She-Ste: Shellbarger through Stevens

See below for annotated biographies of Radical Republicans. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

SHELLABARGER, Samuel,  U.S. Representative from Ohio and principal drafter of the Civil Rights Act of 1871.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume V:

SHELLABARGER, Samuel, born in Clark county, Ohio, 10 December, 1817; died 6 August, 1896. He was graduated at Miami in 1842, studied law under General Samson Mason, was admitted to the bar in 1847, was a member of the first legislature in Ohio that met under the present constitution, and in 1860 was elected to congress as a Republican. He took his seat in a special session that met in accordance with President Lincoln's call, on 4 July, 1861, and served in 1861-'3, in 1865-'9, and in 1870-'3. He was chairman of the committees on commerce, that on charges by Frey against Roscoe Conkling, and that on the provost-marshal's bureau, and was on the special committees on the assassination of President Lincoln, civil service, and the New Orleans riots. He was U.S. minister to Portugal in 1869-'70, and in 1874-'5 was one of the civil service commission. He then resumed the practice of his profession in Washington, D.C.

Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress:

SHELLABARGER, SAMUEL, a Representative from Ohio; born near Enon, Clark County, Ohio, on December 10, 1817; attended the county schools and was graduated from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, in 1841; studied law; was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Springfield, Ohio, in 1846; member of the State house of representatives in 1852 and 1853; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1863); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1862 to the Thirty-eighth Congress; elected to the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses (March 4, 1865-March 3, 1869); declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1868; Minister to Portugal from April 21 to December 31, 1869; again elected to the Forty-second Congress (March 4, 1871-March 3, 1873); chairman, Committee on Commerce (Forty-second Congress); was not a candidate for renomination in 1872; member of the United States Civil Service Commission in 1874 and 1875; continued the practice of law until his death in Washington, D.C., August 7, 1896; interment in Ferncliff Cemetery, Springfield, Ohio.

Shellabarger elected to the Forty-second Congress (March 4, 1871 – March 3, 1873). During that term he served as chairman of the Committee on Commerce. Perhaps the most historically memorable moment of his life came early in this term when he drafted an anti-Ku Klux Klan bill—also referred to as the Civil Rights Act of 1871. After passage by both houses of Congress, the bill was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20. This bill was very instrumental in giving Grant the tools he needed to disable the first-era KKK. Shellabarger's KKK bill was the second introduced in Congress that year; an earlier bill drafted by Benjamin Butler had failed to garner sufficient votes for passage.



SHREWSBURY, Henry L.  African American teacher and Reconstruction era state legislator in South Carolina.  He was a free mullato, and represented Chesterfield County in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1868 until 1870.

Henry L. Shrewsbury (born c. 1847) was an American teacher and Reconstruction era state legislator in South Carolina. He was described as a free mullato, and represented Chesterfield County in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1868 until 1870.
Amelia Ann Shrewsbury was his sister. He taught at a school established by the American Missionary Association after the Civil War.

He ran the Freedman Bureau office in Cheraw, South Carolina. He was a delegate to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention. He was appointed and election commissioner for Chesterfield County, South Carolina in October 1868.

The Chesterfield Democrat gave a favorable accounting of his integrity as a politician.



SPALDING, Rufus Paine, 1798-1886, Massachusetts, lawyer, jurist.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio, 1863-1869.  Opposed the extension of slavery into the new territories.  In 1847, declared: “If the evil of slavery had been restricted, as it should have been, to the thirteen original states, self-interest might have led to the extinction of the practice long before now.”  Spalding joined the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1850.  He opposed the Fugitive Slave Act.  He encouraged fellow attorneys in Cleveland to oppose the Act.  He represented Underground Railroad conductor Simon Buswell in his defense, arguing the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional.  He opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.  Spalding was elected to Congress in 1862.  While there, he introduced legislation to repeal the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850.  One of the organizers of the Republican Party.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Sinha, 2016, pp. 524, 525; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 620-621; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe.)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume V, pp. 620-621.
 
SPALDING, Rufus Paine, jurist, born in West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, 3 May, 1798; died in Cleveland, Ohio, 29 August, 1886. He was graduated at Yale in 1817, and subsequently studied law under Zephaniah Swift, chief justice of Connecticut, whose daughter, Lucretia, he married in 1822. In 1819 he was admitted to practice in Little Rock, Arkansas, but in 1821 he went to Warren, Ohio. Sixteen years later he moved to Ravenna, Ohio, and he was sent to the legislature in 1830-'40 as a Democrat, serving as speaker in 1841-'2. In 1840 he was elected judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio for seven years, but when, three years later, the new state constitution was adopted, he declined a re-election and began practice in Cleveland. In l852 he entered political life as a Free-Soiler, and he was one of the organizers of the Republican Party. He was a member of Congress in 1863-'9, where he served on important committees, but he subsequently declined all political honors. Judge Spalding exercised an important influence in restoring the Masonic Order to its former footing after the disappearance of William Morgan. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 620-621.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 375:

RUFUS P. SPALDING.

AMONG the older members of the Fortieth Congress, and one who retains the physical and intellectual vigor of a middle age, is Rufus Paine Spalding, of Cleveland, Ohio, who has, for six consecutive years, represented the Eighteenth Congressional District of that State.

He was born on the 3d day of May, 1798, at West Tisbury, on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, in the State of Massachusetts, where his father, Dr. Rufus Spalding, resided and practiced medicine for twenty years. He traces back his ancestry two hundred and twenty-eight years in a direct line to Edward Spalding, who was “made a Freeman " at Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1640. Benjamin Spalding, the son of Edward, migrated to Connecticut about the year 1665, and settled in the town of Plainfield, in the County of Windham. Dr. Rufus Spalding, the father of the subject of this sketch, was the great grandson of Benjamin Spalding, who thus settled in Connecticut.

In the spring of the year 1812, Dr. Spalding returned with his family to Connecticut, and took up his abode in the city of Norwich. After the usual preparatory studies, his son Rufus P. Spalding entered Yale College; and in the autumn of 1817, received from that institution the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Among the members of his class in college were Rt. Reverend Wm. H. De Lancy, Bishop of Western New York; Dr. Nathan R. Smith, of Baltimore; Prof. Lyman Coleman, of Easton, Pa.; Hon. Charles J. McCurdy, at one time Minister to Austria, and now a Judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut; Hon. Thomas B. Osborne, and Hon. Thomas T. Whittlesey, ex-members of Congress from Connecticut; Sam’l H. Perkins and Joel Jones, Esquires, eminent lawyers of Philadelphia ; J. Prescott Hall, Esq., U. S. District Attorney for New York, and others who also became distinguished for usefulness in life.

Immediately on leaving college, Mr. Spalding commenced the study of the law with Hon. Zephaniah Swift, the learned author of the “Digest,” who was then Chief Justice of Connecticut.

After reading the usual time, and receiving from his instructor the most flattering testimonials of his qualifications, he, like very many of the energetic young men of New England, made his way to the West; and after encountering various fortunes incident to a frontier settlement, he found himself, in December, 1819, at the old “Post of Arkansas," and shortly afterwards at “Little Rock,” in the practice of law, in co-partnership with Samuel Dinsmoor, Esq., since Governor of New Hampshire.

He remained in this new Territory until June, 1821, when he retraced his steps eastward, and was finally induced to throw out his sign as an “ Attorney at Law” in the pleasant village of Warren, the shire town of Trumbull County, Ohio.

In October, 1822, he was married to Lucretia A. Swift, the eldest daughter of the gentleman with whom he had studied his profession. Seven children, three sons and four daughters, were the offspring of this marriage, only three of whom now survive. They are Col. Zeph. S. Spalding, now United States Consul at Honolulu, Bt. Captain George S. Spalding, First Lieutenant 33d U. S. Infantry, and Mrs. Lucretia McIlrath, the wife of Charles McIlrath, Esq., of St. Paul, Minnesota. In January, 1859, Judge Spalding was married to his present wife, the eldest daughter of Dr. Wm. S. Pierson, of Windsor, Conn.

After a residence of more than sixteen years in Warren, Mr. Spalding removed to Ravenna, in the County of Portage. In the fall of 1839, he was chosen by a majority of one vote over his opponent, to represent the people of Portage County in the General Assembly of Ohio. The Legislature, mainly through the active exertions of Mr. Spalding, passed an act at this session, erecting the new County of Summit, of which he soon became an inhabitant by transferring his residence to Akron, the county seat.

In 1841-2, he was again a member of the Legislature, as a representative from the new county. At this time he was chosen Speaker of the House, and became justly popular as an able and successful presiding officer. In conjunction with the late Governor John Brough, then Auditor of State, he took strong ground against the effort, then being made, to repudiate the public debt of Ohio, and, by his personal influence, did much to prevent the disastrous consequences which must always attach to such pernicious legislation.

In the winter of 1848-9, Mr. Spalding was elected, by joint vote of the two Houses of the General Assembly, a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, for the constitutional term of seven years, of which le served, however, but three years, as the new Constitution, then adopted, re-organized the Judiciary, and Judge Spalding declined being a candidate in the popular canvass that followed.

The following extract from a letter written to the author, by Hon. William Lawrence, M. C., who was the Reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Ohio during all the time Judge Spalding was upon the Bench, will serve to show his qualifications for that high trust:

“ The judicial services of Judge Spalding commenced March 7, 1849, and ended February 1, 1852. He brought to the exalted position the force of a vigorous and cultivated intellect, imbued with a profound knowledge of the law, and enriched with classical attainments of no ordinary character, His opinions will be found in volumes 18, 19, and 20 of the Ohio Reports; and it is, at least, no disparagement to others to say, that Judge Spalding has never had a superior on the Bench of the State. His opinions are remarkable specimens of judicial literature, distinguished for the force of their logic, their terse, clear, emphatic style, and a precision of expression unsurpassed even by the learned English judges whose decisions are found in the celebrated Reports of Durnford and East.

“The generous nature and urbane deportment of Judge Spalding was such that lie enjoyed the profound respect and esteem of the Bar, and all with whom he was associated, as the writer of this has abundant means of knowing.”

On retiring from the Bench, Judge Spalding removed to the city of Cleveland, where he at once entered upon a lucrative business in the practice of his profession. As an advocate and counselor he maintained the highest rank in his State.

In politics, the Judge was an active and devoted member of the Democratic party, from the days of Andrew Jackson until the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, when he threw all his energy and influence into the ranks of the “Free-Soil” or “ Anti-Slavery” party.

He was a member of the Convention at Pittsburg, in February, 1852; and it was on his motion that John P. Hale was nominated for the Presidency. He was again a member of the Pittsburg Convention of 1856, which originated the Republican party; and he was, the same year, one of the delegates at large from the State of Ohio, to the National Convention in Philadelphia, which nominated John C. Fremont. In May, 1868, he was a delegate to the Convention in Chicago, which nominated General U. S. Grant for President.

In October, 1862, Judge Spalding was chosen to represent the Eighteenth Congressional District, made up of the Counties of Cuyahoga, Lake, and Summit, in the Congress of the United States. He was re-elected in October, 1864, and again in October, 1866, so that he served in the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses. In the spring of 1868, he addressed a letter to his constituents, declining to be again a candidate.

In the Thirty-eighth Congress he was a member of the Standing Committee on Naval Affairs, the Committee on Revolutionary Pensions, and served as Chairman on the Select Committee on the Bankrupt Law.

In the Thirty-ninth Congress he was made a member of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, and continued to serve on the Committee on Bankruptcy, of which Mr. Jenckes was then Chairman. Soon after the opening of the first session of this Congress, Mr. Spalding made a speech in which he indicated the measures which he regarded as necessary to be adopted in order to reconstruct the rebel States. The suggestions then made were for the most part afterwards adopted by Congress. The military features of the Reconstruction Acts originated in an amendment offered by Mr. Spalding to Mr. Stevens' first bill.

