Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 70

 Second Founding Festival set for July 8 and 9, 2028

November 2026

By Ross Hetrick

Save this date: July 8 and 9, 2026. That is when the Second Founding Festival will be held in Gettysburg on Stevens Street between Washington and Carlisle Streets. It will be a celebration of  the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution which transformed America. The festival will be on the 160th anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the single most important amendment that insures equal rights under the law and extends such fundamental rights as freedom of speech and religion to the state level. 

Stevens Street is the perfect place for the festival since Thaddeus Stevens is one of the chief framers of the 14th Amendment. Additionally,  the site is next to the home of Edward McPherson at 250 Carlisle Street, who along with Stevens created the necessary conditions for the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments.

This will be a national event attracting people from across the country. Like any good festival, there will be food booths and entertainment. There will also be lectures from prominent historians and exhibits by non-profit that depend on the 14th Amendment to pursue their missions. There may even be a synchronized drone display to light up the night sky. 

What is the Second Founding and why should it be celebrated in Gettysburg? The concept of the Second Founding was popularized in recent years by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner who wrote the 2019 book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction remade the Constitution.  It tells how constitutional changes brought equality to our country and how it has fared over the last 160 years.

Stevens introduced the 14th Amendment in Congress on May 10, 1866 and was ratified by the states on July 9, 1868. As it moved through Congress there were many changes that Stevens did not agree with. But he accepted it. "Believing, then, that this the best proposition that can be made effectual, I accept it." he told the House of Representatives.

Edward McPherson of Gettysburg played an important role in the Second Founding by working with Stevens to keep the ex-Confederates out of Congress on December 4 1865. McPherson was clerk of the House of Representatives at that time, a position that Stevens got him, and at Stevens direction, McPherson refused to recognize the ex-Confederates as part of the 39th Congress. This allowed the Republican dominated Congress to pass the 14th and 15th Amendments. McPherson lived from 1875 to 1895 at 250 Carlisle Street, which is next to where the festival will be held.

The festival promises to be a really big show. If you would like to help make it happen, email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or call or text 717-347-8159.

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA.  More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the Society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/ 

 

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 69

Thad is missing from the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum

October 2026

By Ross Hetrick

The Gettysburg National Military Museum is an amazing place.  Besides hundreds of exhibits about the battle, there are displays about the origins of the Civil War and its aftermath. It even has a huge picture of Thomas Jefferson at the entrance for some unexplained reason. What it doesn't have is any mention of Thaddeus Stevens even though he played a large role in the Gettysburg campaign.

Stevens, who was the most powerful congressman in 1863, suffered the largest civilian financial loss of the battle and owned the house where Confederate general Robert E. Lee set up his headquarters. Yet he does not get a mention at the museum.

Stevens's massive financial loss happened at his Caledonia iron furnace, now a state park near Chambersburg. On June 26, 1863, Confederate General Jubal Early burned the furnace complex to the ground in retaliation for Stevens's hardline abolitionist policies. "Mr. Stevens is an enemy of the South. He is in favor of confiscating their property and arming the negroes," Early said at the time. "His property must be destroyed."

Stevens, who lived in Lancaster, PA at the time, was at the iron mill shortly before the raid, but fled, which was a good thing since Early said he would have murdered him. "I would hang him on the spot and divide his bones and send them to the several [Confederate] states as curiosities," he told the mill's foreman.

Besides burning the iron mill, the Confederates stole all of the mill's horses, mules and harness, 4,000 pounds of bacon, $1,000 worth of corn and $4,000 worth of bar iron to use for shoeing horses. In all, Stevens lost more $75,000, which is over $2 million in current dollars.

The burning would not be the only effect the battle had on Stevens. When the Confederates got to Gettysburg, Lee set up his headquarters at the home of Mary Thompson at the top of Seminary Ridge. That house was owned by Stevens, who had bought the building at a sheriff's sale in 1846 to prevent Thompson from being evicted. The is no mention of the house at the museum even though there is one about the headquarters of Union General George Meade. 

With the theft from the Caledonia mill and the take over of the Thompson house, it could be said that Stevens partially supplied and housed the Confederate invasion of Gettysburg, unwillingly of course. Besides these direct connections to the Gettysburg battle, Stevens should also be included for his very important role in the legislative destruction of slavery. Yet none of this is at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum. 

