What if Thaddeus Stevens had failed on December 4, 1865?
November 2025
By Ross Hetrick
December 4, 1865 was a pivotal day in American history when Thaddeus Stevens, with the help of Edward McPherson of Gettysburg, prevented ex-Confederates from taking over Congress. But what would have happened to the United States over the next 160 years if Stevens had failed on that critical day?
This important day in American history will be commemorated on Thursday, December 4, at 6 p.m. at Christ Lutheran Church, 30 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg. The free program will include the showing of a video about December 4, 1865 and a one-man show by Ross Hetrick portraying Thaddeus Stevens.
While few people know what happened on that fateful day, the barring of ex-Confederates from Congress set the stage for the enactment of the 14th and 15th Amendments, the granting of political rights to African Americans and the military occupation of the south. But there were ominous signs that events could have gone in a dramatically different way.
The biggest harbinger of disaster came in April 1865 when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice President Andrew Johnson, a southern Democrat, took over. While Johnson had been against secession, he was ambivalent about slavery and shortly after becoming president, Johnson started pardoning ex-Confederates wholesale and allowed the former Confederate states to hold congressional elections and they elected former Confederate military and government officials.
Johnson and northern Democrats wanted them to take their seat and seize power from the Republicans. These men did their best to force ex-Confederates into the 39th Congress, but McPherson, who was clerk of the House, stood his ground and did not recognize the southerners and Stevens backed him by using his legendary parliamentary skills, If McPherson and Stevens had failed, the United States would have returned to a condition very similar to the way it was before the Civil War.
White supremacist governments would have retained control in the south and there would have been nothing to prevent them from implementing laws called the Black codes, which returned African Americans to a state of servitude on a par with slavery. These laws may have continued for generations.
The freed slaves would have been barred from voting and would fear for their lives if they dared to exercise their freedom. Without the establishment of multiracial governments during Reconstruction, there would have been no public schools or other government agencies. And the14th and 15th Amendments would be nonexistent, eliminating the bulwarks of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
In short, the south would have reverted back to having a small rich aristocratic elite at the top, most of the whites in grinding poverty and more than a third of its population in a new form of bondage.
Thaddeus Stevens knew that the United States was at a turning point on December 4, 1865 and the opportunity should not be lost. He would later comment on this as the Congress grappled with the 14th Amendment and Reconstruction.
"I believe there is entrusted to this Congress a high duty, no less important and no less fraught with the weal or woe of future ages than was entrusted to the august body that made the Declaration of Independence," Stevens said on January 31, 1866. "I believe now, if we omit to exercise that high duty, or abuse it, we shall be held to account by future generations of America, and by the whole civilized world that is in favor of freedom."
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/
