Thaddeus Stevens

BY ELIZABETH LAWSON

Grade Level and Copyright

Grade Level is 11.6 using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test in Microsoft Word.

First edition published by International Publishers, Inc. 1942. All rights reserved.

Electronic edition published by Ebooks for Students Ltd., 2021 with the permission of International Publishers, Inc.

See our other biographies, novels and popular histories at ebooksforstudents.org.

Comments or questions to support@ebooksforstudents.org or (202) 464-9126.

REFERENCES

1. The Jacobins were the most progressive group in the French revolution of 1789. They were so called because their first meeting took place in a convent of the Jacobin friars in Paris. Back

2. James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, p. 275, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1931. Back

3. David Muzzey, The American Adventure, Vol. II, p. 5, Harper & Bros., New York, 1927. Back

4. Samuel Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, 1865-1937, p. 637, Oxford University Press, New York, 1930. Back

5. Stevens was a first cousin of Betsy Stevens Weed, great-grandmother of Ella Reeve Bloor. (See Ella Reeve Bloor, We Are Many, pp. 18-19, International Publishers, New York, 1940.) Back

6. New York Daily Tribune, Nov. 7, 1861. (See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States, p. 24, International Publishers, New York, 1927.) Back

7. Thomas Frederick Woodley, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 93, The Telegraph Press, Harrisburg, Pa., 1934. Back

8. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 provided for the admission of Missouri with slavery, of Maine without slavery, and prohibited slavery in other states that might be carved from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, wherever these states lay north of latitude 36 ° 30'. By this compromise, the slave power gained three additional slave states— Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. That portion of the compromise prohibiting slavery north of 36 "30' was later abrogated by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and by the Dred Scott decision. Back

9. Texas was detached from Mexico by a slave-owners' revolt engineered in 1836, after a period in which Americans had established slavery illegally in considerable Texas territory, contrary to the provisions of the Mexican constitution. The incident which led to the revolt was Mexico's attempt to collect her customs duties in'Texas. Texas was annexed to the United States in 1845. Back

10. In order to gain still more territory from Mexico after the annexation of Texas, the Polk administration in 1846 picked a boundary dispute and entered upon a two-years war, resulting in die cession from Mexico of eight hundred thousand square miles of land. Back

11.  In the late 1850's, emigrant aid societies were established in order to settle portions of Mexico, with a view to ultimate absorption of all or a part of the country. President Buchanan, in 1858, recommended to Congress that the United States assume a temporary protectorate over Sonora and Chihuahua. Back

12. The 1850's witnessed filibustering expeditions against Nicaragua, with the aim of providing slavery with new lands. One of the fllibusterers, William Walker, made himself master of Granada and legalized slavery there, but his rule was overthrown in 1857 by a coalition of Central American states. Back

13.  An effort to obtain Cuba for the United States was made in 1854, when the American ambassadors to Spain, France, and England—all pro-slavery men—met in Ostend and issued the document which became known as the Ostend Manifesto. This manifesto offered to purchase Cuba from Spain, but threatened to seize the island forcibly in case Spain refused to sell it. Back

14.  Congressional Globe, Appendix, Feb. 20, 1850, pp. 141-43. Back

15.   Ibid., June 10, 1850, p. 767. Back

16. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and decreed that the people of a territory should decide the issue of freedom or slavery. This doctrine was known as "popular sovereignty" or "squatters' sovereignty." It opened to slave settlement an area which Congress had years before declared free. It paved the way for the forcible invasion of the West by the slaveholders; and the establishment of slave plantations invariably left no room for manufacturers, workers, artisans, and independent farmers. Back

17.  Congressional Globe, Jan. 22, 1862, p. 439. (Cf. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the United States, pp. 70, 80.) Back

18. Confidential letters which have since come to light show that the Southern members of the court were in constant communication, in 1856 and 1857, with the, then, incoming President, Buchanan, on the progress of the Dred Scott case; that the more aggressive of the pro-slavery justices used the president-elect to whip up their colleagues. Buchanan's pretense, in his inaugural address, that he was ignorant of the nature of the forthcoming decision, was a lie uttered in the first hour of his administration. Back

19.  Congressional Globe, Jan. 22, 1862, p. 439. Back

20.  Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years, Vol. II, p. 408, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1926; Ibid., The War Years, Vol. I, p. 118, 1939. Back

21.  Congressional Globe, Jan. 29, 1861, pp. 621-22. Back

22. Copperhead, the name of a poisonous snake, was the term used in the North during the Civil War to designate Northern sympathizers with the Confederacy. Politically, Copperheadism represented the interests of the Northern bankers, merchants, and shippers. Back

23.  Congressional Globe, Aug. 2, 1861, pp. 414-15. Back

24.  Ibid., Jan. 22, 1862, pp. 440-41. Back

25.  Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I, p. 261; Vol. II, pp. 127-38, 285, 291-98, 358-59; Vol. Ill, pp. 135, 150-52, 160-62, and 169-76, C. H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, 1911. Back

26.  Congressional Globe, Feb. 20, 1862, p. 900. Back

27.  Ibid., Feb. 6, 1862, p. 688. Back

28.   Cf., James S. Allen, Reconstruction, The Battle for Democracy, pp. 36, 214, International Publishers, New York, 1937. Back

29.  Angelo Herndon was arrested in 1932 under a sedition law passed in Georgia in 1866. Back

30.  Congressional Globe, Dec. 18, 1865, p. 74. Back

31.  Article I, Sec. 2, Constitution of the United States. Back

32.  Cf., James S. Allen, Reconstruction, The Battle for Democracy, p. 85. Back

33.  Congressional Globe, Jan. 3, 1867, p. 251. Back

34.  Speech at Lancaster, Pa., Sept. 7, 1865, Examiner and Herald print (Lancaster). Back

35.  Congressional Globe, Appendix, June 10, 1850, p. 769. Daniel Webster, Senator from Massachusetts, had been counted an anti-slavery man until he supported the Fugitive-Slave Bill in 1850. Back

36.  James Albert Woodburn, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens, p. 600, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, 1913. Back

37. Congressional Globe, Appendix, June 11, 1852, p. 744. Back

38.  Ibid., June 16, 1866, pp. 3217-18. Back

39.  Ibid., Appendix, June 10, 1850, p. 767. Back

40. Speech at Lancaster, Sept. 23, 1866. (See Alphonse B. Miller, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 293, Harper & Bros., New York, 1939.) Back