The Thaddeus Stevens Society has on a number of occasions brought this to the attention of National Park Service, which operates the museum, and the Gettysburg Foundation, which owns the museum, but to no avail. Exhibits at the museum are changed from time to time and maybe an exhibit that at least mention's Thaddeus Stevens might be considered. The Stevens Society stands ready to help if this ever happens. 

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA.  More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the Society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/ 

The Great Commoner, Fall 2026, No. 53 www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com

 Membership meeting on October 4 in Fairfield, PA

The Thaddeus Stevens Society will have a membership meeting on Sunday, October 4, at 1 pm at the Hamiltonban community park at 4020 Bullfrog Road in Fairfield, PA. The meeting will be a potluck picnic. Hot dogs, hamburgers, soda and chips will be served and attendees are encouraged to bring side dishes, though it is not required. After the business meeting, we will carpool to see local sites associated with Thaddeus Stevens's Tapeworm Railroad and Maria Iron Furnace. If you plan to attend, please email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or call 717-347-8159.

                                  Remains of the Maria Furnace stack in Fairfield, PA

Please contribute to the Giving Spree to support the Thaddeus Stevens Museum

If you'd like to see the Thaddeus Stevens Museum in Gettysburg survive forever, please contribute to the Thaddeus Stevens Society's endowment fund at the Adams County Community Foundation. During the last three years, the Society's endowment fund has grown to $45,000. While this already provides us with a modest annual income, we need to grow it further. You can help by clicking on this link: Giving Spree, and printing out the Community Foundation's Giving Spree Donor Guide filling it out and mailing it to the Community Foundation before October 30. The Society's is number 100. Please check the "Forever" box to the Thaddeus Stevens Society and write in your donation. You may also want to donate to other groups. It would be great if we could increase the fund to $50,000 this year. Please let us know how much you contribute by emailing us at info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com

We need your help at the museum

If you live in the Gettysburg area, please consider being a docent at the Thaddeus Stevens Museum. While the museum at 46 Chambersburg Street in Gettysburg is generally staffed by Stevens Society President Ross Hetrick, there are times that he must go offsite. It is an easy gig and you can learn more about Thad and meet interesting people who visit the museum. If interested, please email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or text 717-347-8159. 

Leave a legacy for Thad

Support Thaddeus Stevens's legacy by leaving a legacy of your own. If you wish to include the Thaddeus Stevens Society in your will, please let us know by calling or texting 717-347-8159 or email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com Thank you. 

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 68

 The comeback of Thaddeus Stevens in the 1850s

August 2026

By Ross Hetrick

When Thaddeus Stevens lost his congressional seat representing Lancaster, PA in 1853, he thought he would never see Congress again. "It is more than probable that hereafter I shall never meet any member here or elsewhere," Stevens told colleagues in March 1853. "I desire to part with no unfriendly feelings towards any of you," he said.

Was he ever wrong. He would come back in 1858 as a Republican and he would become the most powerful member of the House of Representatives after the Civil War. But even though he did not hold political office during that interim period, he was very involved in politics, laying the ground work for his comeback.

Stevens had moved from Gettysburg to Lancaster in 1842 to make more money as a lawyer in a larger city to support his money-losing Caledonia iron works near Chambersburg. In 1848 he ran for Congress as a Whig and won. During his first two years, the biggest issue was the Compromise of 1850. Besides bringing California into the Union as a free state and prohibiting the slave trade in Washington, D.C. the measure included the infamous Fugitive Slave Act, which required citizens anywhere in the U.S. to assist slaveholders in capturing fugitive slaves. Of course, Stevens was vehemently against it.

"The distinguished senator from Kentucky [Henry Clay] wishes further to make it the duty of all bystanders to aid in the capture of fugitives; to join the chase and run down the prey," Stevens said in Congress. "This is asking more than my constituents will ever grant. . . . No law that tyranny can pass will ever induce them to join the hue and cry after the trembling wretch who has escaped from unjust bondage." Stevens words proved to be prophetic. 

On September 11, 1851 a slaveowner in pursuit of fugitive slaves was meet by a self protection group of African Americans near Christiana, a town near Lancaster. The group blew a horn and neighbors came to help them, including four white men. The slaveowner tried to recruit the white men who turned out to be Quakers and they refused, The confrontation ended with the slaveowner being killed and the fugitive slaves escaping. The four Quakers along with other participants were put on trial for treason in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Stevens was a member of the defense team that got them all off. 

