Thaddeus Stevens Quotes

Thaddeus Stevens was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party during the 1860s. A fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against African-Americans, Stevens sought to secure their rights during Reconstruction, in opposition to U.S. President Andrew Johnson. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the American Civil War, he played a leading role, focusing his attention on defeating the Confederacy, financing the war with new taxes and borrowing, crushing the power of slave owners, ending slavery, and securing equal rights for the Freedmen.

Stevens was born in rural Vermont, in poverty, and with a club foot, which left him with a permanent limp. He moved to Pennsylvania as a young man and quickly became a successful lawyer in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He interested himself in municipal affairs, and then in politics. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he became a strong advocate of free public education. Financial setbacks in 1842 caused him to move his home and practice to the larger city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There, he joined the Whig Party, and was elected to Congress in 1848. His activities as a lawyer and politician in opposition to slavery cost him votes and he did not seek reelection in 1852. After a brief flirtation with the Know-Nothing Party, Stevens joined the newly formed Republican Party, and was elected to Congress again in 1858. There, with fellow radicals such as Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, he opposed the expansion of slavery and concessions to the South as war came.

Stevens argued that slavery should not survive the war; he was frustrated by the slowness of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to support his position. He guided the government's financial legislation through the House as Ways and Means chairman. As the war progressed towards a Northern victory, Stevens came to believe that not only should slavery be abolished, but that African-Americans should be given a stake in the South's future through the confiscation of land from planters to be distributed to the freedmen . His plans went too far for the Moderate Republicans and were not enacted.

After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Stevens came into conflict with the new president, Johnson, who sought rapid restoration of the seceded states without guarantees for freedmen. The difference in views caused an ongoing battle between Johnson and Congress, with Stevens leading the Radical Republicans. After gains in the 1866 election the radicals took control of Reconstruction away from Johnson. Stevens's last great battle was to secure in the House articles of impeachment against Johnson, though the Senate did not convict the President. Historiographical views of Stevens have dramatically shifted over the years, from the early 20th-century view of Stevens as reckless and motivated by hatred of the white South, to the perspective of the neoabolitionists of the 1950s and afterwards, who applauded him for his commitment to equality. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. April 1792 – 11. August 1868
Thaddeus Stevens photo
Thaddeus Stevens: 19   quotes 0   likes

Famous Thaddeus Stevens Quotes

“I never thought of it that way, but it does relieve God Almighty of a heavy responsibility.”

When someone pointed out to him that like Stevens himself, Andrew Johnson was a self-made man, in Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens

“There is a wrong impression about one of the candidates. There is no such person running as James Buchanan. He is dead of lock-jaw. Nothing remains but a platform and a bloated mass of political putridity.”

As quoted in Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens https://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=%22Nothing+remains+but+a+platform+and+a+bloated+mass+of+political+putridity%22&source=bl&ots=oqB1kBMZ_i&sig=KmEw-qDWsNFXiJ8PVI78z7q-iSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW1eakxNLLAhUJFT4KHUioB4UQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Nothing%20remains%20but%20a%20platform%20and%20a%20bloated%20mass%20of%20political%20putridity%22&f=false

“Our object should be not only to end this terrible war now, but to prevent its recurrence. All must admit that slavery is the cause of it. Without slavery we should this day be a united and happy people… The principles of our Republic are wholly incompatible with slavery.”

"Subduing the Rebellion" (22 January 1862), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens http://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
1860s

Thaddeus Stevens Quotes about men

Thaddeus Stevens Quotes

“I can never acknowledge the right of slavery.”

I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians — however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant’s lash, and the cries of his tortured victims.
Letter (4 May 1838), quoted in Shapers of the Great Debate on the Civil War : A Biographical Dictionary (2005) by Dan Monroe and Bruce Tap, p. 255
1830s

“I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs”

Statement at the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (July 1837), quoted in Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959) by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 63
1830s
Context: I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.

“Every humane and patriotic heart must grieve to see a bloody and causeless rebellion, costing thousands of human lives and millions of treasure.”

"Subduing the Rebellion" (22 January 1862), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens http://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
1860s
Context: Every humane and patriotic heart must grieve to see a bloody and causeless rebellion, costing thousands of human lives and millions of treasure. But as it was predetermined and inevitable, it was long enough delayed. Now is the appropriate time to solve the greatest problem ever submitted to civilized man.

“There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen.”

"The California Question" (10 June 1850), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens http://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1850s
Context: There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose ‘corner-stone is slavery.’ But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence.

“All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.”

James A. Garfield, as quoted in Many Thoughts of Many Minds : A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age (1896) edited by Louis Klopsch, p. 116
Misattributed

“He that hath a trade, hath an estate.”

Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack (1772)
Misattributed

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