Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens PDF Author: Bruce Levine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476793387
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A “powerful” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of one of the 19th century’s greatest statesmen, encompassing his decades-long fight against slavery and his postwar struggle to bring racial justice to America. Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution—a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies—including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies—would prove crucial to the Union war effort. During the Reconstruction era that followed, Stevens demanded equal civil and political rights for Black Americans—rights eventually embodied in the 14th and 15th amendments. But while Stevens in many ways pushed his party—and America—towards equality, he also championed ideas too radical for his fellow Congressmen ever to support, such as confiscating large slaveholders’ estates and dividing the land among those who had been enslaved. In Thaddeus Stevens, acclaimed historian Bruce Levine has written a “vital” (The Guardian), “compelling” (James McPherson) biography of one of the most visionary statesmen of the 19th century and a forgotten champion for racial justice in America.

Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens PDF Author: Bruce Levine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476793387
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
A “powerful” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of one of the 19th century’s greatest statesmen, encompassing his decades-long fight against slavery and his postwar struggle to bring racial justice to America. Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution—a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies—including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies—would prove crucial to the Union war effort. During the Reconstruction era that followed, Stevens demanded equal civil and political rights for Black Americans—rights eventually embodied in the 14th and 15th amendments. But while Stevens in many ways pushed his party—and America—towards equality, he also championed ideas too radical for his fellow Congressmen ever to support, such as confiscating large slaveholders’ estates and dividing the land among those who had been enslaved. In Thaddeus Stevens, acclaimed historian Bruce Levine has written a “vital” (The Guardian), “compelling” (James McPherson) biography of one of the most visionary statesmen of the 19th century and a forgotten champion for racial justice in America.

Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens PDF Author: Hans L. Trefousse
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807864994
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
One of the most controversial figures in nineteenth-century American history, Thaddeus Stevens is best remembered for his role as congressional leader of the radical Republicans and as a chief architect of Reconstruction. Long painted by historians as a vindictive 'dictator of Congress,' out to punish the South at the behest of big business and his own ego, Stevens receives a more balanced treatment in Hans L. Trefousse's biography, which portrays him as an impassioned orator and a leader in the struggle against slavery. Trefousse traces Stevens's career through its major phases: from his days in the Pennsylvania state legislature, when he antagonized Freemasons, slaveholders, and Jacksonian Democrats, to his political involvement during Reconstruction, when he helped author the Fourteenth Amendment and spurred on the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Throughout, Trefousse explores the motivations for Stevens's lifelong commitment to racial equality, thus furnishing a fuller portrait of the man whose fervent opposition to slavery helped move his more moderate congressional colleagues toward the implementation of egalitarian policies.

Thaddeus Stevens and the Fight for Negro Rights

Thaddeus Stevens and the Fight for Negro Rights PDF Author: Milton Meltzer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Life story of the fire-eating Congressman who fought long and hard for the abolition of slavery and often had to endure hatred for his convictions.

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens

The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens PDF Author: Michael J. Birkner
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807171549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era’s most prominent politicians as well as the political landscapes they inhabited and informed. Both men called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, their home, and both were bachelors. During the 1850s, James Buchanan tried to keep the Democratic Party alive as the slavery debate divided his peers and the political system. Thaddeus Stevens, meanwhile, as Whig turned Republican, invested in the federal government to encourage economic development and social reform, especially antislavery and Republican Reconstruction. Considering Buchanan and Stevens’s divergent lives alongside their political and social worlds reveals the dynamics and directions of American politics, especially northern interests and identities. While focusing on these individuals, the contributors also explore the roles of parties and patronage in informing political loyalties and behavior. They further track personal connections across lines of gender and geography and underline the importance of details like who regularly dined and conversed with whom, the complex social milieu of Washington, the role of rumor in determining political allegiances, and the ways personality and failing relationships mattered in a hothouse of national politics fueled by slavery and expansion. The essays in The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens collectively invite further consideration of how parties, personality, place, and private lives influenced the political interests and actions of an age affected by race, religion, region, civil war, and reconstruction.

