrote to Johnson that his policies were gravely damaging the country and that he should call a special session of Congress, which was not scheduled to meet until December. When his communications were ignored, Stevens began to discuss with other radicals how to prevail over Johnson when the two houses convened. Congress has the constitutional power to judge whether those seeking to be its members are properly elected; Stevens urged that no senators or representatives from the South be seated.[108] He argued that the states should not be readmitted as thereafter Congress would lack the power to force race reform.[109]

In September, Stevens gave a widely reprinted speech in Lancaster in which he set forth what he wanted for the South. He proposed that the government confiscate the estates of the largest 70,000 landholders there, those who owned more than 200 acres (81 ha). Much of this property he wanted distributed in plots of 40 acres (16 ha) to the freedmen; other lands would go to reward loyalists both North and South, or to meet government obligations. He warned that under the President's plan, the southern states would send rebels to Congress who would join with northern Democrats and Johnson to govern the nation and perhaps undo emancipation.[110]

Through late 1865, the southern states held white-only balloting and, in congressional elections, chose many former rebels, most prominently Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, voted as senator by the Georgia Legislature. Violence against African-Americans was common and unpunished in the South; the new legislatures enacted Black Codes, depriving the freedmen of most civil rights. These actions, seen as provocative in the North, both privately dismayed Johnson and helped turn northern public opinion against the president.[108] Stevens proclaimed that "This is not a 'white man's Government'! ... To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates the fundamental principles of our gospel of liberty."[111]

Stevens in a thoughtful pose

By this time, Stevens was past age seventy and in poor health; he was carried everywhere in a special chair. When Congress convened in early December 1865, Stevens made arrangements with the Clerk of the House that when the roll was called, the names of the Southern electees be omitted. The Senate also excluded Southern claimants. A new congressman, Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes, described Stevens: "He is radical throughout, except, I am told, he don't [recte doesn't] believe in hanging. He is [a] leader."[112]

As the responsibilities of the Ways and Means chairman had been divided, Stevens took the post of Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, retaining control over the House's agenda.[113] Stevens focused on legislation that would secure the freedom promised by the newly ratified Thirteenth Amendment.[114] He proposed and then co-chaired the Joint Committee on Reconstruction with Maine Senator William Pitt Fessenden.[115] This body, also called the Committee of Fifteen, investigated conditions in the South. It heard not only of the violence against African-Americans but against Union loyalists and against what southerners termed "carpetbaggers". Northerners who had journeyed south after the restoration of peace. Stevens declared: that "our loyal brethren at the South, whether they be black or white," required urgent protection "from the barbarians who are now daily murdering them".[114]

The Committee of Fifteen began to consider what would become the Fourteenth Amendment. Stevens had begun drafting versions in December 1865, before the Committee had even formed.[116] In January 1866, a subcommittee including Stevens and John Bingham proposed two amendments: one giving Congress the unqualified power to secure equal rights, privileges, and protections for all citizens; the other explicitly annulling all racially discriminatory laws.[117] Stevens believed that the Declaration of Independence and Organic Acts already bound the federal government to these principles, but that an amendment was necessary to allow enforcement against discrimination at the state level.[118] The resolution providing for what would become the Fourteenth Amendment was watered down in Congress; during the closing debate, Stevens said these changes had shattered his lifelong dream in equality for all Americans.[119][120] Nevertheless, stating that he lived among men, not angels, he supported the passage of the compromise amendment.[121] Still, Stevens told the House: "Forty acres of land and a hut would be more valuable to [the African-American] than the immediate right to vote."[122]

Based on ill-considered exchanges between Johnson and hecklers during the Swing Around the Circle, this Thomas Nast cartoon excerpt shows Johnson delivering a pardon to Davis as Stevens and Wendell Phillips hang in the background.

When Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull introduced legislation to reauthorize and expand the Freedmen's Bureau, Stevens called the bill a "robbery" because it did not include sufficient provisions for land reform or protect the property of refugees given them by the military occupation of the South.[123] Johnson vetoed the bill anyway, calling the Freedmen's Bureau unconstitutional, and decrying its cost: Congress had never purchased land, established schools, or provided financial help for "our own people."[124][125] Congress was unable to override Johnson's veto in February, but five months later passed a similar bill. Stevens criticized the passage of the Southern Homestead Act of 1866, arguing that the low-quality land it made available would not drive real economic growth for black families.[123]

Congress overrode a Johnson veto to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (also introduced by Trumbull), granting African-Americans citizenship and equality before the law and forbidding any action by a state to the contrary. Johnson made the gap between him and Congress wider when he accused Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips of trying to destroy the government.[126]

After Congress adjourned in July, the campaigning for the fall elections began. Johnson embarked on a trip by rail, dubbed the "Swing Around the Circle" that won him few supporters; his arguments with hecklers were deemed undignified. He attacked Stevens and other radicals during this tour. Stevens campaigned for firm measures against the South, his hand strengthened by violence in Memphis and New Orleans, where African-Americans and white Unionists had been attacked by mobs, including the police. Stevens was returned to Congress by his constituents; Republicans would have a two-thirds majority in both houses in the next Congress.[127]

In January 1867, Stevens introduced legislation to divide the South into five districts, each commanded by an army general empowered to override civil authorities. These military officers were to supervise elections with all males of whatever race, entitled to vote, except for those who could not take an oath of past loyalty – most white Southerners could not. The states were to write new constitutions (subject to approval by Congress) and hold elections for state officials. Only if a state ratified the Fourteenth Amendment would its delegation be seated in Congress.[128] The system gave power to a Republican coalition of freedmen (mobilized by the Union League), carpetbaggers, and co-operative Southerners (the last dubbed scalawags by indignant ex-rebels) in most southern states.[129] These states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in mid-1868.[130]

Stevens introduced a Tenure of Office Act, restricting Johnson from firing officials who had received Senate confirmation without getting that body's consent. The Tenure of Office Act was ambiguous since it could be read to protect officeholders only during the tenure of the president who appointed them, and most of the officials the radicals sought to protect had been named by Lincoln. Chief among these was Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a radical himself.[131]

Stevens steered a bill to enfranchise African-Americans in the District of Columbia through the House. The Senate passed it in 1867, and it was enacted over Johnson's veto. Congress was downsizing the Army for peacetime; Stevens offered an amendment, which became part of the bill as enacted, to have two regiments of African-American cavalry. His solicitude for African-Americans extended to the Native American; Stevens was successful in defeating a bill to place reservations under state law, noting that the native people had often been abused by the states.[132] An expansionist, he supported the railroads.[133] He added a stipulation into the [Transcontinental] Pacific Railroad Act requiring the applicable railroads to buy iron "of American manufacture" of the top price qualities.[134] Although he sought to protect manufacturers with high tariffs, he also sought unsuccessfully to get a bill passed to protect labor with an eight-hour day in the District of Columbia. Stevens advocated a bill to give government workers raises; it did not pass.[135]

• Jolly, James A. "The Historical Reputation of Thaddeus Stevens," Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society (1970) 74:33–71, ISSN 0023-7477, OCLC 865778228
• Pickens, Donald K. "The Republican Synthesis and Thaddeus Stevens," Civil War History (1985) 31:57–73, ISSN 0009-8078, Unique Identifier: 5183399288; argues that Stevens was committed to Republicanism and capitalism in terms of self-improvement, the advance of society, equal distribution of land, and economic liberty for all; to achieve that he had to destroy slavery and the aristocracy.

• Kendrick, Benjamin B. The Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction. New York: Columbia University, 1914.
• Palmer, Beverly Wilson and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds. The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens. Two vol. (1998), 900 pages; his speeches plus letters to and from Stevens. ISBN 978-0822940524, OCLC 806290019
• Stevens, Thaddeus, et al. Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, at the First Session ... by United States Congress. Joint Committee on Reconstruction, (1866) 791 pages; online edition
• Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Thaddeus Stevens: Delivered ... by United States 40th Cong., 3d sess., 1868–1869. (1869) 84 pages; online edition