The Great Commoner, Fall 2023, No. 47, www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com

 Thaddeus Stevens Society to meet November 5 at Adams County Historical Society Museum in Gettysburg

The Thaddeus Stevens Society will meet Sunday, November 5, at 1 p.m. at the Adams County Historical Society Museum at 625 Biglerville Road (Route 34), Gettysburg, PA. After a light lunch and business meeting, there will be a tour of the new museum, which includes a new Thaddeus Stevens exhibit. Individuals will be charged $12 each by the museum. If you plan to attend, please email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or call 717-347-8159.

Gettysburg Mayor sets up Thad display

Ross Hetrick portraying Thaddeus Stevens and Gettysburg Mayor Rita Frealing in front of new Stevens display outside her office.

Gettysburg Mayor Rita Frealing recently set up a Thaddeus Stevens display outside her office with items donated by the Society. The borough has also installed "Stevens Run" signs on Constitution Avenue.

"Thaddeus Stevens was a major figure in Gettysburg history and deserves this recognition," the mayor said. "I hope these tributes will spark interest in Stevens among local residents."

The display consists of a bust of Stevens on a small oak table with flyers about Stevens's life. On the walls behind the bust are a painting of Stevens and a plaque listing his accomplishments. All the items were donated by the Society over the last few decades.

The new Stevens Run signs are on both sides of a small bridge that is just east of a Gettysburg College parking lot. The 2.2 mile stream is a tributary of Rock Creek and is part of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Its name dates back to the early 1800s when it ran through land owned by Stevens, who sold six acres of the property to the college for its initial campus.

                                Stevens Run sign on Constitution Avenue in Gettysburg.

Fundraiser to be launched for Society office and exhibit area

The Thaddeus Stevens Society will launch a fundraising effort on November 9 to raise money for a Society office and exhibit area for its collection of Stevens artifacts. 

The Society is partnering with the Adams County Community Foundation for its Giving Spree, which will be held on November 9  from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Gettysburg Middle School, 37 Lefever Street. The Society's table at the event will feature Ross Hetrick portraying Stevens who will walk around the area telling potential donors why he needs a new office in Gettysburg. 

Donations will be given to the Foundation, which turns them over to the Society along with an "incentive match." More information about the event can be found at this link: GivingSpree.

The Society's goal is to raise $14,000, which would be combined with $13,000 the Society already has. This should be sufficient to set up the office and exhibit site and pay rent for about two years. We are also asking for donations to an endowment fund set up with the Foundation that could help fund the office in the future.

Various sites for the office and exhibit area are under considerations. We hope to find a place in downtown Gettysburg that would be close to where Stevens's house was on Chambersburg Street. 

Our extensive collection of Stevens artifacts is now housed in a residential apartment on Stevens Street in Gettysburg. The exhibit can be seen by appointment by emailing info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or calling 717-347-8159.

With the new location and regular office hours, we hope it will be a great draw for tourists and significant increase the public visibility of Thaddeus Stevens.

Society to lend Caledonia Stove to Lancaster History for proposed museum

"Ten-Plate" stove made at Stevens's Caledonia Iron works more than 150 years ago.

The Thaddeus Stevens Society will indefinitely lend a stove made at Stevens's Caledonia iron works to be part of the Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy. 

Lancaster History, which is developing the $22 million museum, is scheduled to take the stove in early 2024 for refurbishing. It will be available for public viewing in April 2025 when the museum is slated to be opened. The stove is now at the Seminary Ridge Museum in Gettysburg. The stove was donated to the Society by Leslie Robinson and Lynn Jensen in 2013.

The Society owns another Caledonia stove as well as a stove made at Stevens's earlier Maria iron mill in Fairfield, PA, which will be part of the future Thaddeus Stevens exhibit in Gettysburg.

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 33

 Thaddeus Stevens and the Christiana Resistance 

September 2023

By Ross Hetrick

On September 11, 1851 an organized group near the small town of Christiana, PA successfully fended off an effort by a Maryland slave owner to capture freedom seekers, killing the slaver in the process. The event, known as the Christiana Resistance or Riot, sparked a political firestorm that drew in Thaddeus Stevens.

The event had its origins a year earlier when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, one of the worst laws ever enacted in the United States. The law made it so easy to capture fugitive slaves that it spurred a reverse Underground Railroad and Black people lived in fear of being kidnapped. This caused the formation of self-protection groups like the one in Christiana, PA created by William Parker. 

Thaddeus Stevens, who was in Congress in 1850, was fiercely opposed to the law, particularly the part requiring bystanders to assist slave owners. "This is asking more than my constituents will ever grant," Stevens said. "The slaveholder may pursue his slave among them with his own foreign myrmidons [minions], unmolested, except by their frowning scorn. 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."

Stevens's appeal did not prevent the law from being passed, but many northern congressmen were so embarrassed by the bill that they were absent during the final vote. This prompted  Stevens to quip that the speaker of the House should "send a page to notify northern members the Fugitive Slave bill has been disposed of and they may now come back into the hall."

His comments about his constituents' reaction to the law proved to be prophetic. The four freedom seekers arrived at the Parker house in Christiana with the slaveholder Edward Gorsuch and his posse in hot pursuit.  After the invaders were repulsed in the early morning hours, Parker's wife blew a horn and dozens of neighbors came running to their aid, including three Quakers. 

Gorsuch tried to recruit the white Quakers who refused to help him. Even though the situation was looking dire, Gorsuch would not retreat.  "My property I will have, or I'll breakfast in hell," he said and he got his wish. Gorsuch was shot and killed and his son was wounded. Parker and others fled to Canada.

The federal government 's reaction was swift and severe. Thirty-eight Blacks were arrested along with the three Quakers and charged with treason. Ironically, the trial was held in Independence Hall in Philadelphia in November 1851.

Stevens was one of the lawyers defending the accused and from the start, he mocked the case against them. "Three harmless, non-resistance Quakers and eight-and-thirty wretched, miserable, penniless negroes, armed with corn-cutters, clubs and a few muskets, and headed by a miller in a felt hat, without a coat, without arms, and mounted on a sorrel nag, levied war against the United States," Stevens said. "Blessed be God that our union has survived the shock."

All the defendants were acquitted because, as Stevens said, they were not engaged in treason, that is making war against the United States. While it was a great victory for Stevens, it seemingly doomed his political career with the local Whig party refusing to nominate him for a third term as congressman. 

But by the mid-1850s Stevens was back in the political fray helping to organize the new Republican party in Pennsylvania.  He was then returned to Congress in 1859 and went on to be the most powerful congressman during and after the Civil War, helping to destroy slavery and becoming the father of the 14th Amendment, the single most important amendment to the Constitution requiring equal treatment under the law and extending civil liberties to the state level.

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/