Stevens, Thaddeus (1792-1868), of Pennsylvania was a leader of the Radical Republicans, a powerful group of Northern congressmen in the United States House of Representatives. The Radicals wanted strict government protection for the rights of Black citizens and firm treatment of the South after the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Stevens was born in Danville, Vermont, on April 4, 1792. He began to practice law in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1816. He often defended, without charging a fee, Black fugitives who had escaped from slavery. Stevens served in Pennsylvania’s state legislature several times during the 1830’s and 1840’s.
Stevens served in the U.S. House from 1849 to 1853 and from 1859 to 1868. He was first elected as a Whig, but he joined the Republican Party in the mid-1850’s.
During the Civil War, Stevens pressed for freeing the nation’s enslaved people. He also served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which played a key role in financing the North’s war effort. After the war, he urged federal control of the South until a new leadership could emerge there and until the people who had been enslaved were protected by law and gained land ownership. Stevens believed the government should seize land from former slaveowners and give it to formerly enslaved people. He helped form, and served on, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which formulated a plan for dealing with the defeated South.
Stevens strongly opposed President Andrew Johnson because of Johnson’s mild policies toward the South. He served on the House committee that recommended impeachment and voted in 1868 to send the President to trial in the Senate, where he was acquitted by one vote. Stevens died in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11, 1868.