In the Fortieth Congress he was placed on the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on the Revision of the Laws of the United States, and upon the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress. He took an important part in the investigation and discussion of the financial questions which enlisted the attention of this Congress. In May, 1868, he delivered in the House of Representatives a speech on “ The Political and Financial Condition of the Country,” from which we make an extract from his able argument, showing the unconstitutionality of Legal Tenders :

" It is my purpose to show that this cherished plan of paying off the interest-bearing bonds of the Government with the United States ‘legal-tender 'notes, has no warrant in the Constitution of the United States, in the act of Congress of February 25, 1862, which first authorized their issue; neither is it justified by the plainest principles of political economy, or the soundest precepts of common sense.

“In the first place, I meet the whole question without gloves,' and affirm that there exists no constitutional power in the Congress of the United States to make paper money a ‘legal tender’ in payment of debts. I admit that under the pressure of extreme necessity, and in order to save the life of the nation, Congress did, in the darkest hours of the rebellion, assume the right to impress on a limited amount of Treasury notes the quality of a ‘legal tender.' And I admit that this extreme measure was justified by the extraordinary circumstances under which it was adopted, and that, under like circumstances, I should not hesitate to repeat the experiment; but I can yield nothing further. A measure of national defense under the weighty pressure of war that brings a strain upon the Constitution of the country, is not to be continued, much less extended, as a principle of financial policy in times of peace, without seriously endangering the whole framework of our Government.

“ The wise men who, in 1787, constructed the great charter of our national rights, had experimental knowledge of the pernicious tendencies of an irredeemable paper currency; for in the year 1780, paper money issued to carry on the war of the Revolution had depreciated to such an extent that in the city of Philadelphia it was sold a hundred dollars in paper for one in silver. Hence it will be found that in framing the Constitution, they sought in every possible way to guard against the evils incident to a circulating medium made up of paper promises.?"

After citing the debates in the Convention which formed the Constitution, and the authority of its ablest expounders, Mr. Spalding remarked :

“It was reserved for the Thirty-seventh Congress of the United States to assert and exert a power, so obviously opposed to the wishes of the framers of the Constitution, to the letter and spirit of the instrument itself, and to its practical construction for three-fourths of a century. But it was exerted in the darkest hour of the nation's conflict with treason and rebellion. It was exerted ex necessitate, to save the life of our glorious Republic. * * *

“Mr. Chairman, I now solemnly aver that if I had been a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, I would have voted under the pressure of circumstances for the passage of the act entitled “ An act to authorize the issue of United States notes, and for the redemption or funding thereof, and for the funding of the floating debt of the United States," approved February 25, 1862. And I affirm just as solemnly, that at no time since the surrender of Lee's army would I have felt justified in repeating that vote.”

Spalding's career in Congress has been that of a wise and patriotic legislator, eminently useful to the country, and highly honorable to himself. His name is associated with all the important legislation relative to the war of the rebellion and its results.



SPEED, James, 1812-1887, Kentucky, lawyer, soldier, statesman, U.S. Attorney General.  Ardent opponent of slavery.  Early friend of Abraham Lincoln.  Emancipation candidate for Kentucky State Constitutional Convention.  Unionist State Senator.  U.S. Attorney General appointed by President Lincoln in 1864, he served until 1866.  Advocate negro suffrage and was critical of President Johnson. He opposed Johnson's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill and favored the Fourteenth Amendment.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 625-626: James Speed, James Speed, A Personality (1914); Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (Cincinnati, 1878); Diary of Gideon Welles (1911), volume II; A. J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln (1928), volume I

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1:

SPEED, JAMES (March 11, 1812-June 25, 1887), lawyer, federal attorney-general, was the descendant of James Speed who emigrated from England and settled in Surry County, Virginia, about the end of the seventeenth century. His grandfather, also James, settled near Danville, Kentucky, about 1783. His father, John, settled in Jefferson County, at "Farmington," five miles from Louisville, and married Lucy Gilmer Fry. There James was born. He attended school in the neighborhood, and then at St. Joseph's College in Bardstown, where he was graduated probably in 1828. The next two years he spent in the county clerk's office in Louisville. He then went to Lexington to the law department of Transylvania University. In 1833 he began the practice of law in Louisville and continued with a few interruptions as long as he lived. In 1841 he married Jane Cochran, the daughter of John Cochran of Louisville. They had seven sons. In 1847 he was elected to the state legislature. In 1849 he was defeated for the state constitutional convention by James Guthrie, on the emancipation issue. His grandfather, James, had suffered defeat for a seat in the Constitutional Convention of 1792 on the same issue, for hostility to slavery long characterized the Speed family. In 1849 Speed wrote a series of letters to the Louisville Courier, in which he boldly assumed a position against slavery that definitely limited his political career until the outbreak of the Civil War. For two years, from 1856 to 1858, in addition to his legal practice, he taught law in the University of Louisville.

In the secession movement he took the typical Kentucky attitude-a desire to preserve the Union and at the same time avoid war. He was a member of the Union .central committee, which was set up to merge the Bell and Douglas forces, and which on April 18, 1861, issued an address lauding Governor Beriah Magoffin's refusal to respond to Lincoln's call for troops and advising the people to refuse aid to either side. In 1861 he was elected to the state Senate as an uncompromising Union man, and he continued in this position until 1863. He became a principal adviser of Lincoln on affairs in Kentucky, and in the latter part of 1864 was appointed attorney-general. He was the brother of Joshua Fry Speed, Lincoln's intimate friend. He was also a Southerner and a conservative, a man agreeing with the President's policy of moderation toward the Southern states, and a man for whom Lincoln had a personal affection. Lincoln could say of him in Washington, that he was "an honest man and a gentleman, and one of those well poised men, not too common here, who are not spoiled by a big office" (Lord Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln, 1916, p. 404). As long as Lincoln lived Speed held true to the President's policy; but when a strange fascination for the radicals developed, Charles Sumner was then able to say of him that he was the "best of the Cabinet" (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United. States, 1904, V, 533). He favored military commissions to try the Lincoln conspirators and other persons not protected by their paroles (opinion of the Constitutional Power of the Military to Try and Execute the Assassins of the President, 1865, and the American Annual Cyclopaedia, Appletons', 1866), though he consistently held that Jefferson Davis should be tried by the civil courts. He early began to advocate negro suffrage and was soon as critical as Stanton of President Johnson. He opposed Johnson's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill and favored the Fourteenth Amendment. As time went on he found himself increasingly out of harmony with Johnson, and on July 17, 1866, he resigned. The breaking point seems to have developed over the Philadelphia convention, when, in answer to a communication sent him by the committee in charge of promoting that convention, he declared that he thoroughly disapproved of it.

He then returned to Louisville and later bought a home near the city, "The Poplars." In September 1866 he attended the Southern Radical convention in Philadelphia and was made its permanent chairman. There he made a bitter speech against Johnson, characterizing him as the "tyrant of the White House"-an expression he later changed to "tenant" (J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years, 1886, II, 226; G. F. Milton, Age of Hate, 1930, p. 726, footnote 28). Back in Kentucky he took a prominent part in Radical Republican activities. In 1867 he received forty-one votes in the Kentucky legislature for senator but was defeated; the next year the Kentucky delegates gave him their votes for vice-president; in 1870 he ran for the national House of Representatives and was defeated. In 1872 and in 1876 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention and each time served on the committee of resolutions. As he grew older he reverted to the ways and beliefs of his earlier life. He continued his practice of law in Louisville and from 1872 to 1879 he taught law again in the University of Louisville. In 1884 he supported Grover Cleveland for the presidency. A few years before his death he became a n .unwilling party to a controversy with Joseph Holt, over the question of President Johnson having received the recommendation for mercy in the Mrs. Surratt case. Against the almost frantic appeals of Holt to Speed to say publicly that Johnson saw the recommendation, Speed resolutely refused on the ground of the rule against divulging cabinet proceedings. Speed's last public appearance was at Cincinnati on May 4, 1887, when he addressed the Society of the Loyal Legion, Address of Hon. James Speed before the ... Loyal Legion (1888). He died at "The Poplars" and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery at Louisville.

[James Speed, James Speed, A Personality (1914); Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (Cincinnati, 1878); Diary of Gideon Welles (1911), volume II; A. J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln (1928), volume I; Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia . . . . 1887 (1888); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 2 series, VII; Lewis and R. H. Collins, History of Kentucky (2 volumes, 1874); Thomas Speed, Records and Memorials of the Speed Family (1892); New York Herald, July 17, 1866; Louisville Commercial, June 26, 1887; North American Review, July, September 1888; letters in Joseph Holt Correspondence and Edwin M. Stanton MSS. in the Library of Congress and in the Charles Sumner MSS. in Harvard College Library]

E. M. C. 

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 625-626:

SPEED, James, lawyer, born in Jefferson county, Kentucky, 11 March, 1812; died there, 25 June, 1887. He was graduated at St. Joseph's college, Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1828, studied law at Transylvania, and began practice at Louisville. His ancestors were identified with that state from pioneer days, and were active participants in the best political life of the young commonwealth. Inheriting a repugnance to every form of oppression and injustice, he was naturally opposed to slavery, and his well-known opinions on that subject prevented his taking any prominent part in politics until the opening of the civil war. He was then nearly fifty years old, but he had established his reputation as a jurist, and was recognized even by those wholly opposed to him on the issues of the time as able, consistent, and upright. He also held at this time a chair in the law department of the University of Louisville. A powerful element in Kentucky strove to commit the state to the disunion cause, and against that element he exercised all his talents and influence. To him as much as any one man is ascribed the refusal of Kentucky to join the Confederacy.  He became in early manhood a friend of Abraham Lincoln, and their subsequent relations continued to be intimate. When the war came, he promptly yielded to the president’s request that he should assist in organizing the National troops in his native state, and he devoted himself to the cause of loyalty until 1864, when he was made attorney general of the United States. He was a member of the legislature in 1847, and in 1849 was the Emancipation candidate for the State constitutional convention, but was defeated by James Guthrie, Pro-slavery. He was a Unionist state senator in 1861-‘3, mustering officer of the U.S. volunteers in 1861 for the first call for 75,000 men, and U.S. attorney-general of 1864 till 1866 when he resigned from opposition to Andrew Johnson’s administration. He was also a delegate to the Republican conventions of 1872 and 1876. His last appearance in public was in delivering an address on Lincoln before the Loyal league of Cincinnati, 4 May, 1887. In 1875, he returned to his law professorship.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 625-626.



STANTON, Edwin McMasters, 1814-1869, statesman, lawyer, anti-slavery activist.  U. S. Secretary of War, 1862-1867.  Favored Wilmot Proviso to exclude slavery from the new territories acquired by the U.S. after the War with Mexico in 1846.  Member of the Free Soil movement. 

