The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, vol. 1, January 1814-March 1865 (review)

232CIVIL WAR HISTORY The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, vol. 1, January 1814—March 1865. Edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer. Associate Editor, Holly Byers Ochoa. (Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. Pp. xxxii, 549. $37.50.) Disentangling myth and history can be a frustrating business, and in the case of certain iconic figures in theAmerican pantheon, it can be impossible. Thaddeus Stevens is a case in point. Demonized in popular literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a "scourge ofthe South," Stevens remains caught in a kind ofhistorical Umbo today. Historians stress his commitment to the abolition of slavery and a color-blind social order. But in the popular imagination he remains today what he was in textbooks written before the 1960s: a vindictive, anti-Southern demagogue. Yet even scholars who accept the notion that Stevens merits more praise than blame for his role in the Civil War and Reconstruction, and who teach undergraduate classes emphasizing that Stevens was part of a vanguard fighting for racial justice, know relatively little about what made him tick. That is partly because Stevens left no substantial body of papers to study, and what scattered correspondence remains is difficult to decipher. Publication ofan edition of Stevens's papers is therefore a welcome event. It has already provided the foundation for a new, excellent biography by Hans Trefousse (Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian, 1997), and it is sure to be a valuable tool for nineteenth century political historians. Despite the exemplary diUgence of editor Beverly Wilson Palmer and her associate editor, Holly Byers Ochoa, there are no dramatic revelations in this volume ofpapers, which treats Stevens's life to March 1865. Indeed, ifthere are any surprises, for this writer they lay in how little of Stevens's correspondence the editors were able to find. This edition includes but one Stevens letter for each of the years 1843, 1844, and 1847 and no letters at all for the years 1845 and 1 846. Coverage of the 1 850s and the war years is better, but not substantially. Based on the material that Palmer and Ochoa have assembled, however, it is possible to trace Stevens's business interests, his legal engagements, and his political activism, particularly his opposition to Masonry and, above all, to slavery . Stevens's relationship with the Know-Nothing party is regrettably not clarified in this volume. However, Stevens's persona and commitment to an egalitarian democracy are evidenced on virtually every page, in pungent and sharp-edged speeches and prose. For example, at a mass meeting in Harrisburg in 1837, Stevens rejected the premise that Congress had no power to abolish slavery in the District ofColumbia. "Sir, little as I rememberofmy school tasks, I recollect there is such a thing as a pregnant negative; and I think this resolution to be a negative, on the power of Congress which is very pregnant" (46). In another 1837 speech, opposing enactment of legislation denying free blacks the right to vote in Pennsylvania , he observed "I would rather be the degraded subject ofasouthern master, than to be a northern freeman without the power and courage freely to speak my sentiments on every subject" (58). BOOK REVIEWS233 Speaking in Congress against the compromise measures of 1 850, Stevens noted that "I hope with some fear that the race of dough faces is extinct" (108). About political enemies he could be brutal. Two of his favorite targets were StephenA. Douglas of Illinois and fellow Pennsylvanian James Buchanan. In 1 856 he called Douglas a "northern traitor," while Buchanan he denominated "a bloated mass of political putridity" (154). In 1858 Stevens charged that Buchanan as President was "the greatest despot we have ever had" (157). By early 1861 he decided that Buchanan was not simply a despot but a "traitor" (172). In Stevens's colloquies before and during the Civil War with Southern congressmen or opponents of the war like Ohio's Clement Vallandigham, he asked for no quarter, and gave none. Stevens's exegesis of the lower South's response to Lincoln's election powerfully conveys his hatred of the "slave power" (19091 ). Throughout the war Stevens pressed President Lincon to broaden his aims. For...