Thaddeus Stevens

[unionblue]

Stevens in a speech at Philadelphia, PA, October 4, 1864, as recorded in the Union League Gazette.

"...The slaveholding madmen rejected the offers and spurned the prostrate suppliants with scorn while yet kneeling in the dust. Their folly was the salvation of freedom. Had not the gods made them mad we should this day have been in shackles instead of having stricken them from others. Now that there is not a slave in the American continent, shall we agree for the sake of a disgraceful and precarious peace to reenslave four million human beings? Shall we aid to rivet the chains on a whole race of God's children that we may purchase the poor boon of a temporary peace from triumphant traitors? If we are men we will resist it to the death. If we are Christians we will sooner suffer martyrdom. Furthermore let us consent to no peace merely on the simple condition of the maintenance of the Union. That would be a weak betrayal of noble men who have fought our battles. Men who make such suggestions, in the Cabinet or out, can be naught else than miserable cowards or moral traitors. Men who aspire to march at the head of a nation or to be foremost in the party of progress, have no right to tremble or despair when danger threatens. My young friends, I know not how such poltroonery stirs your warm blood, but, old as I am, it makes the blood boil in my thin worn veins. It is not by such trembling and trimming in compromises that great nations are established or sustained."

Unionblue

 

[unionblue]

From the book, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens, by James Albert Woodburn, chapter 10, The Constitution and the War, pg. 223-224, Thaddeus Stevens on the admission of West Virginia as a new state to the Union.

"...Stevens was ready to vote for the admission of West Virginia because he did not think the Constitution applied to a state in arms against the government of the Union. He was not afraid nor ashamed to ignore the Constitution which the rebels were ignoring, in order to do what was best for his cause and for their defeat.

"We may admit West Virginia," he said, "not by any provisions of the Constitution but under our absolute power which the laws of war give us. I shall vote for this bill upon that theory and that alone; for I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Constitution for this proceeding...

Sir, it is but mockery, in my judgment, to tell me that the Legislature of Virginia has ever consented to this division. About 200,000 out of 1,250,000 people have held a convention and elected a legislature which has assented to the division. But before all this was done the state had a regular organization and a constitution under which it acted. By a convention of a large majority of the people of that state they changed their constitution and changed their relation to the federal government from that of one of its members to that of secession. This is treason, but so far as the state corporation was concerned, it was a valid act and governed the state. The majority of the people of Virginia was the state of Virginia, although individuals had committed treason. Their legislature which called the seceding convention was the legislature of the state. The legislature was disloyal and traitorous, but the state as a state was bound by their acts. Not so individuals. They are responsible to the general government, whether the state decrees treason or not. Governor Letcher, elected by a majority of the votes of Virginia, is the Governor of Virginia,--a traitorous Governor of a traitorous state. A small number of the citizens of Virginia--the people in West Virginia--assembled together, disapproved of the acts of Virginia, and with the utmost self-complacency called themselves Virginia.

Is it not ridiculous?"

Primary Source: Congressional Globe, December 9, 1862.

Unionblue

 

[BillO]

Stevens in a speech before the Union League in Lancaster, 1863.

"...These base Copperheads would change the Constitution to conciliate the South, but not to hurt slavery. Before this Rebellion began the Constitution bound us hand and foot to the car of human bondage. Now when an all-wise Providence has caused this wicked treason to break those obligations and enable us to strike off their shackles and guarantee universal freedom throughout this grand continent, these vipers, instead of glorying in the opportunity, insist with one voice on reimposing their chains and dooming this fair land, and generation upon generation of human beings, to its blighting curse.

"Of what stuff are such things made? Have they human souls? I doubt if there can be found in the hottest corner of pandemonium cinders black enough and hard enough to make hearts for such inhuman wretches."

Unionblue

Kinda reads like a Joe Biden speech.

 

[dvrmte]

Excrement...Where do you come up with this "unlimited federal government" stuff?
What do you call what Davis did to the Confederacy...Conscription Acts, Impressment Acts, Confiscation Acts, Price fixing, Government price controls, Rationing, ...where is all that "protection of sovereignty" ? Oh, and God forbid you exercise your freedom of speech by proclaiming "Abolition" in the Confederacy!

The South being "Anti Big Government" and ALL "States Rights" just gets weaker and weaker.

Kevin Dally

Sounds like a nation at war to me. You seem to lack an understanding of antebellum Jefferson/Jackson Democratic Republican ideals of a limited, inactive government.

