Thaddeus Stevens

Preface

Thaddeus Stevens was the unquestioned leader of the House of Representatives from July 4, 1861, when it assembled at the call of Lincoln, until his death, which occurred in 1868. The legislative work of that period stands unapproached in difficulty and importance in the history of Congress, if not, indeed, of any parliamentary body in the world. Stevens was the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means during the war, and afterwards of the Committees on Appropriations and Reconstruction. He was, therefore, especially identified with the financial measures of the war, including the legal tender acts, also with reconstruction, with the great constitutional amendments, and with the impeachment of President Johnson. I have dwelt very slightly upon his connection, during the later period of his congressional service, with other matters, which, although some of them would have been of great consequence in ordinary times, were dwarfed and robbed of interest by the stupendous events with wlnph they were associated.

vi PREFACE

The fact that no extended biography of Stevens has ever been published would have very greatly augmented the difficulty of my work had it not been for the assistance which has been generously given me. I desire especially to acknowledge my obligation to Hon. Marriott Brosius, who has for many years represented Stevens's former district in Congress ; to Professor C. F. Richardson, of Dartmouth College ; to Mr. C. B. Tillinghast, of the Massachusetts State Library ; to Mr. A. R. Spofford and Mr. J. Q. Howard, of the Library of Congress ; and to those two venerable and distinguished statesmen, the Hon. Henry L. Dawes and Hon. George S. Boutwell, who served with Stevens in Congress during the war period, and were intimately associated with him in most of the important legislation of that era.

S. W. McCall.

Washington, D. C, January 19, 1899.

Contents

CHAP. *AOE

I. Youth 1

n. The Law 19

Chapter I

Thaddeus Stevens, the son of Joshua and Sally Stevens, was born in Danville, Vermont, April 4, 1792. Not much is known of his ancestors, although enough to enable us to determine the character of the stock, which was evidently Anglo-Saxon. His parents removed from Methuen, in Essex County, Massachusetts, to Danville, about the year 1786, with a small company of immigrants, mostly bearing the names of Harris and Morrill, the latter being the maiden name of his mother. The name of Joshua Stevens, or Stephens, as it was on that occasion, and often, written, makes a solitary appearance in the records of Haverhill, in 1712, before Methuen had been set off from that town. It is found with the names of eight others, all of whom lived in that part of the town which afterwards became Methuen, upon a petition asking an abatement of tlieir taxes for the support of the ministry and the school "on account of the great distance they lived from the town and the difficulty they met with in coming." ^ If the signer of this petition was an ancestor of our hero, this lonely circumstance, coming from the distant past, stands somewhat in contrast with the great speech with which more than a century afterwards Thaddeus Stevens saved from repeal the free -school system of Pennsylvania.

The father of Thaddeus does not appear to have had the thrifty and enterprising qualities necessary to achieve success in the wilderness, although he was well versed in the science of surveying, so useful to the pioneer, and which in the settlement of this country has often brought to its possessor not merely good wages, but also large tracts of land gained by "surveying on the shares." He re-surveyed the lines of the town of Danville in 1790, and his measurements are the legal ones to-day. He was a shoemaker also, and his son Thaddeus learned enough of the trade to enable him to make shoes for the family. He enjoyed a wide reputation as an athlete, especially at wrestling, and was able, like young Abraham Lincohi, to throw any man in his neighborhood. The accounts are uniform ^ Chase, History of Haverhill, p. 237- in attributing to him great poverty, although they disagree as to the method of his final escape from it. One version has it that he ran away from his family a few years after settling in Danville, and was never heard of again ; another that he was killed in the war of 1812; while yet another has it that he died at home while his children were young. This much appears certain, that the mother was left in extreme penury with four children, aU boys, to support and educate.

The location of DanviUe on the western edge of the valley which there takes its name from the Passumpsic, but a few miles further south merges into the Connecticut, is beautiful in the extreme. The land rises rapidly towards the west from St. Johnsbury, ten miles distant, and in general level it attains an altitude in Danville of about two thousand feet above the sea. The principal peaks of the White and Franconia mountains in New Hampshire are distinctly visible, and in the other direction the Green Mountains make a jagged horizon, with their summits uplifted against the sky. Pleasing as are the outlines of the mountains and the beauty of the valleys and lesser hills, they form by no means the most attractive features of the scenery. No verdure has a brighter green in the springtime, or a more brilliant variety of coloring in the autumn tlian the maple forests in that portion of Vermont. One would not know where to find a more gorgeous picture than can be seen from one of the hills in that region upon a clear September or October day. The mapletrees afforded a more solid benefit than to color the landscape ; and when the supply of food was almost exhausted at the close of a long winter, they furnished that well-known, wholesome sugar which helped to preserve the first immigrants from starvation.^ Not the least of the hardships which those j)ioneers had to endure was the rigor of the climate. At a point north of the 45th parallel, and remote from the sea, the cold was of course severe. The snow lay deep upon the hillsides until late in the springtime and returned before the end of the autumn, but the fertile soil yielded bountiful crops even in the brief summer. In spite of these severities, however, the settlement was soon firmly planted, and, on the whole, with much less than the usual suffering.