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 65, 67, 69, 72, 144, 147-148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 648-649; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 517; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 558).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

STANTON, Edwin McMasters, statesman, born in Steubenville Ohio, 19 December, 1814; died in Washington, D. C., 24 December, 1869. His father, a physician died while Edwin was a child. After acting for three years as a clerk in a book-store, he entered Kenyon College in 1831, but left in 1833 to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1836, and, beginning practice in Cadiz, was in 1837 elected prosecuting attorney. He returned to Steubenville in 1839, and was supreme court reporter in 1842-'5, preparing volumes xi., xii., and xiii. of the Ohio reports. In 1848 he moved to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and in 1857, on account of his large business in the U. S. Supreme Court, he established himself in Washington. During 1857-'8 he was in California, attending to important land cases for the government. Among the notable suits that he conducted were the first Erie Railway litigation, the Wheeling Bridge Case, and the Manney and McCormick reaper contest in 1859. When Lewis Cass retired from President Buchanan's cabinet, and Jeremiah S. Black was made Secretary of State, Stanton was appointed the latter's successor in the office of Attorney-General, 20 December, 1860. He was originally a Democrat of the Jackson school, and, until Van Buren's defeat in the Baltimore Convention of 1844, took an active part in political affairs in his locality. He favored the Wilmot proviso, to exclude slavery from the territory acquired by the war with Mexico, and sympathized with the Free-Soil movement of 1848, headed by Martin Van Buren. He was an anti-slavery man, but his hostility to that institution was qualified by his view of the obligations imposed by the Federal Constitution. He had held no public offices before entering President Buchanan's cabinet except those of prosecuting attorney for one year in Harrison County, Ohio, and reporter of the Ohio Supreme Court for three years, being wholly devoted to his profession. While a member of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, he took a firm stand for the Union, and at a cabinet meeting, when John B. Floyd, then Secretary of War, demanded the withdrawal of the United States troops from the forts in Charleston Harbor, he indignantly declared that the surrender of Fort Sumter would be, in his opinion, a crime, equal to that of Arnold, and that all who participated in it should be hung like André. After the meeting, Floyd sent in his resignation. President Lincoln, though since his accession to the presidency he had held no communication with Mr. Stanton, called him to the head of the War Department on the retirement of Simon Cameron, 15 January, 1862. As was said by an eminent senator of the United States: “He certainly came to the public service with patriotic and not with sordid motives, surrendering a most brilliant position at the bar, and with it the emolument of which, in the absence of accumulated wealth, his family was in daily need.” Infirmities of temper he had, but they were incident to the intense strain upon his nerves caused by his devotion to duties that would have soon prostrated most men, however robust, as they finally prostrated him. He had no time for elaborate explanations for refusing trifling or selfish requests, and his seeming abruptness of manner was often but rapidity in transacting business which had to be thus disposed of, or be wholly neglected. As he sought no benefit to himself, but made himself an object of hatred to the dishonest and the inefficient, solely in the public interest, and as no enemy ever accused him of wrong-doing, the charge of impatience and hasty temper will not detract from the high estimate placed by common consent upon his character as a man, a patriot, and a statesman.

Mr. Stanton's entrance into the cabinet marked the beginning of a vigorous military policy. On 27 January, 1862, was issued the first of the president's war orders, prescribing a general movement of the troops. His impatience at General George B. McClellan's apparent inaction caused friction between the administration and the general-in-chief, which ended in the latter's retirement. He selected General Ulysses S. Grant for promotion after the victory at Fort Donelson, which General Henry W. Halleck in his report had ascribed to the bravery of General Charles F. Smith, and in the autumn of 1863 he placed Grant in supreme command of the three armies operating in the southwest, directed him to relieve General William S. Rosecrans before his army at Chattanooga could be forced to surrender. President Lincoln said that he never took an important step without consulting his Secretary of War. It has been asserted that, on the eve of Mr. Lincoln's second inauguration, he proposed to allow General Grant to make terms of peace with General Lee, and that Mr. Stanton dissuaded him from such action. According to a bulletin of Mr. Stanton that was issued at the time, the president wrote the despatch directing the general of the army to confer with the Confederate commander on none save purely military questions without previously consulting the members of the cabinet. At a cabinet council that was held in consultation with General Grant, the terms on which General William T. Sherman proposed to accept the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston were disapproved by all who were present. To the bulletin announcing the telegram that was sent to General Sherman, which directed him to guide his actions by the despatch that had previously been sent to General Grant, forbidding military interference in the political settlement, a statement of the reasons for disapproving Sherman's arrangement was appended, obviously by the direction of Secretary Stanton. These were: (1) that it was unauthorized; (2) that it was an acknowledgment of the Confederate government; (3) that it re-established rebel state governments; (4) that it would enable rebel state authorities to restore slavery; (5) that it involved the question of the Confederate states debt; (6) that it would put in dispute the state government of West Virginia; (7) that it abolished confiscation, and relieved rebels of all penalties; (8) that it gave terms that had been rejected by President Lincoln; (9) that it formed no basis for peace, but relieved rebels from the pressure of defeat, and left them free to renew the war. General Sherman defended his course on the ground that he had before him the public examples of General Grant's terms to General Lee's army, and General Weitzel's invitation to the Virginia legislature to assemble at Richmond. His central motive, in giving terms that would be cheerfully accepted, he declared to be the peaceful disbandment of all the Confederate armies, and the prevention of guerilla warfare. He had never seen President Lincoln's telegram to General Grant of 3 March, 1865, above quoted, nor did he know that General Weitzel's permission for the Virginia legislature to assemble had been rescinded.

A few days before the president's death Secretary Stanton tendered his resignation because his task was completed, but was persuaded by Mr. Lincoln to remain. After the assassination of Lincoln a serious controversy arose between the new president, Andrew Johnson, and the Republican Party, and Mr. Stanton took sides against the former on the subject of reconstruction. On 5 August, 1867, the president demanded his resignation; but he refused to give up his office before the next meeting of Congress, following the urgent counsels of leading men of the Republican Party. He was suspended by the president on 12 August on 13 January, 1868, he was restored by the action of the Senate, and resumed his office. On 21 February, 1868, the president informed the Senate that he had removed Secretary Stanton, and designated a secretary ad interim. Mr. Stanton refused to surrender the office pending the action of the Senate on the president's message. At a late hour of the same day the Senate resolved that the president bad not the power to remove the secretary. Mr. Stanton, thus sustained by the Senate, refused to surrender the office. The impeachment of the president followed, and on 26 May, the vote of the Senate being “guilty,” 35, “not guilty,” 19, he was acquitted—two thirds not voting for conviction. After Mr. Stanton's retirement from office he resumed the practice of law. On 20 December, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant a justice of the Supreme Court, and he was forthwith confirmed by the Senate. Four days later he expired.

The value to the country of his services during the Civil War cannot be overestimated. His energy, inflexible integrity, systematized industry, comprehensive view of the situation in its military, political, and international aspects, his power to command and supervise the best services of others, and his unbending will and invincible courage, made him at once the stay of the president, the hope of the country, and a terror to dishonesty and imbecility. The vastness of his labors led to brusqueness in repelling importunities, which made him many enemies. But none ever questioned his honesty, his patriotism, or his capability. A “Memoir” of Mr. Stanton is at present in preparation by his son, Lewis M. Stanton. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 648-649.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 517:

STANTON, EDWIN MCMASTERS (December 19, 1814-December 24, 1869), attorney-general and secretary of war, a native of Steubenville, Ohio, was the eldest of the four children of David and Lucy (Norman) Stanton. His father, a physician of Quaker stock, was descended from Robert Stanton, who came to America between 1627 and 1638, and, after living in New Plymouth, moved to Newport, Rhode Island, before 1645, and from the latter's grandson, Henry, who went to North Carolina between 1721 and 1724 (W. H. Stanton, post, pp. 27-34). His mother was the daughter of a Virginia planter. The death of Dr. Stanton in 1827 left his wife in straitened circumstances and Edwin was obliged to withdraw from school and supplement the family income by employment in a local bookstore. He continued his studies in his spare time, however, and in 1831 was admitted to Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. During his junior year his funds gave out and he was again obliged to accept a place in a bookstore, this time in Columbus. Unable to earn enough to return to Kenyon for the completion of his course, he turned to the study of law in the office of his guardian, Daniel L. Collier, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. His practice began in Cadiz, the seat of Harrison County, but in 1839 he removed to Steubenville to become a partner of Senator-elect Benjamin Tappan.

Stanton's ability, energy, and fidelity to his profession brought him quick recognition and a comfortable income. To give wider range to his talents he moved to Pittsburgh in 1847 and later, in 1856 he became a resident of Washington, D. C., in order to devote himself more to cases before the Supreme Court. His work as counsel for the state of Pennsylvania (1849-56) against the Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Company (13 Howard, 518; 18 Howard, 421) gave him a national reputation and resulted in his retention for much important litigation. He was one of the leading counsel in the noted patent case of McCormick vs. Manny (John McLean, Reports of Cases  ... in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Seventh Circuit, volume VI, 1856, p. 539) and made a deep impression upon one of his associates, Abraham Lincoln, because of his masterly defense of their client, Manny (A. J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1928, volume I, 581). Stanton's practice was chiefly in civil and constitutional law, but in 1859 in defending Daniel E. Sickles [q.v.], charged with murder, he demonstrated that he was no less gifted in handling criminal suits. More important than any of these cases, however, was his work in California in 1858 as special counsel for the United States government in combatting fraudulent claims to lands alleged to have been deeded by Mexico to numerous individuals prior to the Mexican War. It was a task requiring prodigious and painstaking research in the collection of data and the most careful presentation, but Stanton proved equal to the occasion and won for the government a series of notable victories. It has been estimated that the lands involved were worth $150,000,000. His services in this connection were undoubtedly the most distinguished of his legal career. As a lawyer Stanton was capable of extraordinary mental labor; he was orderly and methodical, mastering with great precision the law and the facts of his cases, and he was able apparently to plead with equal effectiveness before judges and juries.

It was his success in the California land cases, together with the influence of Jeremiah S. Black [q.v.], that won for him the appointment of attorney-general on December 20, 1860, when Buchanan reorganized his cabinet. Prior to that time Stanton had taken little part in politics and had held only two minor offices, those of prosecuting attorney of Harrison County, Ohio (1837-39), and reporter of Ohio supreme court decisions (1842-45). Jacksonian principles enlisted his sympathies while an undergraduate and he appears to have adhered quite consistently to the Democratic party from that time until his entrance into Lincoln's cabinet in 1862. He favored the Wilmot Proviso, however, and was critical of the domination of the Southern wing of the party during the two decades before 1860. Like his forebears he disapproved of the institution of slavery, but he accepted the Dred Scott decision without question and contended that all laws constitutionally enacted for the protection of slavery should be rigidly enforced. He supported Breckinridge's candidacy for the presidency in 1860 in the belief that the preservation of the Union hung on the forlorn hope of his election (Gorham, post, I, 79). Above all Stanton was a thorough-going Unionist.

In Buchanan's cabinet he promptly joined with Black and Joseph Holt [q.v.] in opposition to the abandonment of Fort Sumter and was zealous in the pursuit of persons whom he believed to be plotting against the government. Since he was of an excitable and suspicious temperament, his mind was full of forebodings of insurrection and assassination, and, while he hated the "Black Republicans," he collogued with Seward, Sumner, and others in order that they might be apprised of the dangers he apprehended to be afoot. The disclosure of this later resulted in the charge that he had betrayed Buchanan (Atlantic Monthly and Galaxy, post). If Stanton was at odds with the President at that time he gave him no indication of it for Buchanan wrote in 1862: "He was always on my side and flattered me ad nauseam" (G. T. Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, 1883, volume II, 523).

During the early months of Lincoln's presidency, Stanton, now in private life, was utterly distrustful of him and unsparing in his criticism of "the imbecility of this administration" (Ibid., II, 559). When George B. McClellan [q.v.] took over the control of the operations of the army in 1861, Stanton became his friend and confidential legal adviser and expressed to him his contempt for the President and his cabinet. Oddly enough, soon afterwards he also became legal adviser to Secretary of War Simon Cameron [q.v.] and aided in framing the latter's annual report recommending the arming of slaves (Atlantic Monthly, February 1870, p. 239; October 1870, p. 470). It was this proposal, offensive to Lincoln, which hastened Cameron's departure from the War Department and inadvertently helped to pave the way for Stanton's succession to the post. Although he had had no personal contacts of any kind with Lincoln since March 4, 1861, Stanton was nominated for the secretaryship, confirmed on January 15, 1862, and five days later entered upon his duties. Various plausible explanations for his selection by Lincoln have been given. Gideon Welles firmly believed that Seward was responsible for it, but Cameron claimed the credit for himself (American Historical Review, April 1926, pp. 491 ff.; Meneely, post, pp. 366-68). The true circumstances may never be known.

