A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era: Volume 2, Political Arguments

Thaddeus Stevens, Emancipation, January 22, 1862.

Representative Thaddeus Stevens Speech on Emancipation, January 22, 1862 The Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, 439–41 (1862) Pennsylvania Representative Thaddeus Stevens embraced the label of “radical Republican.” Perhaps the most powerful member of the House of Representatives during the Civil War years and one of the most powerful people in Washington during the administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, Stevens’s hatred of slavery and the “slave power” conspiracy of the South motivated his efforts and solidified his loyalty to the Union. One of the few people in the United States in the 1860s who might be called a race equalitarian, Stevens worked tirelessly for equal treatment before the law for all Americans, even African Americans—a radical position for his era. Stevens lived and died by his principles of equality, insisting on being buried in a minor cemetery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because the major cemeteries in town all were segregated by race. Stevens understood that his time presented unique opportunities ; as he stated the issue in this speech, his generation had the chance “to write a page in the history of the world whose brightness shall eclipse all of the records of heroes and sages.” Although the war was not a year old, Stevens wanted to strike at the root cause, the radical cause, of the conflict—slavery. Contrary to the liberty and liberties contained in the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the 1787 Constitution, southerners held on to and promoted the institution of slavery. To strike them with the military was one approach to hurting the enemy of liberty, but Stevens argued that another approach existed: “Universal emancipation must be proclaimed to all.” He argued that the war would be stopped when African Americans stopped working because they were free persons. Loyal slaveholders could be bought out and compensated more cheaply than it was costing the nation to run the war. For Stevens, end slavery and the war would end because the South would crumble. As he put the issue, “Six years [of more war] with slavery and a Documentary History of the American Civil War Era 118 debt of $2,000,000,000—manumission with peace in six months, slavery extinct on this continent, and a debt of $500,000,000 [to compensate loyal slaveholders]. These are the alternatives. Let the tax-payers and patriots choose between them.” Although Stevens’s political timing for emancipation was wrong, his perception of a link between the war to save the Union and slavery’s continuation or ending was not. Mr. Stevens. Mr. Chairman, I shall avail myself of the custom when in Committee of the Whole, to speak to other questions than that before the committee. On the first day of the session I introduced a bill containing two propositions . The first was to put a speedy and final end to this rebellion through the necessary instrumentality of emancipation; the second, to make full reparation to all loyal men who might suffer loss by that mode of warfare. That bill, with all others of a kindred kind, was removed from the House on motion of the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. kellogg.] I propose to discuss it now. This is no accidental rebellion, as the pro-slavery gentleman from New York, [Mr. steele,] and other pro-slavery gentlemen suppose. But we are in the midst of a crisis which a sagacious statesman foretold thirty years ago, before such agitation existed. When John C. Calhoun and other South Carolina conspirators attempted to dissolve the Union, General Jackson, with an energy and patriotism which covered a thousand faults, crushed the treason and confounded the traitors. But he saw that they would persevere, and that the tariff, which was then alleged cause, was but a mere pretense, and that the next pretext would be slavery. From that time to this they have educated their people in the doctrine of disunion, until they had prepared the popular mind for the rebellion which now disturbs the land. Those who suppose that the leaders which actuated by a desire to redress grievances, either real or fancied, greatly mistake the real object of the traitors. They have rebelled for no redress of grievances, but to establish a slave oligarchy which would repudiate the odious doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, and justify the establishment of an empire admitting the principle of king, lords, and slaves. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were a constant reproach to the slaveholding South...