Thaddeus Stevens

Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian

By: Hans L. Trefousse

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the most controversial figures in 19th-century American history, Thaddeus Stevens is best remembered for his role as congressional leader of the radical Republicans and as a chief architect of Reconstruction. Long painted by historians as a vindictive “dictator of Congress”, out to punish the South at the behest of big business and his own ego, Stevens receives a more balanced treatment in Hans L. Trefousse’s biography, which portrays him as an impassioned orator and a leader in the struggle against slavery.

Trefousse traces Stevens’ career through its major phases, from his days in the Pennsylvania state legislature, when he antagonized Freemasons, slaveholders, and Jacksonian Democrats, to his political involvement during Reconstruction, when he helped author the 14th Amendment and spurred on the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Throughout, Trefousse explores the motivations for Stevens’ lifelong commitment to racial equality, thus furnishing a fuller portrait of the man whose fervent opposition to slavery helped move his more moderate congressional colleagues toward the implementation of egalitarian policies.

©1997 the University of North Carolina Press (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Thaddeus Stevens has long deserved a discerning, fair-minded, knowledgeable, meticulous biographer; he has finally found him.” (James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom)

“This book is well researched and engagingly written and is likely to become the standard biography.” ( Choice)

“An especially valuable addition to Civil War literature. This is now the definitive work on Stevens.” ( Library Journal)

complex character, good explanation

Thaddeus Stevens was ahead of his time ...an Abolitionist who was in the House. Great.

Great Reviewer

Thaddeus Stevens became the most visionary white politician in the history of this nation! He had the foresight to understand America could never truly prosper, unless all citizens experienced freedom, justice and equality!

Informative

very well done, informative and well worth my time to learn about this country.

The Commoner

Great read. Thanks for your contributions to black people. Your leadership will always be remembered

Wow! Ashamed for not knowing this until I became almost 79 years old. Thanks

Mark twain said history may not repeat itself but it does rhyme. Hopefully we will find something that rhymes with the great commoner Thaddeus Stevenson. It’s a shame this was stressed and taught more in high school.

Captivating History

Thaddeus Stevens is a character of debate, while this book is excessively favorable to him, it at least points out a number of foul things about him. The whole thing was done really well & thus I offer no scathing criticisms. It's just that some matters are up for interpretation. They're things that none of us could truly know not knowing him personally and being so far removed through the passing of time.

Well done!!!

While contributing for years to Thaddeus Stevens college, I had never read his full bio!! What an extraordinary rendering of his full contradictions and contributions to life in PA —indeed the USA!!

Important figure, dry book

Many important people are less well-known than they should be. Thaddeus Stevens is one of them. I think the way that many people to do know who he is and have heard of him is because Tommy Lee Jones played him in the movie Lincoln.

Hans Trefousse's 2005 biography was the first real reevaluation of Stevens in a couple of generations. (Bruce Levine has a new biography published in 2021 that I have not read.) I picked this up on sale at Audible, which may not have been the best format.

One of the problems with the biography of Stevens is that he is a lawyer and legislator. He was known for being effective with parliamentary rules and procedures. And rules and procedures are not scintillating reading. But they are essential to the work of legislating.

Thaddeus Stevens is best known for leading the House during the Civil War and being the leader of what is commonly known as the Radical Republicans during the Reconstruction Era. He strongly favored public education, emancipation before the Civil War, and civil and voting rights after the Civil War. Radical Republicans were both organized to oppose Johnson and to push for stronger federal actions to protect Black citizens across the country and to punish former Confederate officials more strongly.

Stevens believed former Confederates were not US citizens (and therefore not subject to the bill of rights and other protections) but fell under international rules of war as a conquered territory and should be handled with military law, not civil law. This means that he did not think that the legislature should seat anyone from those territories until there were new votes by the legislature to adopt them as states. (Incidentally, Johnson was a senator from Tennessee that remained with the Union and continued to be seated in the Senate after Tennessee joined the Confederacy until Lincoln appointed him as military governor in 1862 before he was elected Vice president. So under Stevens' understanding, Johnson should have been removed from the Senate when Tennesse withdrew from the Union.) The implication of Stevens' understanding of citizenship means that the legislature would have been a smaller body with only Northern legislators, which would have changed the requirements for approving legislation, passing the constitutional amendments, vetoes, and impeachment.

Stevens was for strong federal power not just after the Civil War but as the head of the Ways and Means Committee. He advocated for increased federal taxation and script currency and more centralized federal control. The Civil War fundamentally changed the balance of state and federal power, which is partly because of Stevens.

But as strong as Stevens was as a legislative leader, he was far more radical than many others he served with. While he moved people in the general egalitarian direction, Reconstruction's failure was partly because many others were not as radical in opposition to an understanding of white racial superiority as Stevens was. Stevens believed in a strong view of reparations and, tied with that, believed that because the former Confederate territory were not US citizens, the US federal government and military had the right to confiscate property. There were various plans, but at least one of his plans included confiscating the land of all former Confederate citizens who owned at least $20,000 of property. That property would then be redistributed to the formerly enslaved (using a type of homestead system that Andrew Johnson used in writing the Homestead Act, which was limited to White Americans). The remaining property would be sold to pay down federal debt from the Civil War. This did not pass, no reparations were ever paid to the formerly enslaved, and the property was largely returned to former Confederates.

Stevens was against the death penalty for former Confederate officials, but he was for punishment. But because he died in 1868 and was quite sick the last couple of years of his life, he could not see his plans for Reconstruction carried out. Those plans were unpopular, and even if he had been younger and in better health, it would have been difficult to move the country toward his egalitarian understanding of drawing Black Americans into the country as full and equal citizens.

Stevens was controversial in many ways. He rose to political prominence as an Anti-Masonic crusader. Stevens was born with a club foot, and one of the requirements of Masonic admission was rejecting anyone with a disability. Whether this was part of why Stevens was so strongly anti-Masonic was part of the discussion in the book. But in his anti-Masonic crusade, he briefly partnered with the xenophobic Know Nothing party in violation of his broader support for immigrant rights. Stevens was strongly in favor of high tariffs as a way to both fund the federal government and as a way to protect US business interests.

Stevens was also a strong supporter of US expansionism and supported Native American suppression and the expansion of US territory, including the purchase of Alaska and the attempts to purchase or conquer Caribbean land.

Stevens also was pragmatic, not convictional constitutionalist. He had no problem violating constitutional limits when it served his interests. And the focus on impeaching Johnson throughout the end of his life was questionable, even as Johnson was violating the Congressional will.

There is no question that Lincoln and Stevens had different approaches. Stevens pushed emancipation far earlier and much more racially than Lincoln did. But Lincoln likely would not have been able to write the Emancipation Proclamation without it being more moderate than Steven's plans. Stevens was cantankerous and that did not win him friends. Part of the problem with this book and any biography of Stevens is that there were so many stories about him from his opponents. Many of these stories do not seem to be based on fact but on trying to smear his reputation. The Lincoln movie shows him having a sexual relationship with his Black housekeeper. And that is a possibility, but as with many biographical details, it is very difficult to prove one way or another. Stevens never married, and he left his housekeeper a significant inheritance. But he was quite rich, and left a lot of money to many people because he did not have any biological heirs.

The book was a bit dry, and spent a lot of time exploring the historicity of various stories about Stevens. And so much of what is important about Stevens is in legislative history and speeches, which are not particularly interesting reading. I am glad to know more about Stevens, but it is hard to recommend this as an exciting book.

Not For Adults

Would you try another book from Hans L. Trefousse and/or Tom Weiner?

Yes

Would you ever listen to anything by Hans L. Trefousse again?

No

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Not much he could do. The book was written at most at high school level.

What character would you cut from Thaddeus Stevens?

None

Any additional comments?

This book is not for adults. It appears to be written for someone with little to no historical knowlege. It should have been listed, at most, as a "young adult" book.

Like Schoolhouse Rock's "How a Bill Becomes a Law"

Like Schoolhouse Rock's "How a Bill Becomes a Law" without the music or humor.

This biography of radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens somehow manages to strip all the radicalism (or at least passion) out of Stevens' life and produces an exceedingly dry biography that is more akin to reading the Congressional Record than it is a biography of a man. There's a reason nobody reads the Congressional Record.

Biographies of influential Representative/Senators is always tricky because the biographer has SO MUCH material to work with on the legislative side that the result is often just a selection of floor debates or an summary of the byzantine nature of how a bill moved through committee. As legislative history goes, it's adequate. As a biography, it's lacking.