How a hero became a villain
August 2025
By Ross Hetrick
A few months after Thaddeus Stevens died on August 11, 1868, members of the House of Representatives gathered to delivery eulogies about one of the greatest congressmen in U.S. history. The picture they drew of quite remarkable.
The congressmen told how Stevens had saved public education in Pennsylvania in the 1830s and how he had helped to revamped the financial structure of the nation to give it more economic muscle during the Civil War. He lead the way in trying to reorganize the slavocracy of the south into a more equal society and orchestrated the parliamentary maneuver that prevented ex-Confederates from talking over Congress after the Civil War.
His personal life was praised as one of unbounded generosity and a willingness to defended fugitive slaves for free. The congressmen predicted that statues would be erected to him across the nation and he would be remembered alongside of that of Abraham Lincoln. "The labors and achievements of his life have rendered him immortal," one congressman said.
The praise went on for 84 pages and the book was published by the government and widely circulated. But by the early 20th century, Stevens's name was a byword for vindictiveness and wrongheaded social theories.
He never flattered the people; he never attempted to deceive them; he never 'paltered with them in a double sense;' he never courted and encouraged their errors. On the contrary, on all occasions he attacked their sins, he assailed their prejudices, he outraged all their bigotries; and when they turned upon him and attacked him him, he marched straight forward, Gulliver wading through the fleets of the Lilliputians, dragging his enemies after him into the great harbor of truth."