Stevens's opposition to the Compromise of 1850 and his participation in the Christiana Resistance case was too much for the Silver Grays, conservative Whigs, who controlled the party in Lancaster. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Stevens bowed out of the Whig nomination contest. But then Stevens took one of most controversial actions of his political career, he joined the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic American party, also known as the Know-Nothings. 

This would seem completely against Stevens's principles of tolerance and religious freedom. But it made sense during this time of political party turmoil. The Whigs were being torn apart over the slavery issue and the Republican party was yet to be born. Of course, the Democrat party, the slavery party, was not an option for Stevens.  He also had a history of pursuing his own agenda and ignoring the general goals of whatever party he was in.

With the support of the Know-Nothings. Stevens was able to get Anthony E. Roberts elected to Congress in 1854, defeating the Democratic and Whig candidates. Then in 1855 he joined the year-old Republican party, which more closely aligned with Stevens's decades long crusade against slavery. He then was elected to the House of Representatives in 1858 and became a leader in the effort to legislatively destroy slavery. 

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA.  More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the Society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/ 

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 67

 Thaddeus Stevens: financial wheeler dealer

July 2026

By Ross Hetrick

Besides his four decades-long crusade against slavery, Thaddeus Stevens was known as a wheeler dealer when it came to government financial matters. This was on full display when Stevens helped to rescue the Second Bank of the United States in 1836 and make it a state bank. The story was the last chapter in a decades long saga of the young country trying and failing to establish a stable banking system. 

It started with the creation of the First Bank of the United States in 1791 by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The bank was where federal taxes were deposited and loans made to the government and private interests. The bank was opposed by people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison of Virginia, who would later become presidents. They contended that the bank was unconstitutional and primarily benefited northern business at the expense of southern agricultural interests. 

But despite this opposition, the bank continued to operate until 1811 when Congress decided not to renew its charter. Then in 1816 Congress thought better of it's earlier decision and took another whack at central banking with the creation of the Second Bank of the United States. Then in the 1830s anti-bank forces lead by President Andrew Jackson succeeded in blocking the rechartering of the bank and Jackson put federal funds into "pet" state banks. 

This is when Stevens stepped in.  In January 1836 he introduced a bill with the unwieldy name of, "An Act to Repeal the State Tax on Real and Personal Property and to Continue and Extend the Improvements of the State by Railroads and Canals, and to Charter a State Bank to be Called the United States Bank,"

In exchange for giving the bank a new life, the rechristened United States Bank would give the state $2 million, ($72 million in today's dollars) and also loan it another $6 million ($216 million in current dollars) if the state needed it at very favorable interest rates. This staved off a possible state default and it also benefited two of Stevens's favorite causes: public education and the construction of a railroad from Gettysburg to western Maryland, later known as the Tapeworm Railroad. 

However, the windfall was short-lived. By 1837, the national economy tanked, partly due to scuttling the bank's role in national finances. Coupled with malfeasance on the part of the it's president Nicholas Biddle, the bank spiraled into insolvency by 1841. Stevens's Tapeworm Railroad was abandoned in 1838 after he lost political power as a result of the Buckshot War where Democrats took political power in Harrisburg by force after a disputed election.

Yet the arrangement did have have the benefits of reducing personal property tax, creating public jobs and averting state bankruptcy, according to Bradley R. Hoch in his book, Thaddeus Stevens in Gettysburg: The Making of an Abolitionist.

It would not be the last time Stevens dabbled in government finances. He would go on to play a pivotal role in 1863 in the creation of the first federal paper currency, called "Greenbacks" and the creation of the national banking system, which endured until the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA.  More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the Society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/ 

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 66

 Thaddeus Stevens and the Underground Railroad

June 2026

By Ross Hetrick

Much of Thaddeus Stevens's life is well documented, but not so with his involvement with the Underground Railroad. Helping fugitive slaves was against the law and secrecy was of the utmost importance. But over the last century and a half, more information has been found that reveals Stevens's participation. 

It has been generally accepted that Stevens's Caledonia iron mill near Chambersburg, PA which he owned from 1837 to 1868, was a stop of the Underground Railroad since it had large African-American workforce and freedom seekers could blend in. He was also involved as an attorney in many fugitive slave cases while he lived in Gettysburg and Lancaster.