Stanton was generally conceded to be able, energetic, and patriotic, and his appointment was well received. It presaged a more honest and efficient management of departmental affairs and a more aggressive prosecution of the war. In these respects the new secretary measured up to the public expectations. He immediately reorganized the department, obtained authorization for the increase of its personnel, and systematized the work to be done. Contracts were investigated, those tainted with fraud were revoked, and their perpetrators were prosecuted without mercy. Interviews became public hearings; patronage hunters received scant and usually brusque consideration; and the temporizing replies of Cameron gave way to the summary judgments of his successor. At an early date Stanton persuaded Congress to authorize the taking over of the railroads and telegraph lines where necessary, and prevailed upon the President to release all political prisoners in military custody and to transfer the control of extraordinary arrests from the State to the War Department. Also he promptly put himself in close touch with generals, governors, and others having to do with military affairs, and especially with the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.

For a few months after entering office Stanton continued his friendly relations with McClellan and assured the general of his desire to furnish all necessary materiel, but he became impatient when McClellan proved slow in accomplishing tangible results. Despite the Secretary's professions of confidence and cooperation, McClellan soon became distrustful and suspected Stanton of seeking his removal. The withdrawing of McDowell's forces from the main army in the Peninsular campaign was attributed to Stanton and editorial attacks upon him began to appear in the New York press which were believed to have been inspired by McClellan (Gorham, I, 415-21). Both men were too suspicious, jealous, and otherwise ill-suited to work in harmony; trouble between them was inevitable. Stanton was particularly irked by McClellan's disobedience to orders and in August 1862 joined with Chase and others in the cabinet in seeking to have him deprived of any command (Welles, Diary, I, 83, 93, 95- 101; "Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, 1903, volume II, 62-63).

Although McClellan constantly complained of a shortage of men, supplies, and equipment, Stanton appears to have made vigorous efforts to meet his requisitions. The same was true with respect to other commanders in the several theatres of operations. His dispatch of 23,000 men to the support of Rosecrans at Chattanooga (September 1863) in less than seven days and under trying circumstances was one of the spectacular feats of the war. Quickness of decision, mastery of detail, and vigor in execution were among Stanton's outstanding characteristics as a war administrator, and he became annoyed when his subordinates proved deficient in these qualities. He was frequently accused of meddling with military operations and was probably guilty of it on many occasions; but Grant had no complaint to make of him in this respect. His severe censorship of the press was also a source of much criticism in newspaper circles, and his exercise of the power of extraordinary arrest was often capricious and harmful. Soldiers and civilians alike found him arrogant, irascible, and often brutal and unjust. Grant said that he "cared nothing for the feeling of others" and seemed to find it pleasanter "to disappoint than to gratify" (Personal Memoirs, volume II, 1886, p. 536). A noted instance of his harshness was his published repudiation of General Sherman's terms to the defeated Johnston in May 1865. That Sherman had exceeded his authority was generally admitted, but the severity of the rebuke was as unmerited as it was ungrateful. Again, Stanton's part in the trial and execution of Mrs. Surratt, charged with complicity in Lincoln's assassination, and his efforts to implicate Jefferson Davis in the murder of the President were exceedingly discreditable (Milton, post, Ch. x; DeWitt, post, pp. 232-34; 272-76). His vindictiveness in both instances was probably owing in part to a desire to avenge the death of his chief, whose loss he mourned. Intimate association for three years had gradually revealed Lincoln's nature and capacities to Stanton, and while he was sometimes as discourteous to him as to others, there developed between the two men a mutual trust and admiration.

At the request of President Johnson, Stanton retained his post after Lincoln's death and ably directed the demobilization of the Union armies. At the same time he entered upon a course with respect to reconstruction. and related problems that brought him into serious conflict with the President and several of his colleagues. During the war he appears to have been deferential and ingratiating in his relations with the radical element in Congress, particularly with the powerful congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, and when peace came he began almost immediately to counsel with leading members of that faction as to the course to be pursued in reconstruction. Although he expressed approval in cabinet meetings of the President's proclamation of May 29, 1865, initiating a reasonable policy of restoration under executive direction, it was soon suspected by many of Johnson's supporters that Stanton was out of sympathy with the administration and intriguing with the rising opposition. In this they were not mistaken (Beale, post, pp. 101-06). When Charles Sumner in a speech on September 14, 1865, denounced the presidential policy, insisted on congressional control of reconstruction, and sponsored negro suffrage, Stanton hastened to assure him that he indorsed "every sentiment, every opinion and word of it" (Welles, II, 394). From the summer of 1865 onward, upon nearly every issue he advised a course of action which would have played into the hands of the Radicals and fostered a punitive Southern policy. He urged the acceptance of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights bills of 1866, and while he was evasive regarding the report of the Stevens committee on reconstruction, he subsequently expressed approval of the Military Reconstruction bill based upon it which was passed over the President's veto on March 2, 1867 (Welles, III, 49; Gorham, II, 420). Stanton actually dictated for Boutwell [q.v.] an amendment to the army appropriation act of 1867 requiring the president to issue his army orders through the secretary of war or the general of the army and making invalid any order issued otherwise (G. S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, 1902, volume II, 107-08; Milton, p. 378). He was also responsible for the supplementary reconstruction act of July 19, 1867, which exempted military commanders from any obligation to accept the opinions of civil officers of the government as to their rules of action (Gorham, II, 373). The one important measure in the rejection of which the Secretary concurred was the Tenure of Office bill which was chiefly intended to insure his own retention in the War Department. He was emphatic in denouncing its unconstitutionality and "protested with ostentatious vehemence that any man who would retain his seat in the Cabinet as an adviser when his advice was not wanted was unfit for the place" (Welles, III, 158; J. D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1897, volume VI, 587). He aided Seward in drafting the veto message.

For more than a year Johnson had been importuned by his supporters to remove Stanton and he repeatedly gave the Secretary to understand "by every mode short of an expressed request that he should resign" (Richardson, ante, VI, 584), but Stanton ignored them and with fatal hesitation the President permitted him to remain. In doing so he virtually gave his opponents a seat in the cabinet. By the beginning of August 1867, however, Johnson could tolerate his mendacious minister no longer. He had become convinced that the insubordination of General Sheridan and other commanders in the military districts was being encouraged by the Secretary and he was now satisfied that Stanton had plotted against him in the matter of the reconstruction legislation. Consequently, on August 5, he called for his resignation, but Stanton brazenly declined to yield before Congress reassembled. in December, contending that the Tenure of Office bill had become law by its passage over the veto and Johnson was bound to obey it. A week later he was suspended, but in January 1868 he promptly resumed his place when the Senate declined to concur in his suspension. Johnson then resolved to dismiss him regardless of the consequences and did so on February 21, 1868. Stanton with equal determination declared that he would "continue in possession until expelled by force" (Gorham, II, 440), and was supported by the Senate. He ordered the arrest of Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas, who had been designated secretary ad interim, and had a guard posted to insure his own occupancy and protect the department records from seizure. For several weeks thereafter he remained in the War Department building day and night, but when the impeachment charges failed (May 26, 1868) he accepted the inevitable and resigned the same day. 

Over-exertion during his public life, together with internal ailments, had undermined Stanton's health and he found it necessary after leaving the department to undergo a period of rest. During the fall of 1868 he managed to give some active support to Grant's candidacy and to resume to a limited extent his law practice, but he never regained his former vigor. He was frequently importuned to be a candidate for public office, but steadfastly refused. His friends in Congress, however, prevailed upon Grant to offer him a justiceship on the United States Supreme Court and this he accepted. His nomination was confirmed on December 20, 1869, but death overtook him before he could occupy his seat.

With the gradual rehabilitation of Andrew Johnson's reputation Stanton's has suffered a sharp decline. His ability as a lawyer and his achievements as a tireless and versatile administrator during the Civil War have not been seriously questioned, but his defects of temperament and the disclosures of his amazing disloyalty and duplicity in his official relations detract from his stature as a public man. In 1867 he explained his remaining in the War Department by contending that his duties as a department head were defined by law and that he was not "bound to accord with the President on all grave questions of policy or administration" (Gorham, II, 421; J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, 1920, VI, 210, note 3); but shortly before his death he is said to have admitted that "he had never doubted the constitutional right of the President to remove members of his Cabinet without question from any quarter whatever," and that in his reconstruction program Johnson advocated measures that had been favorably considered by Lincoln (Hugh McCulloch, 20 Men and Measures of Half a Century, 1888, pp. 401-02). Stanton was encouraged in his disloyalty and defiance by Republican politicians, newspapers, and Radical protagonists generally, but his conduct has found few defenders among modern students of the post-war period. Whether he was motivated by egotism, mistaken patriotism, or a desire to stand well with the congressional opposition is difficult to determine.

In appearance Stanton was thick-set and of medium height; a strong, heavy neck supported a massive head thatched with long, black, curling hair. His nose and eyes were large, his mouth was wide and stern. A luxuriant crop of coarse black whiskers concealed his jaws and chin. Altogether he was a rather fierce looking man; there was point to Montgomery Blair's characterization, the "black terrier." Stanton was twice married. Mary Ann Lamson of Columbus, Ohio, with whom he was united on December 31, 1836, died in 1844. On June 25, 1856, he married Ellen M. Hutchison, the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Pittsburgh. Two children were born of the first union; four of the second. His biographers assure us that in his family life Stanton was a model husband and father, and for his mother, who survived him, he appears to have cherished a lifelong filial devotion.

[There is no satisfactory biography of Stanton. G. C. Gorham, The Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton (2 volumes, 1899), and F. A. Flower,   Edwin McMasters Stanton (1905) contain much useful data, but both are extremely laudatory. The Diary of Gideon Welles (3 volumes, 1911), although hostile, is a very serviceable documentary source. The writings and biographical literature of other public men of the day contain numerous references to Stanton. Of especial value for the war period are J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 volumes, 1890), and Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (12 volumes, Gettysburg ed., 1905).

See also A. H. Meneely, The War Department-1861 (1928). G. F. Milton, The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (1931), and H. K. Beale, The Critical Year (1930) are the most scholarly of the recent studies of the reconstruction era.

D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903), is the standard book on the subject and has a sharply critical chapter on Stanton's public career.

Revealing disclosures of his conduct while in Buchanan's cabinet are to be found in the Black-Wilson controversy in the Atlantic Monthly, February, October 1870, and the Galaxy, June 1870, February 1871, reprinted as A Contribution to History (1871).

The papers of Stanton and many of his associates are deposited in the Library of Congress these, together with War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), and other government publications pertaining to the war and reconstruction problems are the basic sources for the study of Stanton's official life. Genealogical material is in

W. H. Stanton. A Book Called Our Ancestors the Stantons (1922). For an obituary, see New York Daily Tribune, December 25, 1869.]

A.H.M.



STEARNS, George Luther, 1809-1867, Medford, Massachusetts, merchant, industrialist, Free-Soil supporter, abolitionist.  Chief supporter of the Emigrant Aid Company which financed anti-slavery settlers in the Kansas Territory.  Founded the Nation, Commonwealth, and Right of Way newspapers.  Member of the “Secret Six” who secretly financially supported radical abolitionist John Brown, and his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, on October 16, 1859.  Recruited African Americans for the all-Black 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments, U.S. Army. 

(Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, p. 268; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 207, 327, 338; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 655; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 543). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 655:

STEARNS, George Luther, merchant, born in Medford, Massachusetts, 8 January, 1809; died in New York, 9 April, 1867. His father, Luther, was a teacher of reputation. In early life his son engaged in the business of ship-chandlery, and after a prosperous career undertook the manufacture of sheet and pipe-lead, doing business in Boston and residing in Medford. He identified himself with the anti-slavery cause, became a Free-Soiler in 1848, aided John Brown in Kansas, and supported him till his death. Soon after the opening of the Civil War Mr. Stearns advocated the enlistment of Negroes in the National Army. The 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments, and the 5th Cavalry (colored), were largely recruited through his instrumentality. He was commissioned major through the recommendation of Secretary of War Stanton, and was of great service to the National cause by enlisting Negroes for the volunteer service in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee. He was the founder of the “Commonwealth” and “Right of Way” newspapers for the dissemination of his ideas. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 655.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 543:

STEARNS, GEORGE LUTHER (January 8, 1809-April 9, 1867),. Free-Soiler, was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the eldest son of Luther and Mary (Hall) Stearns and the descendant of Charles Stearns who became a freeman of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1646. Such formal education as the boy received was in a preparatory school for boys established by his father, a physician. At the age of fifteen he began his business career in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1827 entered a ship chandlery firm in Boston. and in 1835 returned to Medford to manufacture linseed oil and to marry, on January 31, 1836, Mary Ann Train. He became a Unitarian and was prominent in church activities. After the death of his wife in 1840, he reentered business in Boston, at first with a ship-chandlery company but later, very successfully, as a manufacturer of lead pipe. By 1840 he felt strongly enough on the subject of slavery to support James G. Birney and the Liberty party. His marriage, on October 12, 1843, to Mary Elizabeth Preston probably furthered his interest in the anti-slavery cause for his wife was a niece of Lydia Maria Child [q.v.]. In 1848, as a Conscience Whig, he liberally supported the Free-soil campaign with his money. He was greatly disturbed by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and is known to have aided at least one slave to escape. He was among the leaders in the movement that put Charles Sumner in the federal Senate, and later, as a member of the famous Bird Club, he played a considerable part in the rise of the Republican party in Massachusetts, becoming particularly interested in the political fortunes of his friend John A. Andrew.
He was in the group that, in 1856, raised a subscription to equip the free state forces in Kansas with Sharpe's rifles. The subsequently successful operations of the Kansas committee of Massachusetts, of which he became chairman, were largely due to the willingness with which he contributed his time and money. In 1857 he met John Brown and made him the committee's agent to receive the arms and ammunition for the defense of Kansas and also aided in purchasing a farm for the Brown family at North Elba, New York Indeed, from this time on Stearns practically put his purse at Brown's disposal. That he ever appreciated Brown's responsibility for the murders on the Potawatomi is doubtful, but in March 1858 Brown confided to him the general outline of his proposed raid into Virginia, an enterprise that Stearns approved, as did S. G. Howe, Theodore Parker, T. W. Higginson and Franklin B. Sanborn [qq.v.]. These five men constituted an informal committee in Massachusetts to aid Brown in whatever attack he might make on slavery. Stearns acted as treasurer for the enterprise in New England. Gerrit Smith of New York and Martin F. Conway of Kansas were also in the secret. Stearns, however, does not appear to have known just when and where Brown proposed to strike, and the blow at Harpers Ferry took him by surprise. On learning of Brown's capture he authorized two prominent Kansas jayhawkers to go to Brown's relief if they thought they could effect his rescue. Stearns himself, becoming somewhat apprehensive of the attitude of the Federal government, fled with Howe to Canada. He soon returned, however, and appeared before the Mason committee of the Senate that was investigating the Brown conspiracy. No further action was taken by the government respecting Stearns.

During the Civil War, upon Governor Andrew's authorization he recruited many negro soldiers for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments, especially from the middle and western states. So satisfactory were his efforts that in the summer of 1863 Secretary Stanton commissioned him as major with headquarters in Philadelphia and directed him to recruit colored regiments for the Federal government. A few months later he was sent to Nashville, where he successfully continued his work until a misunderstanding with Stanton led him to resign from the army early in 1864. In 1865 he established the Right Way, a paper that supported radical Republican policies, particularly negro suffrage, and attained a circulation of 60,000, largely at his expense. He died of pneumonia while on a business trip to New York.
[F. P. Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns (1907) and Cambridge Sketches (1905); O. G Villard, John Brown (1910); J. F. Rhodes, History of the U.S., volume II (1892); Sen. Report, No. 278, 36 Congress, 1 Session (1860); A. S. Van Wagenen, Genealogy and Memoirs of Charles and Nathaniel Stearns, and Their Descendants (1901).]

W.R.W. 




STEVENS, Thaddeus, 1792-1868, statesman, lawyer, abolitionist leader.  Anti-slavery leader in U.S. House of Representatives.  As member of Whig Party and leader of the radical Republican Party, urged Lincoln to issue Emancipation Proclamation.  Led the fight to pass Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery and establishing citizenship, due process and equal protections for African Americans. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 677-678; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 620; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 764-767; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 711). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 620-:

STEVENS, THADDEUS (April 4, 1792-August 11, 1868), lawyer, congressman, political leader, was born in Danville, Vermont, of a family which had migrated from Massachusetts a few years earlier. His father, Joshua Stevens, an unthrifty shoemaker, died or disappeared at an undetermined date, leaving the mother, Sally (Morrill) Stevens, and four small sons in dire poverty. She was fortunately a woman of fine ideals and great industry, and made many sacrifices to educate Thaddeus, who as the youngest child, and lame and sickly from birth, required special care. The family soon removed to Peacham, Vermont, to gain the advantages of the academy which had been established there in 1795. This village, just above the junction of the Connecticut and Passumpsic rivers in north central Vermont, was still part of a semi-frontier community, and the boy grew up in a ruggedly democratic society. He was early trained to hard work and an independent outlook, and though a chance visit to Boston at the age of twelve gave him an ambition some day "to become rich" (McCall, post, p. 7), he imbibed a strong feeling for the poor and an intense dislike of aristocracy and of caste lines.

Completing his course at Peacham Academy, Stevens entered Dartmouth College as a sophomore in 18II, and graduated in 1814. However, he spent one term and part of another at the University of Vermont, There are early evidences of his headstrong nature: at Peacham Academy he joined other students in presenting a tragedy in the evening, both the dramatic entertainment and the hour being infractions of the rule, and at the University of Vermont he is said to have killed a cow. At the latter institution he also wrote a drama on "The Fall of Helvetic Liberty" and helped enact it. The instruction at Dartmouth and Vermont was limited and thorough, emphasizing Greek, Latin, higher mathematics, and ethics. From his classical training Stevens undoubtedly drew much of the clarity, exactness, and force which later characterized his public speaking, and which led Blaine to say that he rarely uttered a sentence that would not meet the severest tests of grammar and rhetoric (J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, I, 1884, p. 325). He had determined to practise law, and began reading it in Vermont. On taking his degree he obtained a post as instructor in an academy at York, Pennsylvania, and continued his law studies under David Casset, leader of the local bar. Apparently to evade a time requirement in Pennsylvania, he took his bar examinations at Bel Air, Maryland, passing with ease when he proved that in addition to a little law he knew how to order Madeira for his examiners and to lose money at cards to them. He then removed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1816 to practise.

For several years a struggling lawyer of narrow income, Stevens used his leisure to do much profitable reading in history and belles-lettres. But an important case in which he defended a man accused of murder on the then unusual plea of insanity gave him a large fee, said to have been $1500 (Hensel, post, p. 5), and a reputation. Thereafter from 1821 to 1830 he appeared in almost every important case at the county bar and won almost all of his numerous appeals to the state supreme court (Woodburn, post, p. 12). Since his county adjoined Maryland, Stevens saw much of the slavery system and of runaway negroes, and his instinctive New England dislike of slavery grew into a fierce hatred. It is said that he once spent $300 which he had saved to make additions to his law library in purchasing the freedom of a negro hotel-servant who was about to be sold away from his family (Hensel, pp. 7, 8). He defended numerous fugitive slaves without fee, and displayed great skill in gaining their freedom.

After practising law for ten years in Gettysburg, Stevens also entered the iron business by becoming in 1826 a partner in James D. Paxton & Company, which at once built Maria Furnace in Hamilton-ban Township, Adams County. The company, which became Stevens & Paxton in 1828, first tried to manufacture stoves and other light castings, but the metal was "cold-short" and the product frequently too brittle to have a value. Stevens and Paxton therefore bought property near Chambersburg, where they built Caledonia Forge (probably named after Stevens' native county in Vermont), and mixed pig iron from Maria Furnace with other ores. In 1837 they also built Caledonia Furnace, and finding ample supplies of superior ore near it, the next year gave up their first furnace entirely. They confined themselves chiefly to the sale of blooms. The Caledonia establishment was never very profitable even in the earlier years. When it met the competition of more effective and economical iron works, Stevens kept it up primarily because he did not wish to deprive the surrounding community of its principal means of livelihood. From his manufacturing enterprise sprang Stevens' interest in protective tariff.

It was natural for a man who felt with his burning intensity on public questions to push into politics. In 1830 he was described as "a firm and undeviating Federalist" and "a violent opponent of General Jackson" (quoted, Woodburn, p. 13). But already the Anti-Masonic movement had attracted him, and he emerged into political prominence in 1831 at the Anti-Masonic Convention in Baltimore which nominated William Wirt for president, and at which he delivered a notable arraignment of secret orders. Two years later he was elected to the Pennsylvania House on the Anti-Masonic ticket, taking his seat in the last weeks of 1833. As a member of the legislature Stevens quickly became known as one of the most fiery, most aggressive, and most uncompromising leaders in Pennsylvania affairs. He served until 1841. For some years he introduced or supported much legislation striking at Masonic influences, and in 1835 was chairman of a committee which made abortive attempts to investigate the evils of Free-Masonry. But his range of interests was wide. He was a warm advocate of the act of 1834 extending the free school system of Philadelphia over the whole state. The next year, when in a reaction against the taxes that were required an effort was made to repeal this law, he sprang into statewide fame by a brilliant defense of free education,-a defense "which produced an effect second to no speech ever uttered in an American legislative assembly" (McCall, p. 38). His denunciation of class-hostility toward free public schools, his excoriation of the repeal as "an act for branding and marking the poor" (Woodburn, p. 45), and his panegyric of a democratic system of instruction, completely won the hostile House. What was more, it caused the Senate to reverse its position. Stevens also labored for larger appropriations for colleges, including Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) at Gettysburg. He argued in behalf of the right of petition, appealed for a constitutional limit on the state debt, and defended the protective tariff and the United States Bank. In 1838 a disputed election in Philadelphia County brought on at Harrisburg the "Buckshot War," with the Whig and Anti-Masonic members of the House endeavoring to organize in opposition to the Democrats. Stevens was the chief leader in this attempt, showing the fierce fighting spirit and uncompromising disposition which marked him through life. At one time he escaped from a mob in the state capitol by leaping from a window. His faction was defeated, and the Democrats declared his seat vacated, but he was at once reelected. In 1836-37 he offered a resolution in favor of abolishing slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. In the state constitutional convention of 1837 he displayed great bitterness in debate, opposing everything that smacked of privilege or class distinctions, and refusing to sign the constitution finally adopted because it limited suffrage to white citizens (McCall, p. 48). At his retirement from the legislature the Harrisburg Pennsylvania Telegraph pronounced him "a giant among pigmy opponents" (E. B. Callender, Thaddeus Stevens, Commoner, 1882, p. 51), and every one recognized him as one of the strongest men in the state.

