Fergus M. Bordewich reviews Bruce Levine’s new biography Thaddeus Stevens in today’s Wall Street Journal. Bordewich is himself an expert on the Congresses that Stevens helped to drive towards recognition of Black citizenship. The brilliant Congressman’s life was distorted by the Dunning School of revisionists in the first half of the 20th Century, but, writes Bordewich:
The modern civil-rights movement inspired a gradual re-evaluation of Stevens, notably in Hans Trefousse’s 1997 biography “Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth Century Egalitarian.” Yet broader recognition of his importance continued to lag. Now Bruce Levine, a retired professor of history at the University of Illinois, restores him fully to his place in the American pantheon with “Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice,” a concise and powerful biography. With a firm grasp on the era’s political history, Mr. Levine pilots us deftly through Stevens’s rise in the Whig Party, his early participation in the antislavery movement, and his part in the founding of the Republican Party, with its opposition to the spread of slavery. He tracks as well the nuances of wartime rivalries and alliances and the fierce battle to enact revolutionary legislation after the war.
