Thaddeus Stevens in Gettysburg Pennsylvania

Thaddeus Stevens is someone we have all heard about, but not too much. At least until Stephen Spielberg made him the dark hero of his 2012 movie Lincoln.

As the country was going through its Secession Winter after Lincoln was elected Stevens said of the lame duck president that “Buchanan is a very traitor” on December 19, 1860.

Stevens was a native of Vermont, born in 1792, He was named after Tadeusz KoŚciuszko, the Polish democrat who fought on the side of the American revolutionaries.

Thaddeus and his brother Joshua were born with clubfeet. Growing up, they were frequently made fun of by other children. In 1804, his father disappeared.  This left his mother, with two disabled boys, very poor, but she was able to help Thad pursue his education and he culminated in him attending Dartmouth University. In 1814, Stevens graduated college and moved to Pennsylvania. In 1816, he was admitted to the bar and he opened a law practice from an office in Gettysburg.

In 1816, Stevens opened his law office in Gettysburg at the site of today’s Gettysburg Hotel on Lincoln Square. In spite of his disability, he was perceived as tall with a robust body. In 1822 he won election to the borough council. In 1833 he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He became active in iron works during this time. In 1842 he moved to the large town of Lancaster.

The Stevens statue is located on the ground of the Adams County Courthouse. It appears as though Stevens is rushing from arguing a case in the court back to his office.

In the Pennsylvania legislature, Stevens became known for his defense of the poor. Having grown up poor himself, he saw Vermont’s funding of public education as an example for his adopted state. Unfortunately, according to Stevens, the wealthy farmers of the state opposed public education because their wealth had come from their fathers and they saw no need to provide the poor children of the state with an education so that they might improve their lot in life. The wealthy, he said, “can scarcely feel any sympathy with, or understand the necessities of the poor.”

While Stevens criticized the shortsightedness of the wealthy, he said that extending the basic rights of a democracy to even the poorest person would keep the American nation from being divided by class.

Now, while Stevens became a hero of the “common man,” he also did entertain conspiracy theories. In the 1830s, he attended Anti-Masonic conventions which sought to portray the Masons as a secret society bent on international hegemony. The Masonic order encourages its member “to cherish a hatred of democracy, and a love of aristocratic and regal forms of power.” he said.

The statue is accompanied by a good explanation of why Stevens was a lightning rod for political controversy.

In Stevens’s hands is the 14th Amendment.

Stevens came to denunciation of slavery after he moved to Pennsylvania. Both Gettysburg and Lancaster were close by the slave state of Maryland. In fact, very early in his time in Gettysburg, he showed ambiguity on slavery. He represented Blacks resisting slave catchers, but he also represented slaveowners. Beginning in 1823, he began speaking out against slavery. In 1830, William Seward spoke with Stevens and said Stevens was a man “abhorring slavery in every form.” In 1836, in response to the State of Virginia’s demand that people in the North stop speaking out against slavery, Stevens responded:

“Every citizen of the non-slaveholding slates, has a right freely to think and publish his thoughts on any subject of national or state policy. Nor can he be compelled to confine his remarks to such subjects as affect only the state in which he resides.”

In 2022, the Stevens Statue was unveiled. The Thaddeus Stevens Society was behind the effort.

The sculptor was Alex Paul Loza from Tennessee.

Sources:

Trefousse, Hans L.. Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (Civil War America) (p. 103). The University of North Carolina Press.

Levine, Bruce C. . Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice (p. 46). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

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