Lacy K. Ford explains it in Origins of Southern Radicalism, South Carolina 1800-1860

"a unified South Carolina could secede because the dominant ideal in her society was not the planter ideal or the slaveholding ideal, but the old 'country-republican' ideal of personal independence, given peculiar fortification by the use of black slaves as a mud-sill class. Yeoman rose with planter to defend this ideal because it was not merely the planter's ideal, but his as well" (p. 372).

 

[unionblue]

Sounds like a nation at war to me. You seem to lack an understanding of antebellum Jefferson/Jackson Democratic Republican ideals of a limited, inactive government.

Lacy K. Ford explains it in Origins of Southern Radicalism, South Carolina 1800-1860

"a unified South Carolina could secede because the dominant ideal in her society was not the planter ideal or the slaveholding ideal, but the old 'country-republican' ideal of personal independence, given peculiar fortification by the use of black slaves as a mud-sill class. Yeoman rose with planter to defend this ideal because it was not merely the planter's ideal, but his as well" (p. 372).

dvrmte,

Sounds like you agree with Thaddeus Stevens in that a nation at war can pretty much do what it needs to survive.

Unionblue

 

[dvrmte]

dvrmte,

Sounds like you agree with Thaddeus Stevens in that a nation at war can pretty much do what it needs to survive.

Unionblue

First of all, Tin cup erroneously blamed Jeff Davis for acts that were passed by the CSA congress. He more or less labeled him a dictator. I'll give him a chance to correct himself and explain the need and limits of those acts he deems so "big government".

Not much to agree with Thad on.

 

[unionblue]

First of all, Tin cup erroneously blamed Jeff Davis for acts that were passed by the CSA congress. He more or less labeled him a dictator. I'll give him a chance to correct himself and explain the need and limits of those acts he deems so "big government".

Not much to agree with Thad on.

dvrmte,

You made the comment in your previous post "sounds like a nation at war to me" when expressing your opinion to Tin cup on why Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy had to resort to the acts that he (Tin cup) found acted just like big government to him.

I merely observed that you seem to express the view that the Confederacy had to take such actions because it was fighting a war to maintain its survival. Was I wrong to assume this was your view?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

 

[unionblue]

From the book, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens, by James Albert Woodburn, chapter 10, The Constitution and the War, pg. 226-228:

(In an argument between Thaddeus Stevens and Francis P. Blair of Missouri over the status of the Southern states and their relationship to the Union) Blair contended that statehood in the South was indestructible, that the Confederate States were like Misouri whose territory had been overrun by rebel armies but whose state organization, with the majority of votes and coercive power behind it, had remained loyal to the Union. According to Blair the Southern States were merely under duress. All that was necessary was to drive out the rebel power that was holding their governments in restraint, and recognize and sustain the loyal elements as the state. This duress had not extinguished the legitimate local sovereignty nor the supreme sovereignty of the general government.

Blair claimed that Stevens in recognizing the Southern States as subsisting state; as perfect now as before the Rebellion, and that in regarding the Confederate States as a separate belligerent power carrying on a legitimate war,--in holding this position Blair contended that Stevens had recognized secession as "absolutely and with more distinctness than ever Calhoun had ventured to urge it." "In this position," said Blair, "no man North or South ever asserted the secession cause so boldly in the forum as the gentleman from Pennsylvania," and he asserted that Stevens had treated with scorn the idea that states held in duress by the rebel power have a right to look to our laws and Constitution for protection. This "secession-abolition-absolute-conquest doctrine," said Blair, was "in defiance of national and state constitutions, the law of the civilized world and of all humanity."

Stevens replied with vigor to Blair, whose speech, he said, "contained the distilled virus of the Copperhead." Blair had made a false statement of Stevens' position.

"If the armies of the Confederate States should overrun a loyal state and hold it in duress, that state would have a right to appeal to the Constitution for protection. Butt a state which by a free majority of its voters has thrown off its allegiance to the Constitution and holds itself in duress by its own armies, is estopped from claiming any protection under the Constitution. To say that such a state is within the pale of the Union so as to claim protection under its constitution and laws is but the raving of a madman...

To escape the consequence of my argument he [Blair] denies that the Confederate States have been acknowledged as belligerents or have established and maintained independent government de facto. Such assurance would deny that there is a sun in heaven. They have a Congress in which eleven states are represented; they have at least 300,000 soldiers in the field; their pickets are almost within sight of Washington. They have ships of war on the ocean destroying hundreds of our ships, and our government and the governments of Europe acknowledge and treat them as privateers, not as pirates. There is no reasoning against such impudent denials.

