Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 24

 Thaddeus Stevens on honoring Confederate dead

December 2022

By Ross Hetrick

Shortly after the Civil War, Thaddeus Stevens said honoring the Confederate dead along with the Union casualties was "blasphemy."

"If the loyal dead, who are thus associated with the traitors who murdered them, [are] put on the same footing with them, are to be treated as the 'common dead of the nation,' " Stevens said, then the Union dead would break out of their graves and haunt the advocates of that policy, until their "eyeballs were seared."

No graves were opened nor eyeballs seared at the Remembrance Day parade on November 19 in Gettysburg, but Stevens and others on the Union side would be gravely dismayed to see hundreds of Confederate reenactors marching in the street with many on the sidelines cheering them on.

Gettysburg has the unusual situation of having two Civil War events in November that sometimes coincide and sometimes are days apart. One is Dedication Day when the immortal speech by Abraham Lincoln is celebrated at the Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19. The other one is Remembrance Day, when Union and Confederate reenactors parade through town to honor Civil War dead on both sides. Remembrance Day is on the Saturday closest to the 19th. So while they are not the same thing, most people often see them as marking Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

This year, 2022, both events fell on the 19th so people were treated to the sight of Confederate reenactors proudly parading while others honored Lincoln, who was cut down by a Confederate agent.

While most people accept the irony without comment, Scott Hancock, a Gettysburg College professor, boldly walked along the side of the Confederate reenactors holding a sign pointing to them saying: "This Army Fought for Slavery." This was the latest public effort by Hancock to inform people about what the Confederacy was fighting for.

"As long as Confederate reenactors with Confederate flags march on Remembrance Day," Scott said recently, "somebody needs to be reminding spectators that if Black people had not been enslaved, there would have been no Confederacy, no Confederate Army, no battle at Gettysburg, and no American Civil War." 

While opponents of honoring the Confederacy have gained ground in recent years as shown with the removal of  monuments around the country, Confederate defenders remain strong as evidenced by the Remembrance Day parade. The remarkable dedication of these people to defend an inhuman system dates back to long before the Civil War.

"Even in a bad, a wicked cause, she shows a united front" Stevens said of southern representatives in an 1850 speech. "All her sons are faithful to the cause of human bondage, because it is their cause. But the North -- the poor, timid, mercenary, driveling North -- has no such united defenders of her cause, although it is the cause of human liberty. None of the bright lights of the nation shine upon her section. Even her own great men have turned her accusers. She is the victim of low ambition -- an ambition which prefers self to country, personal aggrandizement to the high cause of human liberty. She offered up as a sacrifice to propitiate southern tyranny -- to conciliate southern treason."

But there was Thaddeus Stevens.

Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which is dedicated to promoting Stevens's important legacy. More information about the Great Commoner can be found at the society's website: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/