The start of Thaddeus Stevens in life was lowly enough, but not on that account unpromising. It is true, as has been said, that his family was even desperately poor; but the rude state of the society about him presented slight inequalities of condition, and interposed few

obstacles between him and nature, with whom he was invited to a struggle to win what she had to yield. The wild freedom of the life about him, the rigor of the climate, the great natural beauty of the surroundings, and the strong and law-abiding qualities of the community in which he lived, formed a series of happy circumstances. The social and political influences to which he was subjected were intensely democratic. The stirring events of the Revolution were fresh in the minds of men, and the heroes of that struggle, still in their prime, could be found in every considerable town. The system of government established by the Constitution had just gone into operation, and, while it imposed checks upon hasty popular action, it was admirably designed to secure, in the conditions then existing, the enactment into law of the sober second thought of the people, and was thus, in the best sense, a democratic government.

There were also special facts in the history of Vermont which powerfully tended to develop in a bright and studious boy the qualities of individuality and of a sturdy independence. The territory of that State had been claimed at the same time by Great Britain, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, and also by the government of the confederation. While her soldiers contributed greatly by their valor to win the victory of the colonies over the common enemy, the State, in the sounding language of Ethan Allen, acknowledged no allegiance but to the King of kings. ^ For years she successfully asserted her independence of all other powers, maintained her own army, coined her own money, and exercised such other attributes of sovereignty as she chose to assume. At length she accomplished her desire, and was admitted into the Union as an independent State upon equal terms with New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, each of whom had previously alleged ownership of her.

Among such a people and at such a time an aristocracy of wealth and of birth stood little chance of being developed. The work to be done required men, and the exacting difficulties in the way of society uncovered merit and used it wherever it might be found. The possession of property, of which indeed very little existed, gave no unfair advantage, and the lack of it caused no inconvenience, save the necessity for more strenuous exertion. If a settler did not have a horse it was necessary for him to walk and to carry his wood or other load upon his

1 That the early settlers of Vermont did not consider themselves unequal to any task may be inferred from the resolution, passed by the Council of Public Safety during the revolutionary period, that the laws of God and Connecticut be adopted '' until we have time to frame better."

back; and while the man with property might supply his wants with less labor, — for anything like real luxury was unknown, — he gained no social prestige over his poorer neighbor. The conditions with which Stevens was surrounded were thus admirably adapted to implant and powerfully strengthen the hatred of privilege and the idea of democratic equality, which so strongly characterized him in after years.

Stevens was most fortunate in his mother. All accounts agree that she was remarkable for character and strength of mind. She made a heroic struggle to overcome the disadvantages of poverty and to give her children a good education. Thaddeus was sickly in his youth, and his mother determined to send him to college. Her other boys, however, were by no means neglected, and each one of them afterwards achieved distinction in his chosen pursuit. The history of Stevens's boyhood is marked by few incidents except those which naturally grow out of a wild and stirring frontier life. When he was twelve years old his parents took him on a visit to Boston, which was then a small town, but by far the largest that Stevens had ever seen. The sight of it kindled his ambition, and he determined to become rich. Another incident of his early life is preserved, which shows the character of his mother. The year after his visit to Boston a plague, known among the settlers as the "spotted fever," broke out and raged violently throughout Danville and the adjoining towns. So manywere stricken with the disease that it was impossible to procure proper attendance. Mrs. Stevens was untiring in her care of the sick, going from house to house, ministering to their wants and alleviating their sufferings in every way in her power. She frequently took Thaddeus with her upon these visits, and an impression was made upon him which he never forgot. From whatever cause, his sympathy for suffering was throughout his life one of the strongest traits of his character.

He could never sufficiently acknowledge his indebtedness to his mother. Long years after, he said of her: "I really think the greatest pleasure 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 contributor's box of the Baptist Church which she attended. This always gave her much j3leasure and me much satisfaction. My mother was a very extraordinary woman. I have met very few women like her. My father was not a well-to-do man, and the support and education of the family depended upon my mother. She worked day and night to educate me.