But it is said the Constitution does not allow them to go out of the Union. True, and in going out they committed a crime for which we are now warring against them. The law forbids a man to rob or murder, yet robbery and murder exist de facto. Blair has said that those who declare the states outlawed to the Union preach the doctrine of secession as much as Jefferson Davis. Does the man who declares that murder and larceny exist give countenance to those crimes? The one is as reasonable as the other. If the fiction of equity courts that whatever ought to be shall be considered as existing,--if this is true, then the rebel states are in the Union. If the naked facts, palpable to every eye, attested by many a bloody battle-field, and recorded by every day's hostile legislation, both in Washington and Richmond, are to prevail, then the rebellious states are no more in the Union, in fact, than the loyal states are in the Confederate States. Nor should they ever be treated so until they repent and are rebaptized into the national Union."

Original source: Congressional Globe, May 2, 1864, pg. 2042.

Unionblue

 

[dvrmte]

dvrmte,

You made the comment in your previous post "sounds like a nation at war to me" when expressing your opinion to Tin cup on why Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy had to resort to the acts that he (Tin cup) found acted just like big government to him.

I merely observed that you seem to express the view that the Confederacy had to take such actions because it was fighting a war to maintain its survival. Was I wrong to assume this was your view?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

No, you aren't wrong now. You left Thaddeus out of it this time.

 

[unionblue]

No, you aren't wrong now. You left Thaddeus out of it this time.

dvrmte,

But when I compare Thaddeus's sentiments with yours about the topic, the seem to be remarkably similar.

Unionblue

 

[dvrmte]

dvrmte,

But when I compare Thaddeus's sentiments with yours about the topic, the seem to be remarkably similar.

Unionblue

I don't think I've expressed sentiments towards ethnically cleansing the country of Yankees. Stevens seemed to be brilliant but his formative years of abuse from an often absent alcoholic father and the ridicule he suffered for his handicap seemed to have twisted it.

 

[OpnCoronet]

From the book, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens, by James Albert Woodburn, chapter 10, The Constitution and the War, pg. 226-228:
(In an argument between Thaddeus Stevens and Francis P. Blair of Missouri over the status of the Southern states and their relationship to the Union) Blair contended that statehood in the South was indestructible, that the Confederate States were like Misouri whose territory had been overrun by rebel armies but whose state organization, with the majority of votes and coercive power behind it, had remained loyal to the Union. According to Blair the Southern States were merely under duress. All that was necessary was to drive out the rebel power that was holding their governments in restraint, and recognize and sustain the loyal elements as the state. This duress had not extinguished the legitimate local sovereignty nor the supreme sovereignty of the general government.
Blair claimed that Stevens in recognizing the Southern States as subsisting state; as perfect now as before the Rebellion, and that in regarding the Confederate States as a separate belligerent power carrying on a legitimate war,--in holding this position Blair contended that Stevens had recognized secession as "absolutely and with more distinctness than ever Calhoun had ventured to urge it." "In this position," said Blair, "no man North or South ever asserted the secession cause so boldly in the forum as the gentleman from Pennsylvania," and he asserted that Stevens had treated with scorn the idea that states held in duress by the rebel power have a right to look to our laws and Constitution for protection. This "secession-abolition-absolute-conquest doctrine," said Blair, was "in defiance of national and state constitutions, the law of the civilized world and of all humanity."
Stevens replied with vigor to Blair, whose speech, he said, "contained the distilled virus of the Copperhead." Blair had made a false statement of Stevens' position.
"If the armies of the Confederate States should overrun a loyal state and hold it in duress, that state would have a right to appeal to the Constitution for protection. Butt a state which by a free majority of its voters has thrown off its allegiance to the Constitution and holds itself in duress by its own armies, is estopped from claiming any protection under the Constitution. To say that such a state is within the pale of the Union so as to claim protection under its constitution and laws is but the raving of a madman...To escape the consequence of my argument he [Blair] denies that the Confederate States have been acknowledged as belligerents or have established and maintained independent government de facto. Such assurance would deny that there is a sun in heaven. They have a Congress in which eleven states are represented; they have at least 300,000 soldiers in the field; their pickets are almost within sight of Washington. They have ships of war on the ocean destroying hundreds of our ships, and our government and the governments of Europe acknowledge and treat them as privateers, not as pirates. There is no reasoning against such impudent denials.
But it is said the Constitution does not allow them to go out of the Union. True, and in going out they committed a crime for which we are now warring against them. The law forbids a man to rob or murder, yet robbery and murder exist de facto. Blair has said that those who declare the states outlawed to the Union preach the doctrine of secession as much as Jefferson Davis. Does the man who declares that murder and larceny exist give countenance to those crimes? The one is as reasonable as the other. If the fiction of equity courts that whatever ought to be shall be considered as existing,--if this is true, then the rebel states are in the Union. If the naked facts, palpable to every eye, attested by many a bloody battle-field, and recorded by every day's hostile legislation, both in Washington and Richmond, are to prevail, then the rebellious states are no more in the Union, in fact, than the loyal states are in the Confederate States. Nor should they ever be treated so until they repent and are rebaptized into the national Union."
Original source: Congressional Globe, May 2, 1864, pg. 2042.
Unionblue

