Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania

April 04, 1792

Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the fiery abolitionist, civil rights advocate, and leader of the Civil War-era Radical Republicans in the House, was born on the Vermont frontier in Danville. Afflicted with club foot, Stevens was a sickly child who immersed himself in study. He graduated from Dartmouth College, passed the Pennsylvania bar, and served in the state legislature before being elected as a Whig to the U.S. House in 1849. Stevens founded the Pennsylvania Republican Party and served as a House Republican from 1859 until his death in 1868. During the Civil War he chaired the Ways and Means Committee, making him the de facto Majority Leader. He also was an impeachment manager during the trial of President Andrew Johnson. Colleagues feared “Old Thad” as a parliamentarian who imperiously crushed opposition and enforced party discipline. Once provoked, Stevens would rise from his seat “by degrees, as a telescope is pulled out, until he stood in a most ungraceful attitude, his heavy black hair falling down over his cavernous brows, and his cold little eye twinkling with anger . . . he would lecture the offender . . . sweeping at him in uncouth gestures, as if he would clutch him and shake him.” Though pitiless toward his opponents, Stevens was widely admired by House Members for his unwavering devotion to the cause of freed blacks.

Related Highlight Subjects

• Artifacts in the House Collection (113)
• Civil War (10)
• Committee on Ways and Means (11)
• Johnson, Andrew (13)
• Reconstruction (18)
• Stevens, Thaddeus (5)

Cite

Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania was one of seven impeachment managers to serve during the trial of President Andrew Johnson. Tinted photograph, after Matthew Brady, ca. 1960, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives.