The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens. Volume 2: April 1865-August 1868 (review)

344civil war history The Selected Papers ofThaddeus Stevens. Volume 2: April 1865-August 1868. Edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer; associate editor, Holly Byers Ochoa (Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. Pp. Xxii, 488. $37.50.) At a time when the motives and private behavior of the author of the Declaration of Independence are encountering astringent new scrutiny, it is intriguing to read a documentary collection in which the Declaration is deemed sacred writ. An inveterate foe of slavery and the "slave power," Thaddeus Stevens embraced what he called the "organic law" of the Declaration (134). No discrimination on the basis of race was acceptable in matters pertaining to citizenship. None. In asserting this position, Stevens found himself in the minority position even in his own party and was doomed to disappointment in the struggles over "reconstructing" the former Confederacy. In this second volume of an exceedingly valuable "selected" edition of Stevens's correspondence and speeches, Beverly Wilson Palmer enables readers to follow, through Stevens's eyes, the conflict between President and Congress (and within the Congress itself) in wake of the South's defeat and the abolition of slavery. The Great Commoner's speeches are an essential source for students and scholars to grasp Stevens's oral extremism and its connection to broader political currents. There are, however, few surprises in the material that editor Palmer has assembled . The much remarked relentlessness of Stevens's arguments for his "conqueredprovince " theory is well evidenced here, as is his commitment to uprooting the southern "aristocracy" and providing the freedmen with "forty acres and a hut" (85-85, passim). Evidences ofStevens's deep contempt for PresidentAndrew Johnson, whose policies and persona Stevens found inimical to a true reconstruction ofthe nation are strewn throughout both correspondence and speeches. (As early as May 1865 he refers to being "sickened" by Johnson's actions [6].) The great bulk of the documents in this volume focus on well-known publicpolicy issues. Although Palmer publishes one letter in which Stevens denies having a mulatto mistress, an attack on his character that he likens to the "offensive odor of diseased dog secretions" (328), no new light is shed on Stevens's relationship with his mulatto housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith. Nor do we derive much insight into Stevens's personal preoccupations, aside from his reverence for his mother and solicitude for his extended family. Stevens was an intensely private individual who seems to have had few close friends and nobody to whom he expressed, through correspondence, his private preoccupations or personal anxieties. Judging by Stevens's correspondence with other proponents of the rights of freedmen—notably Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips—Stevens's relations even with his allies are noticeably formal rather than warm or chatty. Stevens shone most in debate on the floor of the House of Representatives. The concision and cumulative power ofhis speeches are reminiscent, ironically, ofJohn C. Calhoun's. They are practically impossible to paraphrase, as Calhoun's BOOK REVIEWS345 biographer Charles WiItse once observed ofthe Cast Iron Man's speeches. There are many examples in this volume of Stevens being contradicted or taunted by more conservative congressmen—who soon found their ears pinned back, in part because of Stevens's quick wit and mordant humor. Consider, for example, his exchanges with an Iowa congressman early in 1866, in which he refers to Andrew Johnson's notorious denunciation of him and other Radical leaders. In the repartee, which frequently evoked laughter from Congressmen in attendance, Stevens suggested that perhaps Johnson had never even made the speech—that it was all a hoax—and then having established this "fact," he hoped that his colleagues "will permit me to occupy the same friendly position with the President I did before" (104). Stevens's relations with the president were, of course, far from a laughing matter. Increasingly convinced by the fall of 1 865 that the freed slaves would never enjoy the fruits of citizenship while Johnson was president, Stevens was one of the first members of the House publicly to say that Johnson deserved impeachment. This position he followed with obsessive implacability, until the final days of Johnson's trial in 1868, which he served as a manager...