Al Owski’s Reviews > Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice > Status Update

“The inscription upon which Thaddeus Stevens finally settled... "I repose in this quiet and secluded spot," it reads, "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."”

“as a shrewd tactician Lincoln knew that politics is the art of the possible... not getting too far ahead of public opinion. In response, one of Stevens's early biographers reasonably asked "how public opinion was ever to be brought to a higher plane... if the surgent and radical anti-slavery men had all kept still, or had uttered nothing but pleasant and honeyed words for Lincoln and his Cabinet."”

“Stevens was famously savage in verbal combat with the paladins of inequality and oppression. But he could also be unsparing about allies who seemed to him backward, cowardly, or simply laggard. Many writers have since faulted him for so sternly criticizing Abraham Lincoln's refusal to move more swiftly and decisively than he did in support of emancipation and black rights generally.”

“On key issues of the day, however, Stevens regularly staked out a position well in advance of public opinion. He did that when he fought for public education for all and when he rejected a discriminatory Pennsylvania state constitution, when he supported abolitionism, when he participated in the Underground Railroad, and when he opposed concessions to the slave states in 1850.”

“Stevens was of course no plaster saint. He had his flaws, and in pursuit of political effectiveness he took a number of missteps. His sojourn among nativists, which violated his democratic principles, was one of those. So was his sometime support for colonization. Recurring doubts about universal manhood suffrage, still another.”

“As a fellow Pennsylvania congressman observed, "too frequently in men of all stations the generous impulses and noble sentiments of youth give place, with advancing years and prosperity, to the fossil petrifaction of humanity called conservatism. But this dry rot of the soul never tainted Thaddeus Stevens." To a radical Republican contemporary, indeed, he came to seem the very "embodied spirit of revolution" ”

“Stevens's devotion to creating a better society had animated his successful fight in the 1830s to protect Pennsylvania public schools from their narrow-minded opponents and especially his decades-long fight against slavery and racial oppression. The passing of time ... only increased the determination and consistency with which he pursued that goal. In that respect, as in so many others, he was unusual.”

“Late in the House's 1868 summer session, Stevens seemed to rally. "For a few days the old vivacity returned," a colleague later remembered, along with "the brilliant repartee and unexpected sallies that all enjoyed so much." But that was only the guttering flame's final flicker. On August 11, at age seventy-six, Thaddeus Stevens died.”

“Stevens seemed to be surviving only by the sheer force of will. "His illness [is] progressing rapidly," the French observer Georges Clemenceau noted, " Once in a while a sardonic smile... flickers over his livid face. If it were not for the fire smoldering in the depths of his piercing eyes, one might imagine life had already fled from that inert body, but it still nurses all the wrath of a Robespierre." ”

“Stevens... "I do not hold that it is necessary to prove a crime as an indictable offense......" Impeachment was "a purely political proceeding. It is intended as a remedy for malfeasance [that is, improper conduct] in office and to prevent the continuance thereof." It was "not intended as a personal punishment for past offenses." ”