Quotes Concerning Reconstruction

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Thaddeus Stevens took the lead in an effort to make sure that the Negro was provided with both land and education. He insisted that it was:

".....due to justice, as an example to future times, that some proper pain should be inflicted on the people who constituted the "Confederate States of America," both because they declared an unjust war against the United States for the purpose of destroying republican liberty and permanently establishing slavery, as well as for the cruel and barbarous manner in which they conducted said war, in violation of all rules of civilized warfare, and also to compel them to make compensation for damage and expense caused by said war, therefore: Be it enacted that all public lands belonging to the ten states that formed the so-called "Confederate States of America," shall be forfeited....and that the lands so seized and condemned be distributed among the slaves who had been made free by the war." (Apparently Stevens had not heard of Sherman's March to the Sea or Sheridan's romp through the Shenandoah Valley.)