By Ross Hetrick
When Thaddeus Stevens misplaced his congressional seat representing Lancaster, PA in 1853, he thought he would by no means see Congress once more. “It’s greater than possible that hereafter I shall by no means meet any member right here or elsewhere,” Stevens instructed colleagues in March 1853. “I want to half with no unfriendly emotions in the direction of any of you,” he mentioned.
Was he ever mistaken. He would come again in 1858 as a Republican and he would develop into probably the most highly effective member of the Home of Representatives after the Civil Struggle. However regardless that he didn’t maintain political workplace throughout that interim interval, he was very concerned in politics, laying the bottom work for his comeback.
Stevens had moved from Gettysburg to Lancaster in 1842 to earn more money as a lawyer in a bigger metropolis to assist his money-losing Caledonia iron works close to Chambersburg. In 1848 he ran for Congress as a Whig and gained. Throughout his first two years, the largest challenge was the Compromise of 1850. In addition to bringing California into the Union as a free state and prohibiting the slave commerce in Washington, D.C. the measure included the notorious Fugitive Slave Act, which required residents wherever within the U.S. to help slaveholders in capturing fugitive slaves. In fact, Stevens was vehemently in opposition to it.
“The distinguished senator from Kentucky [Henry Clay] needs additional to make it the responsibility of all bystanders to assist within the seize of fugitives; to affix the chase and run down the prey,” Stevens mentioned in Congress. “That is asking greater than my constituents will ever grant. . . . No legislation that tyranny can move will ever induce them to affix the hue and cry after the trembling wretch who has escaped from unjust bondage.” Stevens phrases proved to be prophetic.
On September 11, 1851 a slaveowner in pursuit of fugitive slaves was meet by a self safety group of African People close to Christiana, a city close to Lancaster. The group blew a horn and neighbors got here to assist them, together with 4 white males. The slaveowner tried to recruit the white males who turned out to be Quakers they usually refused, The confrontation ended with the slaveowner being killed and the fugitive slaves escaping. The 4 Quakers together with different members had been placed on trial for treason in Independence Corridor in Philadelphia. Stevens was a member of the protection workforce that received all of them off.
Stevens’s opposition to the Compromise of 1850 and his participation within the Christiana Resistance case was an excessive amount of for the Silver Grays, conservative Whigs, who managed the celebration in Lancaster. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Stevens bowed out of the Whig nomination contest. However then Stevens took considered one of most controversial actions of his political profession, he joined the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic American celebration, also referred to as the Know-Nothings.
This would appear utterly in opposition to Stevens’s ideas of tolerance and spiritual freedom. But it surely made sense throughout this time of political celebration turmoil. The Whigs had been being torn aside over the slavery challenge and the Republican celebration was but to be born. In fact, the Democrat celebration, the slavery celebration, was not an possibility for Stevens. He additionally had a historical past of pursuing his personal agenda and ignoring the overall targets of no matter celebration he was in.
With the assist of the Know-Nothings. Stevens was in a position to get Anthony E. Roberts elected to Congress in 1854, defeating the Democratic and Whig candidates. Then in 1855 he joined the year-old Republican celebration, which extra intently aligned with Stevens’s a long time lengthy campaign in opposition to slavery. He then was elected to the Home of Representatives in 1858 and have become a pacesetter within the effort to legislatively destroy slavery.
Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA. Extra details about the Nice Commoner may be discovered on the Society’s web site: https://www.thaddeusstevenssociety.com/
Supply hyperlink