I was feeble and lame in youth, and as I could not work on the farm, she concluded to give me an education. I tried to repay her afterwards, but the debt of a child to his mother, you know, is one of the debts we can never pay." He gratefully cherished her memory to the last, and by his will he established a fund, the income of which was forever to be used to plant each springtime "roses and other cheerful flowers" upon her grave.

The means of education at the disposal of young Stevens were not of so limited a character as might be supposed. That portion of Vermont had only just been settled at the time of his birth, and yet the tide of immigration set in so strongly that when he was a dozen years old his native town was nearly as populous as it is to-day. The first sounds of the axe had hardly broken the silence of the wilderness when, true to the instinct of the race from which they sprang, the settlers established a court for the peaceable settlement of their disjjutes, and a school for the education of their children. It was agreed that Danville should be the shire town and have the court-house, and that the academy should be established in the adjoining town of Peacham. A charter was obtained in 1795, and the academy now in existence in the latter town began its long and honorable career.

The academy possessed greater attraction for Mrs. Stevens than the court-house, and accordingly she moved to Peacham, that she might educate her boys. The school was a very humble institution both architecturally and in its means of instruction. It had no large endowment, no long list of learned teachers, and no imposing buildings to strike the imagination; but its rude halls were thronged with pupils eager to acquire knowledge, and they made the most of all the means at their command. In fact, with the ardor of bright scholars, they seemed willing to improve upon the ordinary facilities of the school, and to introduce more modern methods than the board of trustees were willing to sanction. The rules provided that there should be each year "an exhibition, in which the male scholars shall be the only performers, and that the pieces to be spoken shall be selected by the preceptor and submitted to the inspection of the prudential committee." This rule apparently did not secure a sufficiently sombre programme, and its defects were repaired by two amendments, one of which provided "that there be no performances by candle-light," and the other that the exhibition " be regulated so as to exckide tragedies, comedies, and other theatrical performances."^

1 The Peaeliam Academy Centennial Address, by Hon. C. A. Bunker, 1897.

At this point Tliaddeus Stevens for the first time emerges into the full light of history, and in view of his subsequent anathemas against treason, it is remarkable that his first appearance should have been in the role of a rebel. However exemplary the course of Stevens at the academy may have been in other respects, his good deeds have eluded the vigilance of the historian of the school, and his open violation of both the rules I have cited is the one conspicuous circumstance that survives. He appears to have been stage-struck, and also to have preferred the glare of the candle to the daylight. Accordingly, on October 7, 1811, we find the trustees passing a vote, naming thirteen students, of whom Stevens was one, and resolving that their course, "in refusing on the day of publick exhibition, being the 4th day of September last, to proceed in" their exhibition in the day time while the board were waiting to see their performance was conduct highly reprehensible. And that their proceeding to exhibit a tragedy in the evening of the said day, contrary to the known rules and orders of the school and the express prohibition of the preceptor, was a gross violation of the rules and by-laws of the institution, tending to subvert all order and subordination in said school, and to disturb the peace of the society, and that they be required to subscribe the following submission, viz. : We, the subscribers, students in the Academy at Peacham, having been concerned in the exhibition of a tragedy on the evening of September 4, 1811, contrary to the known rules of the board of trustees, on reflection are convinced that we have done wrong in not paying a suitable respect to the authority of the board, and hereby promise that, as long as we continue students at this Academy, we will observe such rules as the board may prescribe." Mr. Bunker says that Stevens signed the paper with great reluctance and because he could do nothing else, and that he then completed his preparation for college, but "never forgot his chagrin." He may have signed the paper, but probably not for the purpose of going back to the academy, for his preparation was already finished, and he entered Dartmouth College during the fall of 1811 as a sophomore.

There is a lack of very definite information as to his career in college. The commonly accepted version that he first entered the University of Vermont, and while a student there witnessed the battle of Lake Champlain, and that afterwards he went to Dartmouth, is incorrect. The battle occurred September 11, 1814, and he graduated from Dartmouth in the summer of that year. The records of the two colleges make it clear that he took his entire college course at Dartmouth, excepting the latter part of the college year, 1812-1813.1

When Stevens entered Dartmouth more than forty years had elapsed since Eleazar Wheelock had planted it in the wilderness at Hanover. It remained for many years the only college in northern New England, and the rapid settlement of that region gave it great prosperity.^ During Stevens's connection with the college its students usually numbered about one hundred and forty, and it had a faculty of eight instructors besides the president. Professor Moore, afterwards the president of Amherst and Williams colleges, and Professors Shurtleff and Adams were perhaps the most learned of the teachers. The president was Dr. John Wheelock, the son of the founder of the college. The quality of his influence may be determined in a measure from the portrait of him which survives in the journal of George Ticknor, who graduated from

1 I am indebted to Professor C. F. Richardson, of Dartmouth, and to Professor J. E. Goodrich, of the University of Vermont, for the most important facts in connection with his college course.

