Thaddeus Stevens – amerykański polityk i abolicjonista.
“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
Statement at the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (July 1837), quoted in Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959) by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 63
1830s
Kontekst: 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.
"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 <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Kontekst: 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.
"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. <br class="br">1850s <br class="br">Kontekst: 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.
“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
Speech (13 January 1865), as quoted in History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congress (1865) by Henry Wilson, p. 388
1860s
“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
Lincoln (2012).
In fiction
“He that hath a trade, hath an estate.”
Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack (1772)
Misattributed
“You must be a bastard for I knew your mother's husband and he was a gentleman and honest man.”
In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens
Lincoln (2012).
In fiction
As quoted in Thaddeus Stevens: Commoner (1882) by E. B. Callender, Ch. VI : Heroic Epoch, p. 113
1860s
"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 <br class="br">1860s
In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens
In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens
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
June 10, 1850 in a speech before Congress on the Fugitive Slave Act. Page 123, Vol. 1, Palmer http://web.archive.org/web/20131209113445/http://thaddeusstevenssociety.com/Quotes.html. In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens <br class="br">1850s
Epitaph on his grave in Lancaster, Pensylvania
1860s
