Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 27

 The funniest congressman in U.S. history

March 2023

By Ross Hetrick

Thaddeus Stevens was perhaps the funniest congressman in American history, and he used his acerbic wit to devastate his oratorical opponents and destroy their arguments. 

While some of this humor has been passed down, much of it was lost because the transcribers of congressional sessions could not hear them, though regularly noting the laughter around Stevens.

"Never has wit of all varieties exhibited in more bewildering profusion," said Vermont Rep. Justin S. Morrill. "He daily wasted in this private and semi-grotesque distribution of mirth, sense and satire, often indiscriminately among friends and foes, a capital sufficient, could it have been preserved, to rival almost any of the acknowledged masters among the colloquial wits of this or any age," he said.

One of his most famous jokes was directed at his fellow Pennsylvania politician, Simon Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War. Stevens complained to Lincoln about some of the overly priced war contracts, which might have included kickbacks to Cameron. "Why, Mr. Stevens, you don't think the Secretary would steal, do you?" Lincoln said. Stevens replied, "Well, Mr. President, I don't think he would steal a red-hot stove." 

Lincoln liked the joke and told Cameron, who did not like it and demanded Stevens retract it. Stevens obediently went to Lincoln and said: "I said I did not think Mr. Cameron would steal a red-hot stove. I am now forced to withdraw that statement."

Later, Lincoln discovered how corrupt Cameron was and appointed him ambassador to Russia to get him out of his cabinet. Stevens wisecracked, "Send word to the Czar to bring in his things at night."

Also Stevens delivered one of the greatest put downs of the evil institution of slavery, which southern politicians regularly praised.

"Gentlemen on this floor [House of Representatives] and in the Senate, had repeatedly, during this discussion, asserted that slavery was a moral, political, and personal blessing, that the slave was free from care, contented, happy, fat and sleek. Comparisons have been instituted between slaves and laboring freemen, much to the advantage of the condition of slavery. Instances were cited where the slave, after having tried freedom, had voluntarily returned to resume his yoke," Stevens said.

"Well, if this be so, let us give all a chance to enjoy this blessing. Let the slaves, who choose, go free, and the free, who choose, become slaves. If these gentlemen believe there is a word of truth in what they preach, the slaveholder need be under no apprehension that he will ever lack bondsmen. Their slaves would remain, and many freemen would seek admission into this happy condition. Let them be active in propagating their principles. We will not complain if they establish societies in the south for that purpose -- abolition societies to abolish freedom. Nor will we rob the mails to search for incendiary publications in favor of slavery, even if they contain seductive pictures and cuts of those implements of happiness -- handcuffs, iron yokes and cat-o'-nine-tails."

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/

The Great Commoner, Spring 2023, No. 46, www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com

 Thaddeus Stevens Society to meet on April 7 in Lancaster, PA

The Thaddeus Stevens Society will meet on Friday, April 7, in Lancaster, during the dinner after the annual graveside ceremony. The graveside ceremony will be at 4:30 p.m. at Stevens grave in the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery at Chestnut and Mulberry Streets in Lancaster, PA. Then at 6 p.m. the Stevens Day Dinner will be held at the Stevens College at 750 E. King Street. If you plan to attend, please email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or call 717-347-8159.

The dinner is free due to the generosity of John Lovell, a member in California who is paying for the dinner.

Thaddeus Stevens is star at new Adams County museum

The Adams County Historical Society museum in Gettysburg is opening on April 15 and Thaddeus Stevens is a big star.

The Thaddeus Stevens Society made a $3,000 donation in January to support the facility. The multi-million dollar facility at 625 Biglerville Road in Gettysburg has galleries with exhibits stretching from prehistoric times to the present days.  There is even a Disney type room that provides a visceral experience of what it would be like when the Confederates invaded Gettysburg, complete with the rumble and flashes of artillery explosions.

