Visitors to Gettysburg may want to take in the sites connected to one of its most famous residents, Thad Stevens. The bio-pic Lincoln gave Tommy Lee Jones a star turn as the combative Congressman and made him a hard-bitten hero to many Americans who were only dimly familiar with him before. Today’s Washington Post has a guide to touring Thad Stevens related locations in the Gettysburg area.
The article by James F. Lee recounts his recent visit to Gettysburg with his wife Carol. Lee writes:
“He represents a radical change in behavior towards people who some considered less than human,” said Nathan Pease, director of library services for LancasterHistory, formerly Lancaster County’s Historical Society….
Stevens was born in Vermont into dire poverty and suffered from club foot that required him to use a cane. Through sheer willpower — and assiduous study — he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1814. He moved to Pennsylvania and set up a law practice in Gettysburg, where he lived from 1816 to 1843. He never married or fathered children.
Unfortunately, Stevens’s house in Gettysburg is no longer standing, but the site is indicated by a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission blue marker at 51 Chambersburg St. There is no vestige of the street as it looked in Stevens’s time, only a busy commercial thoroughfare lined with restaurants and shops — and lots of Civil War buff tourists. Stevens’s wealth grew in Gettysburg as his law practice expanded; he ran for public office and invested in property. One of his biggest investments was the Caledonia Furnace, an ironworks started in 1837, in nearby Fayetteville, Pa.
…Carol and I drove west of Gettysburg on Route 30 to Caledonia State Park in Fayetteville to see the ruins of the ironworks, now located in the state park. The park’s 0.8-mile, self-guided Thaddeus Stevens Historical Trail points out the remnants of the 19th-century industrial concern.
The man-made water race that supplied the factory is now a pleasant stream. Trees cover the hills, which occasionally bear the scars of long-ago charcoal pits. At the head of the trail, there is a reconstructed furnace made from the rubble of the ironworks’ original furnace. We walked along the edge of the furnace dam; several people were fishing on the banks of the hand-dug pond that provided a source of water for the water wheel in times of dry weather.
At the blacksmith shop, we found park ranger and licensed blacksmith Bill Taylor firing up the forge. We watched him take iron rods out of the fire, then hammer them on his anvil, sparks flying. The clanging reverberated through the building.
Taylor said this shop was once part of a larger community built around the ironworks, which employed hundreds of iron workers, blacksmiths, woodchoppers and colliers. “At one point there were as many as 200 people working here,” he said. “A lot of them were free Blacks or were enslaved people running for Canada.”
Standing nearby was Ross Hetrick, dressed as Thaddeus Stevens in a black frock coat, cravat and ill-fitting wig. (Stevens was bald and known for his famously unshapely wig.) Hetrick, president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society in nearby Gettysburg, portrays the congressman on Saturdays during the summer at Caledonia…
He pointed out that Stevens was reviled by anti-abolitionists. In 1863, in an act of wanton destruction, Confederate Gen. Jubal Early destroyed the Caledonia Furnace, even burning down the workers’ huts. He did it for one reason: The owner of the works was Thaddeus Stevens. The ironworks was rebuilt and survived into the early 20th century, but the act of destruction was a huge financial loss for Stevens….
From Fayetteville, we drove to Lancaster, where Stevens lived from 1843 until his death in 1868. Lancaster offered more opportunities for Stevens’s law practice — and for his political aspirations. In 1858, running as a Republican, he was elected to serve Pennsylvania’s 9th Congressional District. He chaired the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and became the outspoken leader of the Radical Republicans, favoring the complete eradication of slavery in the United States.
…His house and law office on Queen Street is still standing. It is the substantial brick townhouse of a successful businessman, politician and capitalist. Stevens lived here with his housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith, a woman of color, who, in her own right, was a successful landowner in Lancaster. It is unclear whether the relationship was romantic. Smith stayed with Stevens until his death. Today, the house is named to honor both of them.
The house is not open to the public at this time. Once scheduled for demolition to make way for the Lancaster Convention Center, it was saved from the wrecker’s ball by the timely intervention of the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, which acquired a historic preservation easement to protect the property. The Trust preserved the facade and unearthed thousands of artifacts. Now LancasterHistory has plans to renovate the interior.
The Convention Center provides a viewing area that looks into the Stevens-Smith House basement. We could see a large brick cistern and some of the glassware and plates found in the house. There is speculation that Stevens used the basement as a stop on the Underground Railroad, but there is no concrete evidence to support this.
Of all the stops on our trip, Carol thought the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology Archives was the most informative and most clearly demonstrated the breadth of his influence. A statue of Stevens on the college’s campus underscores this point: Around its pedestal are plaques commemorating the many causes he championed: abolition, philanthropy, equality, reconstruction and education.
Our final stop was Stevens’s grave at the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery, a quiet, tree-lined sanctuary in downtown Lancaster. Stevens had chosen this cemetery for his burial because it was the only one in Lancaster that allowed Black people to be buried there. Inscribed on his tomb are the words “EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR.”