2 In 1791 it graduated to the degree of A. B. 49, while the number for the same year was 27 for each of the other leading colleges, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton ; and for the decade 1790-1800 the number of graduates was : Harvard, 394 ; Dartmouth, 363 ; Yale, 295 ; Princeton, 240. Chase, History of Dartmouth College, p. 615.

the college four years before Stevens entered it. "Dr. Wheelock was stiff and stately. He read constantly, sat up late, and got up early. He talked very gravely and slow, with a falsetto voice. Mr. Webster [who graduated in 1801] could imitate him perfectly. He had been in England, he had had a finger in politics, and had been a lieutenant-colonel in the army of the Revolution, but there was not the least trace of either of these portions of his life in his manners or conversation at this time. He was one of the most formal men I ever knew." ^

The course of study at Dartmouth College, in 1811, was very similar to that of the other colleges of that day. Timothy Dwight, who was at the time president of Yale College, has given in his ponderous volumes of travel in New York and New England an exact statement of the requirements for admission and the course of study at Yale, and he adds that the recital would be substantially true for all the New England colleges.^ A candidate for the freshman class was examined in Virgil, Cicero and Sallust, in the Greek Testament, and in arithmetic. The course of study included a little Greek, a moderate amount of the higher mathematics, and considerable Latin. ^ But Paley and Locke were

^ Life, Letters, and Journal, vol. i. p. 5.

2 Travels in Netv York and New England, vol. i. p. 199.

8 Ibid. vol. i. p. 208.

not neglected at a time when the professors were chosen quite as much for the soundness of their theological views as for their learning. The course contained no modern languages, which, indeed, appear to have been little in demand in this country at that time, for so late as 1813, and in Boston, when George Ticknor attempted to study German, he had great difficulty in procuring the requisite books. ^

The course, then, of the New England college of that time was most meagre compared with the wealth of learning which the modern college affords; but it was full of strong discipline, and it was possible for the earnest student to acquire the rudiments of a sound education. The libraries were not large, but they contained the best books, which were doubtless read with great care by students who were willing to make such sacrifices to secure an education; and some of the scholars who were disciplined in those schools were able afterwards to contribute new models to the English tongue.

Very little is known of Stevens's life at Dartmouth to distinguish him from the mass of the students. There was nothing sensational about

1 He succeeded in borrowing a grammar from Mr. Everett, a text-book from the Athen^um, where it had been deposited by J. Q. Adams on going abroad, and then he was forced to send to New Hampshire for a dictionary. Journal, vol. i. p. 11.

it, and, if we may draw an inference from his known industry, it was probably marked by patient and plodding labor. He was a hard student, was sensible of the sacrifice made by his mother, and there can be little doubt that he took away from those "cloisters of the hill-girt plain " all that they had to give. His style of speech shows the result of study in a degree of accuracy unusual among our public men. In the last years of his life, when he had attained the distinction of being one of the greatest parliamentary leaders in our history, he delighted in showing a contempt for literary form; but at the same time his own speech was faultless, and Mr. Blaine, who served in Congress with him, has borne witness that rarely did a sentence fall from his lips even in the most careless moment "that would not bear the test of grammatical and rhetorical criticism." ^

Stevens did not pass the whole of the time from 1811 to 1814 in Dartmouth College, but for one term, and probably for two, he was a student in the University of Vermont. His name appears upon the president's list at Burlington for the second term of 1812-13, and also on the programme of the "exhibition" at the close of the third term on the afternoon preceding commencement day in the summer of 1813.

^ Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, vol. i. p. 325.

At this exhibition Stevens took part in an "English Forensic Disputation" on the question: "Ought the Gospel to be Supjsortecl by Law? " On the same day was presented "The Fall of Helvetic Liberty," a tragedy in three acts, written by Thaddeus Stevens. The "Fall " seems to have been a most imposing military performance, and to have recognized the desirability of having many officers and few privates. Of the fourteen characters in the play three were French and eight were Swiss generals. Stevens played one of the parts.