Thaddeus Stevens has his own glass case which tells about his time in Gettysburg from 1816 to 1842 before moving to Lancaster, PA. Included in the case is a chair from his house, books, an oil lamp and the gavel that he used as a local school director. In another case there is a stove made at the Maria iron furnace in Fairfield, which he owned with other investors from 1826 to 1837. In the museum’s gift shop there are Stevens biographies along with postcards and refrigerator magnets with Stevens's image. 

You can attend the opening festivities by clicking this link:  Adams County Museum

           Ross Hetrick, portraying Stevens, presents Adams County Museum Historian Tim               Smith with $3,000 for new museum.

Banner outside the museum with Stevens peeking out.

Entrance to the new Adams County museum.

The Thaddeus Stevens exhibit at the museum

Stove made at Stevens's Maria Furnace near Fairfield, PA

Both Stevens refrigerator magnets and postcards are sold at the museum

Burning of Caledonia reenactment 

planned for late June.

June 26, 2023 will mark the 160th anniversary of the burning by Confederates  of Thaddeus Stevens’s Caledonia iron furnace near Chambersburg, PA and the Stevens Society along with Caledonia State Park and the Franklin County Visitors Bureau are planning a reenactment of the event. If you would like to help stage this event, please contact the Society at info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com or call 717-347-8159. A date for the reenactment is yet to be determined.

The destruction of the iron mill by Confederate General Jubal Early was the largest civilian financial loss of the Gettysburg campaign, costing Stevens $75,000 in the currency of the day. But despite this devastating loss, Stevens was able to continue to pay the 250 workers at the facility as he rebuilt the iron mill. 

We hope to recapture all the drama and tragedy connected to this important event in the Civil War.

Stevens/Smith project slated for completion in         late 2024 or early 2025

The Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy is slated to be completed in late 2024 or early 2025, according to LancasterHistory, the group managing the project. So far $12 million has been raised by the historic group of a needed $20 million. 

Stevens’s house in Lancaster was saved from destruction in 2000 by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, which was able to restore the exterior of the house to its 1860 appearance. But because of financial problems, the project was turned over to LancasterHistory in 2010, which has delayed completion due to other projects.

The Thaddeus Stevens Society has urged LancasterHistory to devote more than half of the facility to Stevens’s legislative achievements, which include the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 26

 Uncovering an historic treasure in Brownsville, PA

February 2023

By Ross Hetrick

On January 7, a group of volunteers cut through a thicket of prickly bushes and vines in Brownsville, PA near Chambersburg to reveal a great historic treasure. A treasure that links Thaddeus Stevens to the Underground Railroad and the service of Black soldiers in the struggle against slavery.

The treasure was a long neglected graveyard that contained several  tombstones of members of the United States Colored Troops who fought in the Civil War. One of the most prominent of these markers was for Alexander Raimer, who died in 1898 at age 82 and served in Company C 25th U.S. Colored Troops. The headstone is very handsome with a floral engraving at the top. Delving more into his background,  it was discovered that the place of his burial is the Raimer Family Cemetery.

Black soldiers had joined the military despite the Confederacy announcing they would not treat them like white soldiers. Instead, if they were captured, they would be enslaved or executed.

The soldiers probably lived in the surrounding area, which was a Black community known as Africa in the mid-nineteenth century and one of the chief occupations was strip mining iron ore for Thaddeus Stevens's Caledonia iron mill a few miles to the east. With their large Black populations, Africa and Caledonia were refuges for freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.

Besides his participation in the Underground Railroad, Stevens was one of the earliest advocates of freeing the slaves in the South and using them in the military. "I am for sending the Army through the whole slave population of the South, and asking them to come from their masters, to take the weapons which we furnish, and to join us in this war of freedom against traitors and rebels," Stevens said in July 1862. "I view it as a means, and the only means, of putting down this rebellion; and if in doing that we extinguish the cause of the rebellion, I shall not mourn for it -- which is slavery."

Because of Stevens's efforts, congress did pass a law to use Black soldiers and recruitment started later in 1863. But in a cruel twist, the Black soldiers were paid half that of white soldiers even though they faced graver dangers. This was abhorrent to Stevens, who was successful in equalizing Black soldiers' pay in 1864. 