An 1847 letter from Stevens to a colleague tells about how he had a "spy on the spies" and would warn freedom seekers of slave catchers lurking in the area. The double agent was later identified as Edward H. Rauch, who told a reporter that he was part of a secret organization that Stevens formed to thwart slave catchers in the Lancaster area. Rauch said he would act as if he was in league with the slave catchers and then relay the information to Stevens.

In 2003 an archaeological dig behind the location of Stevens's Lancaster house, found a possible passageway from the next door building to a cistern that might have been a hiding place for fugitive slaves. However, this assertion has been challenged. 

In 2009 a manuscript by Oliver Cromwell Gilbert was discovered detailing his escape with other freedom seekers from slavery in Maryland and how Stevens assisted him. After crossing the Susquehanna River they were directed to Stevens's house in Lancaster. There Stevens gave them a note and instructed them to go several more miles to a stop on the Underground Railroad. 

As a result of these findings and other research done by Randy Harris, an Underground Railroad expert in Lancaster, Stevens's grave and house in Lancaster and his Caledonia iron mill have been included in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. 

While Stevens participation in the Underground Railroad was kept secret during his lifetime, his contempt for laws that facilitated the catching of fugitive slaves was on full display while he was a congressman. He particularly opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which denied alleged runaways a jury trial and the right to testify. Stevens particularly attacked a provision requiring bystanders to assist slaveowners in capturing freedom seekers.

"The slaveholder may pursue his slave among them [Pennsylvanians] with his foreign myrmidons unmolested, except by their frowning scorn," Stevens said in congressional debates, "But no law that tyranny can pass will ever induce them to join the hue and cry after the trembling wretch who has escaped from unjust bondage," 

This proved to be the case a year later near Christiana, PA where a slaveowner was meet with armed resistance to capturing an escaped slave and tried to recruit four Quakers who refused. The slaveowner was killed in the ensuing melee and the Quakers and others were put on trial for treason. Stevens was part of the defense team that won an acquittal for all involved. But it cost Stevens's his congressional seat since the Whig party would not nominate him again.

But Stevens returned to congress in 1858 as a Republican to see the legislative destruction of slavery during the Civil War.

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA.  More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the Society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/ 

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 65

 A book for all Thaddeus Stevens admirers

May 2026

By Ross Hetrick

The Mad Dreams of Thaddeus Stevens by Michael J. Barton, is a book that every Thaddeus Stevens admirer should own. It is not a biography, it is a  tribute, telling why Thaddeus Stevens was a visionary who changed the United States.

The book originated with an epic poem written by Barton, a Michigan attorney who devoted his retirement to studying the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the so-called Reconstruction Amendments. "In that type of study, all roads lead to Thaddeus Stevens," he writes in his book.

The Thaddeus Stevens Society reprinted the poem in our spring 2025 newsletter which can be found at this link: Barton Poem 

This led to the Society asking Barton to put together a print-on-demand book that would include his poem and others written in the 19th century.  He threw himself enthusiastically into the venture and added several chapters about how other authors celebrated Stevens and described schools, museums and statues that honor the Great Commoner. The book can be found on the Barnes & Noble web page by typing in "The Mad Dreams of Thaddeus Stevens." The book is also available in paperback at the same site. 

The book starts with an essay about how Stevens was ahead of his time. "He does not seem to be a product of his time," Barton writes. This is followed by chapters on Stevens lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., his inspirational grave in Lancaster, PA. the eulogies read in Congress, as well as poems written by Civil War era authors, 

Then there is a gem of a letter by Frederick Douglass, written in 1869 in response to an inquiry from Edward McPherson, Steven's longtime protege. And even though he never met Stevens, Douglass had great admiration for him. 

"My impressions of the man derived from close observation of his manner and bearing on the floor of the house, whether in debate or in repose, are very vivid and will never be forgotten," Douglass wrote, adding that Stevens's "great qualities of his mind and heart --  which made him more potent in Congress and in the country than even the President and Cabinet combined."

Barton then describes Stevens's involvement in the Christiana Resistance case of 1851 and even how a Stevens quote helped win the famous 1954 Supreme Court case that outlawed school segregation.  There are also essays on what W.E.B. Du Bois and Carl Sandburg said about him.

The book ends with a revised version of Barton's 45-page poem that draws on American history as well as Greek mythology. And it ends with the Stevens's inspirational epitaph on his grave in Lancaster:

"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 during a long life: Equality of Man before his creator."

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA.  More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the Society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/