His decision to quit politics was only temporary, for as the contest over slavery grew heated he was irresistibly drawn toward the arena. Pique over his failure to gain a place in the cabinet of Harrison, whom he had supported in 1836 and 1840, may have played a part in his retirement. His business had not prospered, and he had debts variously estimated at from $90,000 to $217,000 to pay off (Woodburn, p. 66). Removing in 1842 to Lancaster, he at once gained a place at its bar worth from $12,000 to $15,000 a year. As he repaired his fortunes he turned toward public life and in 1848 was elected on the Whig ticket to the Thirty-first Congress. Here he immediately took a leading place among the little band of free-soilers, surpassing such men as Joshua R. Giddings and G. W. Julian [qq.v.] in fieriness of temper as in general parliamentary versatility. He was willing to make no compromise whatever with slavery in the territories, and predicted that if ringed about by "a cordon of freemen," all slave states would within twenty-five years pass laws "for the gradual and final extinction of slavery" (February 20, 1850, Congressional Globe, 31 Congress, I Session, Appendix, p. 142). He denounced slavery as "a curse, a shame, and a crime"; he compared it to the horrors of Dante's Inferno (June 10, 1850, Ibid., Appendix, p. 767). He taunted men of the lower South as slave-drivers, and Virginians for devoting their lives "to selecting and grooming the most lusty sires and the most fruitful wenches to supply the slave barracoons" (February 20, 1850, Ibid., Appendix, p. 142). His invective was bestowed as harshly upon Northerners who condoned slavery as upon Southerners who practised it. He assailed the compromise measures of 1850, and did his utmost to defeat the Fugitive Slave Act. Southern members expressed horror at his gross language, which they declared too indecent for print, and at his reckless and incendiary sentiments. Reelected in 1850, he renewed his assaults upon slavery and his warnings to the South against secession. He also spoke for increased tariffs. In March 1853, disgusted with the moderation of most Whigs, he quit Congress but not politics. For within a year Douglas had prepared his Kansas-Nebraska scheme, and the moment was ripe for a leader of Stevens'. unsurpassed powers of agitation and denunciation.

In the formation of the Republican party in Pennsylvania, Stevens played a vigorous part. He helped organize Lancaster County in 1855, and in 1856 attended the National Convention at Philadelphia as a supporter of Justice McLean. His impassioned appeals at this gathering led Elihu B. Washburne to say that he had "never heard a man speak with more feeling or in more persuasive accents" (E. B. Washburne, ed., The Edwards Papers, 1884, p. 246, note). In 1858 he was reelected to Congress and, with fire unabated at the age of sixty-eight, entered the last debates before the Civil War. His harshness of speech was as great as ever. An early colloquy with Crawford of Georgia almost provoked a riot on the floor (Woodburn, pp. 135-36). He also renewed his pleas for a protective tariff. In 1860 he again was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and though he was constrained to support Cameron and preferred McLean, finally voted for Lincoln. Returning to Congress, he opposed any concessions to the Southerners as "the coward breath of servility and meanness"; he warned the South to secede at its peril, saying that if it tried to break up the Union "our next United States will contain no foot of ground on which a slave can tread, no breath of air which a slave can breathe" (January 29, 1861, Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, p. 624). He called upon Buchanan to exert the Federal authority sternly against those who were flouting the national government. In one memorable debate he denounced the plotters of "treason" so violently that the excitement, according to Henry L. Dawes, "beggared all description," and his friends formed a hollow square to protect him from the menaces of hostile members (McCall, pp. 127-28).

Stevens was again mentioned for a cabinet post, and when Lincoln chose Simon Cameron instead he criticized the cabinet as representing political expediency rather than efficiency. But he soon found himself in a position of greater power than if he had taken Cameron's place. He was made chairman of the ways and means committee, which gave him wide authority over all revenue bills and most other congressional measures dealing with the prosecution of the war; while as Blaine states, in everything he was "the natural leader, who assumed his place by common consent" (Blaine, ante, I, 325). Upon nearly all aspects of the war he had stern and positive views, and his ideas of policy diverged sharply from Lincoln's. In the field of finance he fortunately gave the administration loyal support. He was prompt in carrying through the House all necessary legislation authorizing Secretary Chase to float loans. He and his committee acted with expedition and nerve in devising new taxes and making them effective. He pressed the income tax against urban objection, the direct tax on real estate against rural objection. The internal revenue act of 1862 showed especial ingenuity in reaching almost every source of revenue, and for this he as well as Justin S. Morrill, chairman of the sub-committee on taxation, deserves credit. On the legal-tender legislation that became a matter of hard necessity following the suspension of specie payments he held doctrines possibly derived in large part from Eleazar Lord (McCall, p. 259; W. C. Mitchell, A History of the Greenbacks, 1903, pp. 47 ff.). He favored a uniform nation-wide paper currency issued directly by the United States without mediation of the banks, legal tender for all purposes, and interchangeable with six per cent. United States bonds (Woodburn, pp. 257-58). The act finally passed with numerous compromises, and the amendment which required the interest on government bonds to be paid in coin and not greenbacks was highly repugnant to Stevens. In his opinion it changed a "beneficent" measure into one "positively mischievous" by establishing one currency for the rich bondholder and another for the plow holder and fighter (February 20, 1862, Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 900).

On the conduct of the war Stevens took a harsh and aggressive position. He was one of the two House members who in 1861 voted against the Crittenden resolution declaring that the war was not fought for conquest or subjugation, or to interfere with the established institutions of the South. From the early months he urged confiscation of all property used for insurrectionary purposes and the arming of slaves (August 2, 1861, Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 1 Sess., pp. 414-15). He bitterly criticized Lincoln for overruling Fremont and Hunter on military emancipation, and termed the President's proposal for compensated emancipation "diluted milk and water gruel" (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. II 54). In language often acrid and abusive he called upon Lincoln to turn out Seward, shake loose from the Blairs and other border-state politicians, and- use every possible method of attack against the South. "Oh, for six months of stern old Jackson !" was one of his exclamations (Woodburn, p. 220). He helped make the committee on the conduct of the war, formed after Ball's Bluff, a thorn in the side of the administration. As the conflict progressed he asked ever--sterner measures. Believing the Constitution no longer applicable to the South, he had no difficulty in justifying demands for wholesale arrests, confiscations, and capital punishments. Early in 1862 he told the House that the war would not end till one party or the other had been reduced to "hopeless feebleness" and its power of further effort had been "utterly annihilated" (January 22, 1862, Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 440). He went so far by 1864 a s to speak of the necessity of seeing the "rebels" exterminated, and more than once spoke of desolating the section, erasing state lines, and colonizing it anew. It was charged that his shrill demands for vengeance after 1863 were prompted in part by the destruction of his iron works near Chambersburg in Lee's invasion of that year (Rhodes, post, V, 544). Confederate troops spent several days at the Caledonia iron works, where they removed all stores and supplies, then burning most of the settlement. In a letter Stevens describes the destruction in indignant terms. They "took all my horses, mules, and harness, even the crippled horses"; they seized two tons of his bacon, with molasses, other contents of the store, and $2,000 worth of grain; they burnt the furnace, rolling-mill, sawmill, two forges, bellows-houses, and other parts of the works; they "even hauled off my bar-iron, being as they said convenient for shoeing horses, and wagons about $4,000 worth"; and they destroyed fences and about eighty tons of hay (Stevens Papers, Library of Congress, volume II). Stevens was forced to provide for the indigent families of the vicinity.

But his chief quarrel with Lincoln was upon reconstruction. He earnestly opposed Lincoln's ten per cent. plan, objected to the seating of congressmen from Louisiana under it, and in a notable speech on reconstruction laid down the rule that the South was outside the Constitution and that the law of nations alone would limit the victorious North in determining the conditions of restoration (January 22, 1864, Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, pp. 317-19). The Wade-Davis bill, embodying a rigorous scheme of reconstruction, did not go far enough for him, but when Lincoln gave this bill a pocket veto with an explanatory proclamation Stevens called the action "infamous" (Woodburn, p. 321). Though he supported Lincoln for reelection in 1864 it was probably with secret hostility (G. W. Julian, Political Recollections, 1884, p. 243; Woodley, post, p. 405), and his sorrow over the President's assassination was not keen. Temporarily he hoped that Johnson would take the radical road. But within a month he saw that the new President was following Lincoln, and wrote Sumner in angry horror: "I fear before Congress meets he will have so be-devilled matters as to render them incurable" (Beale, post, p. 63). With Sumner, he at once prepared to give battle to Johnson for the purpose of reducing the South to a "territorial condition," making it choose between negro suffrage and reduced representation, imposing other harsh conditions, and fixing Republican supremacy-for which he appreciated economic as well as political arguments (Beale, pp. 73, 152, 206, 403-05). Like Sumner, he also set about promoting schism in Johnson's cabinet (Oberholtzer, post, I, 164).

As soon as Congress met, the two houses, on motion of Stevens, appointed a joint committee on reconstruction (December 4, 1865, Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 6), of which he as chairman of the House group was the dominant member. A fortnight later (December 18, 1865) he again asserted that rebellion had obliterated the Southern states and that the section was a "conquered province" with which Congress could do as it pleased. He also frankly avowed that one aim of representation was "to divide the representation, and thus continue the Republican ascendency" (Ibid., pp. 73-74). The first open rupture with the President came in February 1866, on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill which Stevens belligerently pushed and Johnson vetoed. Beginning with Johnson's speech on Washington's birthday, the two men exchanged bitter attacks, and Stevens succeeded in passing both the Civil Rights Bill and a revised Freedmen's Bureau Bill over Johnson's veto. On April 30, 1866, the joint committee reported the Fourteenth Amendment, which with a few changes Congress adopted, and a bill declaring that when the amendment became part of the Constitution any state lately in insurrection which ratified it and adopted a constitution and laws in conformity with its terms should be admitted to representation in Congress. But this bill never passed. It did not go as far as Stevens wished and on the last day of the session he tried to amend it to require full negro suffrage. Johnson opposed the congressional plan, the South with his apparent approval refused to accept the Fourteenth Amendment, and the whole issue went before the people in the congressional election of 1866. Economic factors strengthened Stevens' hands, for large elements feared loss of tariff advantages, railway grants, free homesteads, and gold bond-redemptions, with all of which the Republican party was identified (Beale, pp. 225-99). A sweeping victory that fall gave Stevens the whip-hand over Johnson and the South.

The first use which he made of his success was to impose military reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment upon the South. He had expected it to reject the Fourteenth Amendment and thus give him an opening, and he was prepared to make the most of a defiance which he had deliberately inspired and encouraged (Woodburn, pp. 436-37). His new measure, introduced February 6, 1867, and passed in March, provided for temporary military rule while the states were remade in the South on the basis of negro suffrage and the exclusion of leading ex-Confederates. He pushed it through a reluctant House by invective, sarcasm, threats, taunts, and cracking of the party whip (Rhodes, VI, 17, 18). Having accomplished this, he turned to the chastisement of the President. He declared during the summer of 1867 that he would willingly help impeach Johnson but that he did not believe the measure would succeed (July 19, 1867, Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 745-46). In December he did vote for an impeachment resolution which failed by nearly two to one. When Johnson summarily removed Stanton as secretary of war Stevens saw his chance, and the very next day reported an impeachment resolution based on the President's supposed disregard of the Tenure of Office Act (February 22, 1868, Ibid., 40 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1336). He was made a member of the committee to draft articles of impeachment, and also one of the managers to conduct the case before the Senate. But his health had now hopelessly failed, and he took little part in the trial itself. Deeply disappointed by the President's acquittal, he sank so rapidly that when Congress recessed he could not be taken back to Lancaster, but died in Washington. He had never married, and only his nephew and colored housekeeper were at his bedside. By his own wish he was buried in a small graveyard in Lancaster. His tombstone bears an inscription prepared by himself: "I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but, finding other cemeteries limited by charter rules as to race, I have chosen this, that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life-Equality of Man before his Creator" (Woodburn, p. 609; Callender, p. 163).