Thaddeus Stevens in Gettysburg

Thaddeus Stevens in Gettysburg PDF Author: Bradley R. Hoch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780977635207
Category : Abolitionists
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description


The Radical Republicans

The Radical Republicans PDF Author: Hans L. Trefousse
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0804153922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
This is the story of the men who, as political realists, fought for the cause of racial reform in America before, during, and after the Civil War. Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin F. Wade, and Zachariah Chandler are the central figures in Mr. Trefousse's study of the Radical Republicans who steered a course between the extreme abolitionists on the one hand and the more cautious gradualists on the other, as they strove to break the slaveholder's domination of the federal government andthen to wrest from the postbellum South an acknowledgment of the civil rights of the Negro. The author delineates their key role in founding the Republican party and follows their struggle to keep the party firm in its opposition to the expansion of slavery, to commit it to emancipation, and finally to make it the party of racial justice. This is the story as well of the tangled relationship of the Radical Republicans with Abraham Lincoln—a relationship of both quarrels and mutual support. The author stresses the similarity between Lincoln's ultimate aims and those of the Radical Republicans, demonstrating that without Lincoln's support Sumner and his colleagues could never have accomplished their ends—and that without their help Lincoln might not have succeeded in crushing the rebellion and putting an end to the slavery. And he argues that by 1865 Lincoln's Reconstruction policies were nearing those of the Radicals and that, had he lived, they would not have broken with him as they did with his successor. Lincoln's assassination left the Radicals with no means to translate their demands into effective action. Their efforts to remake the South in such a way as to secure justice for the Negro brought them into conflict with President Johnson, in whose impeachment they played a leading role. Although they succeeded in initiating congressional Reconstruction and adding the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, the Radicals lost power after the failure of the Johnson impeachment. Mr. Trefousse shows how, despite their declining influence throughout the 1870s, their accomplishments helped make possible—a century later—the resumption of the struggle for civil rights.

Reconstruction

Reconstruction PDF Author: Thaddeus Stevens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reconstruction
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description


The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights

The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights PDF Author: Barry M. Goldenberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692919545
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Winner of the prestigious Carey McWilliams Prize for best Undergraduate Honors History Thesis at the University of California, Los Angeles, The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights is a groundbreaking book that re-examines three of the most influential-but largely forgotten-civil rights leaders in American history. As civil rights history continues to hold a prominent place in American society, it is only through the courageous actions of Thaddeus Stevens, Ulysses S. Grant, and Charles Sumner that America's most prized Civil Rights gains are emblazoned in our Constitution. Without these powerful and then-famous politicians, the 1960's Civil Rights Movement would not have occurred the way it did--or possibly even at all. During the Reconstruction Era when racism and prejudice was at its height, Stevens, Grant, and Sumner valiantly fought for African American equality only years following the institution of slavery. The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights brings to life the personalities, the struggles, and the legacies of three men who strove towards America's claim of "liberty and justice for all" during this unprecedented time in our nation's history. Review "The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights is a model of excellent research, astute analysis, and engaging discourse....[Goldenberg] succeeds in both differentiating and connecting the efforts of these men to keep America on its uncertain course towards democracy." --UCLA Department of History

The Life and Loves of Thaddeus Stevens

The Life and Loves of Thaddeus Stevens PDF Author: Mark S Singel
Publisher: Sunbury Press
ISBN: 9781620062265
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The Life and Loves of Thaddeus Stevens is an insightful look at one of the most misunderstood figures of the 19th Century. Stevens, the driving force behind landmark civil rights laws, education policy, and economic development initiatives, is presented in this book as both an uncompromising politician and a vulnerable human shaped by his own passions. The book captures the highlights of Stevens's career at the local, state, and federal levels but does not shy away from the story of his relationships with several paramours. These relationships, whispered about during his lifetime and long after his death, denied him his proper place as a true historical figure, a key counselor to Presidents, and a visionary leader who lived and died for the basic right of equality for all men and women.

Secession on Trial

Secession on Trial PDF Author: Cynthia Nicoletti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108415520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This book explores the treason trial of President Jefferson Davis, where the question of secession's constitutionality was debated.