Stevens was a patriot, but, unlike Lincoln, he was a revolutionary, engaged in a revolutionary war for survival. He saw the south(and southerners) as enemies to be conquered.

 

[Tin cup]

Sounds like a nation at war to me. You seem to lack an understanding of antebellum Jefferson/Jackson Democratic Republican ideals of a limited, inactive government.

Lacy K. Ford explains it in Origins of Southern Radicalism, South Carolina 1800-1860

"a unified South Carolina could secede because the dominant ideal in her society was not the planter ideal or the slaveholding ideal, but the old 'country-republican' ideal of personal independence, given peculiar fortification by the use of black slaves as a mud-sill class. Yeoman rose with planter to defend this ideal because it was not merely the planter's ideal, but his as well" (p. 372).

The planter class did a lot to include the non slave owning white populous in their racial ideology. Though many may not be slave owners, they were far above the lowly slave. The common denominator was fear that slavery would end. The planter class made sure that everyone understood the ramifications of THAT!

Kevin Dally

 

[BillO]

The planter class did a lot to include the non slave owning white populous in their racial ideology. Though many may not be slave owners, they were far above the lowly slave. The common denominator was fear that slavery would end. The planter class made sure that everyone understood the ramifications of THAT!

Kevin Dally

Kevin you make this sound like a secret conspiracy or something dark and sinister. It's not, it's simple human nature,if you grew up riding in a Chevy you want a Cadillac. If you grew up riding around in a Caddy you want a Bentley and if you grew up riding around in a Bentley you want to be a senator. It's just the way we are.

 

[Tin cup]

Kevin you make this sound like a secret conspiracy or something dark and sinister. It's not, it's simple human nature,if you grew up riding in a Chevy you want a Cadillac. If you grew up riding around in a Caddy you want a Bentley and if you grew up riding around in a Bentley you want to be a senator. It's just the way we are.

The planter class in South Carolina was working the media to herd the non slave owning class into their ideological corral. In light of the fact that the planter class wanted, and worked towards secession, that is part of a "sinister plot"!

Kevin Dally

 

[Tin cup]

dvrmte, and unionblue (and everyone else):

Well, have been reading your post's on a man I know little about, meaning I'm going to have to look into buying another book!
amazon.com...here I come!

Kevin Dally

 

[James B White]

Kevin you make this sound like a secret conspiracy or something dark and sinister. It's not, it's simple human nature.

I agree. One could look at it from the other direction and say that poor whites, who had the majority of the vote, insisted planters keep control of their slaves, the way neighbors of a factory might vote that the factory had to safely store its hazardous chemicals. Everyone is going to benefit if the status quo is kept under control and slaves aren't suddenly turned free to compete for poor whites' jobs.

 

[Tin cup]

I agree. One could look at it from the other direction and say that poor whites, who had the majority of the vote, insisted planters keep control of their slaves, the way neighbors of a factory might vote that the factory had to safely store its hazardous chemicals. Everyone is going to benefit if the status quo is kept under control and slaves aren't suddenly turned free to compete for poor whites' jobs.

It's a "sinister plot" to the the slaves. One needs to keep that direction in mind.

Kevin Dally

 

[BillO]

The planter class in South Carolina was working the media to herd the non slave owning class into their ideological corral. In light of the fact that the planter class wanted, and worked towards secession, that is part of a "sinister plot"!

Kevin Dally

So much mental manure. The planter class didn't have to "herd the non slave owning class" anywhere. The middle and lower class whites aspired to planter class themselves.

 

[Tin cup]

So much mental manure. The planter class didn't have to "herd the non slave owning class" anywhere. The middle and lower class whites aspired to planter class themselves.

Hmmmm...then all those speeches and meetings, newspaper articles.. were just wasted effort?

Kevin Dally