"Why should they [soldiers] not all be paid alike?" Stevens said in April 1864. "Why should they not all be clothed alike? Why should they not be armed alike? Why should they not all charge the rebels alike, and die alike in defense of the Union? . . . Indeed, sir, if any were to have a preference over others in pay and in inducements to join the service, it ought to be that class of men whose perils are greatest when they go into the army. The black man knows when he goes there that his dangers are greater than the white man's. He runs not only the risk of being killed in battle, but the certainty, if taken prisoner, of being slaughtered instead of being treated as a prisoner of war."

Stevens would be so pleased to know that the tombstones of Reamer's and other brave USCT soldiers buried in the small plot are now visible for all to see and admire.

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/

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 25

 Thaddeus Stevens and the drive for the 13th Amendment

January 2023

By Ross Hetrick

One hundred and fifty-eight years ago this month, the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, was barely passed in the House of Representatives, which was surprising considering that all of the ardent supporters of slavery from the south had long left the House to fight for a new country dedicated to slavery.

One of the strongest supporters for that amendment was Thaddeus Stevens, who had worked for more than 40 years to see slavery destroyed.

"What an opportunity is presented to this Republic to vindicate her consistency and become immortal," Stevens said in January 1862, years before the amendment was passed. "The occasion is forced upon us, and the invitation presented to strike the chains from four million of human beings, and create them MEN; to extinguish slavery on this whole continent; to wipe out, so far as we are concerned, the most hateful and infernal blot that has ever disgraced the escutcheon of man, to write a page in the history of the world whose brightness shall eclipse all the records of heroes and sages."

But the amendment was not preordained. In fact, the first attempt at a 13th Amendment was actually a sinister effort to appease the South by further enshrining the horrid institute in the Constitution.

As southern states were leaving the Union in early 1861, the House and the Senate approved a Constitutional amendment that would have barred any amendment that would interfere with slavery. Called the Corwin Amendment after its sponsor, Rep. Thomas Corwin of Ohio, it was signed by outgoing President James Buchanan, even though a presidential signature was not needed.

The measure went on to be approved by the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, Maryland and Illinois. Even Abraham Lincoln said he had no objection to the Corwin Amendment. But to be fair to Lincoln, he and most abolitionists conceded slavery was completely protected by the Constitution and the new amendment would make no difference.

But the proposed amendment did not dissuade the South from leaving. Their main objection was that Lincoln and the Republican party were against the expansion of slavery into new states, a position they would not compromise on.

Stevens and other congressmen submitted amendments to abolish slavery in the spring of 1864, and while the measure passed in the Senate, it failed in the House where it was 13 votes short of the necessary two-thirds vote. Then in December 1864, Lincoln got behind the effort publicly and the amendment squeaked through the House by the end of January with only three votes to spare.

Even with Lincoln support, the effort to approve the amendment was a monumental legislative struggle, as shown in the 2012 movie Lincoln. Democrat George Pendleton of Ohio was the chief defender of slavery and accused Stevens and his allies of causing the Civil War. Stevens responded by saying Pendleton's epitaph should be, "Here rests the ablest and most pertinacious defender of slavery and opponent." In contrast, Stevens said he would be satisfied if his tombstone read:  "Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, and who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he had striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color."

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/

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/

 

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles No. 23

 Thaddeus Stevens and the Gettysburg Address

November 2022

By Ross Hetrick

Asked why he and other prominent politicians were not going to attend Lincoln's speech in Gettysburg, Thaddeus Stevens said, "Let the dead bury the dead."

Stevens quoted this enigmatic Biblical passage because he thought  Lincoln was politically dead at the time and would not be re-elected president. But near the end of 1864, battlefield victories came in fast and furiously and Lincoln won a second term, only to be cut down a month into his new term.

It's too bad that Stevens didn't go to Lincoln's immortal address. Perhaps he could have shown Lincoln around Gettysburg, where he had lived for 26 years, and some of the fame of the event would have rubbed off on him. Despite his legendary ability of persuasion, Thad could have used a good PR consultant some times. 