Stevens is cited as authority for a story, which is not wholly agreeable, of an affair which occurred while he was in the University of Vermont, and probably about the time when his play was presented. An obstinate resident of Burlington insisted upon pasturing his cow upon the college campus at commencement time, in spite of protests, and the dispute became so warm that one night the cow became the innocent victim of a somewhat practical joke, and was killed. Stevens, whose authorship of a tragedy had prepared him for the act, and another student, who had probably aided him in overturning Helvetic Liberty, were guilty of the offense, but circumstances pointed strongly to a student who was altogether innocent. The owner demanded satisfaction, and the suspected student was about to be expelled from the college. Stevens and his college comrade were free from suspicion, but they could not escape punishment by keeping silent. They had the alternative of seeing an innocent boy bear the penalty for their misdeed, or of relieving him by making a confession. They promptly decided on the latter course, and made a clean breast of the matter to the owner of the cow. The man proved to be of a generous nature, even if obstinate. He refused to take pay for the cow, and exonerated the student under suspicion without exposing the real culprits. Many years afterwards Stevens, who never forgot a kindly act, sent him a draft for more than the value of the cow, and a gold watch and chain.

Chapter II

When Stevens graduated from Dartmouth College he was twenty-two years old, well educated for those days, and wholly dependent upon his own resources. He determined to study law, a profession which, under the circumstances surrounding him, offered the shortest road to fame and to a livelihood, if not to fortune. In order to support himself while studying law, he taught school. His native State did not offer the opportunities which he desired, and the year after graduating he removed to Pennsylvania, where he secured a position as instructor in the academy which a few years previously had been established in the town of York. The place was the shire town of a large and flourishing county, and he was able to pursue his legal studies under favorable conditions. By this move from Vermont to Pennsylvania he gained a broader field for the pursuit of his profession. That, however, was the slightest consequence of the step. He exchanged a location near the northern frontier of the country for one which was then very near the centre of our civilization and upon the line which, beginning at the Atlantic and stretching to our western frontier, with a dip southward, formed the line of battle along which was to be fought the great contest for freedom. The county of York and that of Adams, to which he shortly removed, were bounded upon the south by the slave territory of the State of Maryland. He thus took his place, and doubtless without any intention upon his part, in the thick of that conflict in which he was destined to win the victory which has immortalized his name.

The struggle to change the location, at various points, of the line which separated the freeman and the slave was bitter enough, but it did not compare in fierceness or in its influence in bringing about the ultimate appeal to the sword with the struggle over the degree of tribute which the institution of slavery should receive from free territory. The Constitution, which nowhere used the term slave, provided that no person held to service or labor in one State, escaping into another, should be discharged from such service, but that he should be delivered upon the claim of the owner. Did this mean that the inhabitants of the free States were to become slave hunters ? Did it mean that a free man might be claimed as a slave, and not have the great question of his freedom passed upon by a jury? Stevens answered both these questions in the negative, and from the very moment when he settled upon the confines of the slave State he became an actor in a real tragedy which dwarfed the one spun from his imagination upon Helvetic Liberty. The sight of slaves, fleeing for their liberty and, after weeks of privation and suffering, gaining the doubtful protection afforded them by free soil, was to him a common occurrence. Fresh from the freedom and the untempered democracy of his northern Vermont home, he was peculiarly sensitive to the spectacle of men being claimed as property and remanded into slavery. Undoubtedly his hatred of that "institution" was thus made more intense and practical, and his eyes were opened to the fact that liberty possessed real benefits, and was not a mere abstraction.

It is certain that while in York he applied himself to his law studies with unceasing industry. Amos Gilbert, a famous Quaker teacher, was intimately associated with him at that time, and speaks of him as a very modest young man and a remarkably hard student. After he had read the scanty amount of law then required for admission to the bar, he crossed the line to Maryland, and took the examination in a court which was being held in a neighboring county of that State. The reason for this proceeding is somewhat obscure. According to one report, which rests upon doubtful authority, a special rule was made in York County to apply particularly to Stevens's case, requiring a certain time to be devoted wholly to the study of law. The rule itself was a reasonable one, and it may well be questioned whether personal hostility to Stevens was responsible for its existence, for at that time he was most retiring in his habits, wholly given up to his work as a teacher and student, and would not naturally have aroused animosity. But whatever was the provocation, it is evident that he took the examination in Maryland in order to obtain a more speedy admission to the Pennsylvania bar, which he could have as a matter of courtesy by virtue of his certificate of admission in another State.