Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (review)

BOOK REVIEWS145 The volumes in this series will be of great assistance to a variety of people. They may be used fruitfully in undergraduate and graduate classes as a means of introducing students to contemporary discourse occurring over crucial issues ; the letters may be a good starting point for any number of projects. Indeed , seasoned scholars may find these volumes useful for certain research topics. However, as the editor states, the Chase papers are voluminous and the ones published in this series are merely representative. For detailed research into a particular subject during the middle period, the microfilm collection—fortyfour reels—will have to be consulted. James L. Huston Oklahoma State University Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. By Hans L. Trefousse. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xiii, 312. $39.95.) Thaddeus Stevens is no longer the loathsome and daunting figure he once was. As Austin Stoneman in Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s novel, The Clansman (1905), and in D.W. Griffith's landmark film, Birth ofa Nation ( 1 9 1 5), Stevens, grim-faced as an executioner, unleased a reign of black terror on the conquered South. Nearly forty years after Fawn Brodie transformed Stevens's role in this racial melodrama, Hans L. Trefousse depicts a more prosaic figure and a less radical era. Stevens exerted little influence over what Trefousse describes as the moderate course of Reconstruction. A native ofVermont and a graduate of Dartmouth College, Stevens migrated south to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In his political and social associations Stevens joined with anti-Jacksonian factions to embrace temperance, antimasonry, nativism, and, finally, antislavery. Eschewing political consensus, Stevens exploited the fundamental instability of the second party system. He enjoyed his greatest success fighting the evil influence of the "slave power." In Pennsylvania , as elsewhere in the North, Jacksonians advanced their democratic reforms among white men at the same time that they denied equal rights to blacks. A delegate to the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1837, Stevens denounced "domestic slavery" as "the most disgraceful institution that the world had ever witnessed" (5 1 ). He supported limited black suffrage and opposed the extension ofthe franchise to white men who did not pay taxes. Bitterly opposed to the new constitution's provisions disenfranchising black men, Stevens refused to sign the document. In 1 842 Stevens moved from Gettysburg to the larger town ofLancaster where his law practice expanded and his political opportunities widened. It was in Lancaster that Stevens began to employ Mrs. Lydia Hamilton Smith as a housekeeper . Awidow with two children, Mrs. Smith, a mulatto, remained in Stevens's household and cared for him for the rest of his life. Rumors of their sexual I46CIVIL WAR HISTORY intimacy abounded. Trefousse discreetly limits his discussion of the matter to what clearly can be discerned from the evidence: Stevens and Mrs. Smith lived as domestic partners and Stevens provided well for her in his will. Stevens's political power reached its zenith during his tenure as chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, a position that he attained in 1 86 1 , at the age of sixty-nine. Trefousse insists that Stevens's outspokenness on emancipation enabled Lincoln "to continue his onward march toward freedom for the slave" (116). On issues of reconstruction, however, Trefousse grudgingly admits that differences between Stevens and Lincoln were fundamental and probably irreconcilable. Lincoln argued thatthe southern states remained within thejurisdiction of the Constitution. Stevens maintained that the act of rebellion invoked the laws of war and rendered the southern states conquered territories. Lincoln's reconstruction policies were limited by the Constitution; Stevens's were not. Stevens would "Strip a proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans; send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshop or handle the plough." He would thus "humble the proud traitors" (172). On this issue Stevens had few followers. "His legacy was one of pointing the way," Trefousse concludes. "It was never one of domination " (238). Louis S. Gerteis University of Missouri-St. Louis Clara Barton: In the Service ofHumanity. By David Burton. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. Pp. 192. $49.95.) Clara Barton was a very...