One thing Lincoln's speech established for all time is the truth that "brevity is the soul of wit." Edward Everett's two-hour speech at the same event is long forgotten and only brought up as an example of wordiness.

In an age when marathon speeches were common, Stevens's orations were distinguished for being short, eloquent and to the point. While none of his speeches were to become as well know as the Gettysburg Address, Stevens poetically summed up his political principles on June 13, 1866 just before the passage of the 14th Amendment in Congress. The measure, which he introduced, promised to fulfill the long delayed promise of all people are created equal and extend the protection of the Bill of Rights to the state level. And even though it was his creation, he was dissatisfied with the way it had been changed, particularly on voting rights.

Stevens expressed his dismay and hope this way: “In my youth, in my manhood, in my old age, I had fondly dreamed that when any fortunate chance should have broken up for a while the foundation of our institutions, and released us from obligations the most tyrannical that ever man imposed in the name of freedom, that the intelligent pure and just men of this Republic, true to their professions and their consciences, would have so remodeled all our institutions as to have rid them from every vestige of human oppression, of the inequity of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor, and the superior caste of the rich. In short, that no distinction would be tolerated in this purified Republic but what arose from merit and conduct. This bright dream has vanished ‘like the baseless fabric of a vision.’ I find that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it, in many of its parts, to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and the storms of despotism.

   "Do you inquire why, holding these views and possessing some will of my own, I accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels; among men as intelligent, as determined, and as independent as myself, who not agreeing with me, do not choose to yield their opinions to mine. Mutual concession, therefore, is our only resort, or mutual hostilities.”

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/

Thaddeus Stevens Chronicles, No. 22

 Thaddeus Stevens Society dedicated to collecting and preserving Stevens artifacts

October 2022

By Ross Hetrick

One of the most important missions of the Thaddeus Stevens Society is to collect and preserve items related to Stevens and his fight for freedom and equality.

In its 22 years of existence, the Society has amassed a nice collection of letters, period newspapers, postcards, books, stoves made at iron mills owned by Stevens and even music  to honor Stevens. And you can see these items at a meeting of the Thaddeus Stevens Society on Sunday, November 6, at 1 p.m. in Gettysburg. There will also be a walking tour of Stevens sights in Gettysburg. If you'd like to attend this meeting, which includes a potluck lunch, please email info@thaddeusstevenssociety.com

While books about famous people are important, we also yearn to visit places where these celebrated individuals lived and breathed. Millions of people a year flock to places like Mount Vernon, Monticello, Wheatland and even Graceland. But despite Stevens's oversized importance to American history, there were no places for admirers to visit for more than a hundred years.

This started to change in the 1990s when the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster established its archives room in the college's  library, which featured a variety of Stevens artifacts, including his bed, his clubfoot boot along with letters and newspaper articles about him.

The Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center in Gettysburg, which opened in 2013, also has a variety of exhibits about Stevens. This will be supplemented in 2023 when the new Adams County Historical Society museum opens. It will include an exhibit specifically about Thaddeus Stevens and his relation to Gettysburg and the surrounding Adams County.

But the really big event is still more than a year or two in the future. That will be when Stevens's house in Lancaster at the corner of Queen and Vine Streets is finally completed after more than 20 years of waiting.

Neglected for over a hundred years, the house was slated to be demolished in 2000 to make way for the Lancaster Convention Center. But Lancaster preservationists were able to save it and restore its exterior to its 1860s appearance. But after fixing up the outside, the effort was put on hold for a decade as other projects took precedence. Now planning and fundraising are in full swing and the multi-million dollar project promises to give the most comprehensive telling of Stevens career and fight for freedom and equality.  

In the meantime, the Thaddeus Stevens Society's collection remains in a residential house with only a few people seeing it. Perhaps some of the artifacts will end up at the Lancaster museum or at other locations that tell the Stevens story. But one thing is certain, the Society will continue to collect Stevens items and press for a Thaddeus Stevens mecca that can be visited by all the Stevens pilgrims. 

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/