Stevens was an intense partisan, and his career was marred throughout by a harsh and vindictive temper which in his last years made him frankly vengeful toward the South. Within a brief time after his death it was evident that he had fallen short of the measure of a statesman. His radical and bitter policy, offered as a means of obtaining equality and justice for the negro, aroused fierce resentment, accentuated racial antagonism, cemented the Solid South, and postponed for many decades any true solution of the race problem. He h ad rare parliamentary talents. Well-read, with a quick and lucid mind, of indomitable courage, a master of language and past master of invective, gifted with a sardonic humor and nimble wit, he was almost invincible on the floor. His private life was far from saintly, for gambling was but one of several habitual vices. But his leonine spirit, his terrible earnestness, his gay resourcefulness, and his fine intellectual equipment always inspired respect. Had tolerance and magnanimity been added to his character, he might have been a brilliant instead of sinister figure in American history.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 677-678:

STEVENS, Thaddeus, statesman, born in Danville, Caledonia county, Vermont, 4 April, 1792; died in Washington, D. C., 11 August, 1868. He was the child of poor parents, and was sickly and lame, but ambitious, and his mother toiled to secure for him an education. He entered Vermont university in 1810, and after it was closed in 1812 on account of the war he went to Dartmouth, and was graduated in 1814. He began the study of law in Peacham, Vermont, continued it while teaching an academy in York, Pennsylvania, was admitted to the bar at Bel Air, Md., established himself in 1816 at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and soon gained a high reputation, and was employed in many important suits. He devoted himself exclusively to his profession till the contest between the strict constructionists, who nominated Andrew Jackson for the presidency in 1828, and the national Republicans, who afterward became the Whigs, drew him into politics as an ardent supporter of John Quincy A dams. He was elected to the legislature in 1833 and the two succeeding years. By a brilliant speech in 1835, he defeated a bill to abolish the recently established common-school system of Pennsylvania. In 1836 he was a member of the State constitutional convention, and took an active part in its debates, but his anti-slavery principles would not permit him to sign the report recommending an instrument that restricted the franchise to white citizens. He was a member of the legislature again in 1837, and in 1838, when the election dispute between the Democratic and anti-Masonic parties led to the organization of rival legislatures, he was the most prominent member of the Whig and anti-Masonic house. In 1838 he was appointed a canal commissioner. He was returned to the legislature in 1841. He gave a farm to Mrs. Lydia Jane Pierson, who had written poetry in defence of the common schools, and thus aided him in saving them. Having incurred losses in the iron business, he removed in 1842 to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and for several years devoted himself to legal practice, occupying the foremost position at the bar. In 1848 and 1850 he was elected to congress as a Whig, and ardently opposed the Clay compromise measures of 1850, including the fugitive-slave law. On retiring from congress, March, 1853, he confined himself to his profession till 1858, when he was returned to congress as a Republican. From that time till his death he was one of the Republican leaders in that body, the chief advocate of emancipation, and the representative of the radical section of his party. His great oratorical powers and force of character earned for him the title, applied to William Pitt, of the “great commoner.” He urged on President Lincoln the justice and expediency of the emancipation proclamation, took the lead in all measures for arming and for enfranchising the negro, and initiated and pressed the fourteenth amendment to the Federal constitution. During the war he introduced and carried acts of confiscation, and after its close he advocated rigorous measures in reorganizing the southern states on the basis of universal freedom. He was chairman of the committee of ways and means for three sessions. Subsequently, as chairman of the house committee on reconstruction, he reported the bill which divided the southern states into five military districts, and placed them under the rule of army officers until they should adopt constitutions that conceded suffrage and equal rights to the blacks. In a speech that he made in congress on 24 February, 1868, he proposed the impeachment of President Johnson. He was appointed one of the committee of seven to prepare articles of impeachment, and was chairman of the board of managers that was appointed on the part of the house to conduct the trial. He was exceedingly positive in his convictions, and attacked his adversaries with bitter denunciations and sarcastic taunts, yet he was genial and witty among his friends, and was noted for his uniform, though at times impulsive, acts of charity. While skeptical in his religious opinions, he resented slighting remarks regarding the Christian faith as an insult to the memory of his devout mother, whom he venerated. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by the University of Vermont in 1867. He chose to be buried in a private cemetery, explaining in the epitaph that he prepared for his tomb that the public cemeteries were limited by their charter-rules to the white race, and that he preferred to illustrate in his death the principle that he had advocated through his life of “equality of man before his Creator.” The tomb is in a large lot in Lancaster, which he left as a burial-place for those who cannot afford to pay for their graves. He left a part of his estate to found an orphan asylum in Lancaster, to be open to both white and colored children. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 677-678.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 283:

THADDEUS STEVENS.

THE picturesque mountainous region known as Caledonia County, in the State of Vermont, was the birth-place of Thaddeus Stevens. His father was Joshua Stevens, and his mother's maiden name was Sarah Morrill. “My father,” said Thaddeus Stevens, near the close of his life, “was not a well-to-do man, and the support and education of the family depended on my mother. She worked night and day to educate me. I was feeble and lame in my youth; and as I couldn't work on the farm, she concluded to give me an education. I tried to repay her afterward, but the debt of a child to his mother is one of the debts we can never pay. The greatest gratification of my life resulted from my ability to give my mother a farm of two hundred and fifty acres and a dairy of fourteen cows, and an occasional bright gold piece, which she loved to deposit in the contribution box of the Baptist church which she attended. This always gave her much pleasure and me much satisfaction. My mother was a very extraordinary woman, and I have met very few women like her. Poor woman ! the very thing I did to gratify her most, hastened her death. She was very proud of her dairy and fond of her cows, and one night, going out to look after them, she fell and injured herself so that she died soon after.”

Thaddeus Stevens ever cherished not only an affectionate memory of his mother, but a warm attachment to the place of his nativity. Late in life, he called his immense iron works in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Caledonia, after the name of his native county.

In seeking an education, he first went as a student to the University of Vermont, at Burlington. Upon the occupation of the town by the British in the war of 1812, the institution was suspended, and young Stevens went to Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1814. He immediately removed to Pennsylvania, and first made his residence in the borough of York. Here he taught school for a livelihood, and read law carefully and steadily through the intervals of the day and night. The bar of York County then numbered among its members some lawyers of uncommon ability and distinction. They very strangely formed a plan to thwart the designs of the young school-teacher by the passage of a resolution providing that no person should be recognized as a lawyer among them who followed any other vocation while preparing himself for admission to the bar. The young student paid no attention to this resolution, but pursued the even tenor of his way until he mastered his studies, and then quietly repaired to one of the adjoining counties of Maryland, where he passed a creditable examination.' He then returned to York, presented his credentials, and was regularly, though reluctantly, admitted.

In 1816, Mr. Stevens removed to the adjoining County of Adams, and settled in the now historical town of Gettysburg. Here he soon rose to the head of a profession which he ardently loved, and practiced with signal success through a long and laborious career.

Soon obtaining a reputation as one of the most acute lawyers and able reasoners in the State, he was employed in many of the most important cases tried in the courts of the commonwealth. He was especially pleased to be retained in causes where some injustice or oppression was to be opposed, or where the weak were to be protected against the machinations of the strong. In such cases he embarked with characteristic zeal, and no epithet was too forcible or too withering for him to employ in denouncing the evil-doer, and no metaphor was too bold for him to use in depicting the just punishment of wrong-doing. While still a very young man, he heard of a free woman who was held in the jail at Frederick, Maryland, as a slave. He instantly volunteered to become her counsel, and saved her from the decree that wanted only the color of an excuse to condemn her to servitude. Some years afterward, while on the way from Gettysburg to Baltimore, he was appealed to by the same woman to save her husband from being sold South by his owner, who was his own father. Mr. Stevens complied with the wishes of the poor woman by paying the full value of the slave to the unnatural father. As a lawyer, Mr. Stevens was the enemy of the oppressor and the champion of the poor and the down-trodden. Injustice and wrong, when perpetrated by the powerful and great, aroused his indignation and called forth terrible outbursts of denunciation. The same spirit was manifested in later years, when he denounced Chief-Justice Taney by saying that the Dred Scott decision had “damned its author to everlasting infamy, and, he feared, to everlasting flame.”

Fierce as was the denunciation of Mr. Stevens against those whom he regarded as wrong-doers, he never had aught but words of kindness and encouragement for the poor and unoffending. In the practice of his profession at Gettysburg, Mr. Stevens was brought into the closest and most confidential relations with the people. They sought and followed his friendly advice in delicate and important matters, which in no way pertained to the laws or the courts. He was not only the legal adviser, but the personal friend of the entire community. The aged inhabitants of Adams County still remember his unaffected benevolence, and unobtrusive charities. No commanding benevolence, no useful public enterprise, nothing calculated to improve his fellow-men in the region where he lived, was projected or completed without his efficient and generous contribution. Pennsylvania College, in Gettysburg, has a noble hall bearing his name, which stands as a monument of his services in behalf of education.

Mr. Stevens' public political career began in 1833, when he was elected a Representative in the State Legislature. Possessed of the most practical common sense, and the most formidable power of debate, he soon became a leader. He was always foremost in every movement that contemplated the improvement of the people. He began his legislative career by proposing and advocating a law to establish a free-school system in Pennsylvania. So great was the ignorance at that time prevalent in Pennsylvania, that one-fourth of the adult population of the State were unable to write their names. The consequence was, that when Mr. Stevens proposed a system for taxing the people for the education of their children, a storm of obloquy and opposition arose against him. His own constituents of the county of Adams refused to second his educational movements. Again and again they instructed him to change his course. He answered with renewed efforts in the cause, and a more defiant disobedience of their mandates, until at last, overcome by his earnest eloquence and unfailing perseverance, they rallied to his support and enthusiastically re-elected him.

The school law was just going into operation with the sanction of all benevolent men, when a strength of opposition was combined against it which promised to effect its immediate abrogation. The miserly, and ignorant wealthy, used their money and their influence to bring it into disrepute, and procured the election by an overwhelming majority of a Legislature pledged to repeal the law. The members of the Legislature were on the eve of obeying instructions to expunge the school law from the statute book, when Thaddeus Stevens rose in his seat and pronounced a most powerful speech in opposition to the movement for repeal. The effect of that “surpassing effort ” is thus described by one who witnessed the scene:

“ All the barriers of prejudice broke down before it. It reached men's hearts like the voice of inspiration. Those who were almost ready to take the life of Thaddeus Stevens a few weeks before, were instantly converted into his admirers and friends. During its delivery in the hall of the House at Harrisburg, the scene was one of dramatic interest and intensity. Thaddeus Stevens was then forty-three years of age, and in the prime of life; and his classic countenance, noble voice, and cultivated style, added to the fact that he was speaking the holiest truths and for the noblest of all human causes, created such a feeling among his fellow-members that, for once at least, our State legislators rose above all selfish feelings, and responded to the instincts of a higher nature. The motion to repeal the law failed, and a number of votes pledged to sustain it were changed upon the spot, and what seemed to be an inevitable defeat was transformed into a crowning victory for the friends of common schools.”

Immediately after the conclusion of this great effort, Mr. Stevens received a congratulatory message from Governor Wolf, his determined political opponent, but a firm friend of popular education. When Mr. Stevens, soon after, entered the executive chamber, Governor Wolf threw his arms about his neck, and with tearful eye and broken voice, thanked him for the great service he had rendered to humanity. The millions who now inhabit Pennsylvania, or who having been born and educated there have gone forth to people other States, have reason to honor the intrepid statesman, who, anticipating the future, grappled with the prejudices of the time, and achieved a victory for the benefit of all coming generations.

This same zeal in behalf of education for the humblest and poorest was cherished by Mr. Stevens to his latest years. When the ladies of Lancaster called upon him for a subscription to their orphans' school, he declined the request on the ground that they refused admission to colored children. “I never will,” said he, “Heaven helping me, encourage a system which denies education to any one of God Almighty's household.”

The year 1835 was one of intense political excitement in Pennsylvania. Anti-Masonry had just blazed up with a lurid glare, which caused men to take alarm without knowing how or whence it came. Ever on the alert against whatever seemed dangerous to freedom, Mr. Stevens was out-spoken in his denunciation of secret societies. George Wolf, a Mason, was then Governor, and a candidate for re-election ; but Joseph Ritner, the Anti-Mason candidate, was elected. Party rancor was very bitter, and personal animosities sometimes broke out in violence. Mr. Stevens was challenged to fight a duel by Mr. McElwee, a member of the House, but instead of going to the field, he retorted in a bitter speech, full of caustic wit and withering sarcasm. That was a memorable period in the political history of Pennsylvania, when, in the partisan language of the day, “ Joe Ritner was Governor, and Thad. Stevens his oracle, and the keeper of his conscience.” Canals and railroads were then originated, which tended to develop the material resources, as free-schools tended to promote the intellectual resources of Pennsylvania.

In 1836, Mr. Stevens was elected a member of the Convention to amend the Constitution of Pennsylvania, an instrument framed as early as 1776. The Convention was composed of many of the ablest lawyers and most distinguished orators in the State. Of the one hundred and thirty-three members of the Convention, none took a more active part than Mr. Stevens. He labored with great energy and ability to have the word “white," as applied to citizens, stricken from the Constitution. The majority were unable or unwilling to surmount their prejudices and reject the obnoxious word. So great was the disgust of Mr. Stevens with the work of the Convention, that he refused to attach his name to the amended Constitution.

In 1838, the political animosities of Pennsylvania culminated in the “ Buckshot War,” one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of this country. The trouble originated in alleged election frauds in Philadelphia County at the general election of 1838. The friends of Governor Ritner, who had been a candidate for re-election, maintained that he had been defeated by perjury and fraud. An address was issued soon after the election by the Chairman of the State Committee, advising the friends of Governor Ritner, until an investigation had been made, to regard the result as favorable to them. It seemed that Mr. Porter, the governor elect, would not be inaugurated, and that certain Democrats elected to the Legislature from Philadelphia would not be admitted to seats. On the day appointed for the assembling of the Legislature, three hundred men from Philadelphia appeared in Harrisburg with the avowed purpose of overawing the Senate and House, and compelling them to receive certain election returns which the Whigs regarded as fraudulent. At a certain point in the proceedings of the Senate, the mob rushed down from the galleries and took possession of the floor. The Speaker of the Senate, together with Mr. Stevens and some others, escaped through a window from the violence of the mob. While the mob held possession of the Senate-chamber and the town, the House was the scene of equal confusion; the members splitting into several bodies under speakers of their own election, each claiming to be the legitimate Assembly. The Governor was perplexed and alarmed. He issued a proclamation calling out the militia of the State, and applied to the General Government for troops to suppress the outbreak which seemed imminent. The greater part of the militia forces of the State at once responded to the call, but the troops asked from the General Government were refused. At length an understanding was arrived at by which the Whigs yielded, a Democratic organization of the Legislature was effected, and Mr. Porter was inaugurated as Governor.

The Democrats having gained the upper hand, singled out Mr. Stevens as the victim of their vengeance. A committee was appointed “ to inquire whether Thaddeus Stevens, a member elect from the county of Adams, has not forfeited his right to a seat in the House. The offense charged was contempt of the House in calling it an illegal body—the offspring of a mob. Mr. Stevens declined to attend the meetings of the Committee, and wrote a declaration setting forth the illegality of the inquiry. Mr. Stevens was ejected from the Legislature, although thirty-eight Democratic members protested against the action of the majority. Sent back to his constituents, he issued a stirring address to the people of Adams County, and he was triumphantly re-elected. An escort to the State Capitol was offered him by his enthusiastic constituents, but he declined the honor in a letter, in which occur the following remarkable, and almost prophetic, words : “Victories, even over rebels in civil wars, should be treated with solemn thanksgiving, rather than with songs of mirth.” Another term of service, to which Mr. Stevens was elected in 1841, closed his career in the State Legislature.

In 1842, at fifty years of age, Mr. Stevens found his private business in a state of confusion, as a consequence of his unremitting attention to public and political affairs. He found himself insolvent, with debts of over two hundred thousand dollars, principally through mismanagement by a partner in the Caledonia Iron Works. Resolved to liquidate this immense debt, he looked about for some more remunerative field for professional practice than the Gettysburg bar offered, and he removed to Lancaster. There he devoted himself with great energy and success to his profession, and in a few years fully retrieved his fortune.

In 1848, Mr. Stevens was elected to represent the Lancaster District in the Thirty-first Congress, and was re-elected to the succeeding Congress. He carried to the National Capitol a large legislative experience acquired in another field, and immediately took a prominent position in Congress. The subjects, however, which were acted upon by the Congress of that day were not such as called into conspicuous view the peculiar legislative abilities of Mr. Stevens.

After an interval of six years, when elected to the Thirty-sixth Congress, he entered upon that distinguished public career which has given his name a prominent place in American History. He held the important position of Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means during three successive Congressional terms. In the Thirty-ninth Congress he was Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. In this and in the Fortieth Congress he was Chairman of the Committee on Reconstruction. These positions gave him a very prominent place in Congress and before the country.

The first measure of Mr. Stevens, which attracted great attention, was introduced by him on the 8th of December, 1862, to indemnify the President and other persons for suspending the privilege of the habeas corpus. This act assisted much to promote the successful issue of the war. It placed a power in the hands of the great and good Executive of the nation, which was absolutely essential to the suppression of the rebellion.

It was ever an object dear to the heart of Mr. Stevens to raise up and disenthrall the down-trodden colored population of the South. Foreseeing that this would be accomplished as a result of the war, he became the originator and earnest advocate of many measures designed to effect this end. As early as the first disaster of Bull Run he publicly favored the employment of negroes as soldiers, to aid in putting down the rebellion of their masters. In the summer of 1862, a bill was passed, granting to negroes the privilege of constructing fortifications and performing camp services. This fell far below the mission of the colored race in the war, as conceived in the mind of Mr. Stevens. On the 27th of January, 1863, he offered a bill in the House for the enlistment of the negro as a soldier. The bill passed the House, but was reported upon adversely by the Military Committee of the Senate. That body could only bring themselves to the point of agreeing to the enlistment of the negro as a cook! That which Mr. Stevens was unable to bring about by Congressional enactment, he had the pleasure, ere long, of seeing effected by force of the necessities of war.

With “hope deferred,” Mr. Stevens impatiently awaited that great act of justice and necessity, the President's Proclamation of Emancipation. After this great Executive act was done, Mr. Stevens was not content until its perpetuity was secured by constitutional guarantees. Accordingly, on the 24th of March following, he offered in the House a joint resolution proposing an article in the Constitution abolishing slavery. A joint resolution of similar import had been previously offered in the Senate by Mr. Trumbull, and agreed to by that body, but it was rejected in the House. After consideration, the resolution of Mr. Stevens was laid over, and the joint resolution of Mr. Trumbull was again taken up on a motion to reconsider, and was finally adopted, January 31, 1865.

The biography of Mr. Stevens, written in detail, would be a complete history of the legislation of the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses, down to the day of his death. At his instance, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction was created, and he occupied the position of Chairman on the part of the House. He strenuously advocated the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. He had the honor of proposing in the House the great measure, now a part of the Constitution, known as the Fourteenth Amendment. As Chairman of the Committee on Reconstruction, Mr. Stevens reported to the House the Military Reconstruction Bill, under which all the States save Tennessee, which had previously been reconstructed, were destined to be restored to their former relation to the Federal Union.

Mr. Stevens had no patience nor forbearance with Andrew Johnson, whom he contemptuously described as “the man at the other end of the Avenue.” Ile regarded him as a bad man, guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors." The annals of Congressional oratory contain nothing more impressive than Mr. Stevens' scathing and withering denunciations of the character and usurpation of the President. Cato was not more earnest and sincere in the utterance of his formula for the safety of Rome-Carthago delenda est—than was Mr. Stevens in his demands that the President should be removed from office. Though in an extreme condition of physical feebleness, Mr. Stevens consented to act as one of the Managers of the Impeachment on the part of the House. He proposed the Eleventh Article, which was regarded as the strongest against the President, and was selected as that upon which the first vote was taken. He pronounced one of the ablest arguments delivered before the “ High Court of Impeachment,” though unable to deliver more than the opening paragraphs in person.

So feeble was he at this time, and for some months before, that he had to be borne to and from his seat in the House, seated in a chair which was carried by two stalwart young men. As they were lifting him in his chair one day, he said : “How shall I get to the House, when you two die?” This playful expression not only illustrates his humor, but his resolute determination to do duty to the last.

For two years Mr. Stevens' health was gradually failing. Month after month he grew weaker and more shadow-like. It seemed, at last, that he was kept alive by force of an indomitable will and an intense desire to see the country safely through the dangers of reconstruction.

On the adjournment of Congress, July 28, Mr. Stevens was too feeble to endure the journey to his home at Lancaster. He rapidly grew worse, until he expired at midnight on the 11th of August. The announcement of his death created profound sensation in all parts of the country. His remains, as they lay in state in the rotunda of the Capitol, were looked upon by thousands, but by none with so much affectionate interest as by multitudes of the colored race, for whose freedom, enfranchisement, and protection he had devoted so much thought and labor. His body was finally conveyed to its last resting place in Lancaster, amid demonstrations of sincere respect such as are manifested only at the obsequies of public benefactors.

At his death Mr. Stevens held but a small proportion of the property which he had accumulated during a long and laborious life. Three times he lost all he had. His latest failure was occasioned by the destruction of his Caledonia Iron Works by the rebels in their raid on Chambersburg. His friends immediately raised $100,000, which they tendered him, but he would accept the gift only on condition that it should be turned over to the poor of Lancaster County. Another incident illustrates his kindness of heart towards the poor and the distressed : A few weeks before his death, while on his way to the Capitol, he met a poor woman in great trouble. She told him that she had just lost seventy-five cents, her little market money, and that she had nothing to buy food for her children. “What a lucky woman you are,” said Mr. Stevens; “I have just found what you have lost!” putting his hand into his pocket and giving her a five-dollar bill.

Mr. Stevens, as he appeared in the House near the end of his life, is thus described by one looking down from the galleries :

“And now the members crowd around a central desk. The confusion of tongues, which amazes a spectator in the galleries, is hushed for a brief space. The crowds in the balconies bend eager ears. A gaunt, weird, tall old man has risen in his seat—the man who is often called the Leader of the House. Deep eyes, hidden under a cliff of brow, the strong nose of a pioneer of thought, shut, thin lips, a face pale with the frost of the grave, long, bony, emphatic limbs—these cover the uneasy ghost which men call Thaddeus Stevens. The great days of his power are past. Perseus has slain his dragon, and now he would unchain the fair Andromeda for whom he fought, binding her brows with the stars. The new version is sadder than the old, for he will not live to see the glory for which he has wrought. He is wonderful even in his decline. Day after day he comes, compelling his poor body, by the might of the strong soul that is in him, to serve him yet longer. He looks so weary of this confusion which we call life, and yet so resolute to command it still. Erratic, domineering, hard, subtle, Stevens is yet so heroic, he wears such a crown of noble years upon him, that one's enthusiasm, and one's reverence, cling to him.”

Thaddeus Stevens was the ablest political and parliamentary leader of his time. Tall in stature, deliberate in utterance and in gesticulation, with a massive head, and features of a classic mould, he seemed an orator of the old Roman type. As a speaker in his later years, he was never declamatory. “Those stilettoes of pitiless wit which made his caustic tongue so dreaded were ever uttered from the softest tones of his voice.” He was seldom eloquent, yet every one gave him breathless attention. He possessed a personal influence and a magnetic power never separated from strong intellect and unbending determination, by which he was fitted to be a leader of men. He was unaffected in his manners, and impressive in conversation. He lived both in Lancaster and Washington in a simplicity of style befitting the leading Republican of his day.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.