Meet Thaddeus Stevens: The Original Civil Rights Advocate

Arnold: 00:00:00

We're going to talk about an individual today who maybe you'd know and maybe you don't know, but he was one of the most important opponents of slavery in American history. He was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and helped guide measures essential to finance the Civil War.

He's also in charge of the Appropriations Committee during Reconstruction. He's considered the father of the 14th amendment. He was a key mover of the 13th amendment and advocated for passage of the 5th, 15th amendment.

He prevented the takeover of Congress by Southern and Northern Democrats immediately after the Civil War. His unsuccessful plan to confiscate land from rich Confederates and redistribute it to freed slaves was also known as 40 acres and a mule.

He led the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. He was the most powerful congressman during and after the Civil War and one of the most revered men in the country.

When he died but a decade later, he was one of the best hated men. He fought for the abolition of slavery, equal protection under the law, universal suffrage and free public education.

And his grave is emblazoned equality of man before his creator. We're going to find out who he was today on St. Louis in Tune. Welcome to St. Louis in Tune.

We thank you for joining us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders and everyday people who make a difference in shaping our society and world. I'm Arnold Stricker along with Mark Langston. Marcus Langston is. Mark, how you doing?

Mark: 00:01:37

I know. How are you? I'm doing fine, actually. I know.

Arnold: 00:01:41

Did I spark your curiosity with that introduction?

Mark: 00:01:44

I did. For a minute there, I thought, how old is our guest?

Arnold: 00:01:46

No, it's not our guest. It's the person we're going to talk about. Yeah, he was born before the Civil War.

Mark: 00:01:53

Whoa, hold on.

Arnold: 00:01:54

He's very seasoned.

Mark: 00:01:56

Resume there, right? Somebody's propping him up.

Arnold: 00:02:01

We're glad that you've joined us today, folks, and I want to thank our sponsor, better rate mortgage. Betterratemortgage.com you can listen to previous shows of St.

Louis intune@stlintune.com please help us to continue to grow by leaving a review on our website, st.luntune.com, apple podcast or your preferred podcast platform. Our Return to Civility Today deals with travel and if you're traveling with a colleague, have a conversation with them.

Mark: 00:02:30

Wow.

Arnold: 00:02:31

Yeah. That's remarkable. Just don't focus on your computer screen or your phone. Take the opportunity to learn something new about your colleague.

Mark: 00:02:41

There you go. I think that's Good advice it is.

Arnold: 00:02:44

Why ignore? I walk around and I see people walking the dog and all. They got their head down in their phone. And I'm like, we live in the city.

Things happen in the city. Be aware of your surroundings. Enjoy whatever trees and grass we have in the city.

Mark: 00:03:00

Does it mean that when I see someone with their head down and they're walking towards me and they're going, they're gonna hit me. I just don't move. I wait to see if they put their head up. And it's usually the last moment.

Arnold: 00:03:13

Unless they've got earbuds in.

Mark: 00:03:14

Oh, yeah.

Arnold: 00:03:15

Then that's. They have no clue.

Mark: 00:03:17

Yeah. That's a whole other thing. I've been talking to my family members. You know, my son Michael, I was talking to him the other day and I.

Not answering me. And he had headbutts. Earbuds in. Yeah. Okay, never mind.

Arnold: 00:03:28

It's something else. If you're traveling with a colleague, have a conversation with him. Our conversation today is with Bruce Levine. He's author and professor emeritus.

He's the J.G. randall Distinguished professor of History Emeritus at the University of Illinois.

He previously taught at the University of Cincinnati and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

He's published five books on the Civil War era, including the Fall of the House of Dixie, the Civil War, and Social Revolution that Transformed the South.

best nonfiction books of: 2005

the Civil war era in December: 2011

g to talk about his book from: 2021

Louis in Tune.

Bruce: 00:04:43

Thank you, Arnold. Good morning to you both.

Arnold: 00:04:45

I am really. I've been looking forward to this because I think we. I contacted you.

It was probably about a month and a half ago and we were able to finally get this together. But Thaddeus Stevens, he is.

Who was Thaddeus Stevens and why are we not familiar with him and the things that he accomplished that I read about at the beginning of the show.

Bruce: 00:05:07

You did a good job at the beginning of the show in saying who he was.

He was a fighter for the Abolition of slavery, and after the Civil War, the fight a fighter for a genuinely multiracial democracy in the United States.

And I think one reason we don't know more about him is that the history we learn and the history we remember tends to focus on a handful of individuals.

When we talk about the Civil rights movement, for example, we almost always focus solely on Martin Luther King, as though he pulled the Civil rights movement out of his thumb, rather than that it was a mass movement of a large number of people and a large number of other leaders. So we've had a Mount Rushmore way of thinking about history, but of course, history is a lot more complicated than that.

The other reason that we don't know more about him is that he was a very radical opponent of slavery.

And once slavery was abolished and those who put an end to it began to settle back into their older ways of thinking and got comfortable and began to pull back from the radicalism that had put an end to slavery. They began to think of Stevens as a dangerous man, as someone who was too radical, too revolutionary and blackened his name.

And that remained true until not very long ago.

Arnold: 00:06:52

And what was the reason? I know that there was a movie that was put out on Lincoln.

Was that kind of the impetus of bringing Stevens really good qualities to the forefront in your book also? Because previously he was really not known. There was not a lot of, what I would say, good press on him.

Bruce: 00:07:09

That's right. There was not a lot of good press on him.

The press on him began to improve, as you might Expect after the 20th century Civil rights movement, as the country began to rethink its views on the relationship between black and white. It also began to rethink its attitude toward those who had fought for what we call racial equality.

But until the movie about Lincoln and the 13th Amendment, very few people knew anything at all about him. Though I'd have to add that the depiction of Stevens in that movie is very ambivalent.

On the one hand, it gives him more attention and more positive attention than he'd received, certainly in anything produced by Hollywood in a long time.

But on the other hand, he's made to appear too radical, too brittle, too stubborn, almost as much an obstacle to the passage of the 13th Amendment as a facilitator of that amendment. So even that film, I think, gives a false impression of the role of Stevens.

For example, you'd never know from that movie, which focuses on Lincoln's role, that Thaddeus Stevens had been advocating the substance of the 13th Amendment at least a year before Lincoln agreed to endorse it.

Mark: 00:08:41

Bruce, did Thaddeus Stevens get along with Abraham Lincoln? Were they allies?

Bruce: 00:08:48

They were allies, but they were not identical.

Politically steep had been in contact with Lincoln for many years, back into the days when both of them belonged not yet to a Republican party which had not yet been formed, but to the old Whig party. And they had been in correspondence with one another.

But Thaddeus Stevens was always ahead of Lincoln, always readier than Lincoln, to advocate for the abolition of slavery and for measures associated with the abolition of slavery.

And Lincoln eventually came to find Stevens once Lincoln is in the White House and Stevens is, in a certain sense, on the outside, pounding on the door, demanding that Lincoln move more quickly.

Began to think of Lincoln as a rather annoying fellow, but nonetheless recognized that people like Stevens were on the same side of history, that he was just.

Mark: 00:09:52

Lincoln was moving too slow.

Bruce: 00:09:55

So that's certainly how Stevens and people who saw things the way Stevens saw things, thought of Lincoln.

Arnold: 00:10:03

And he was like that even in Pennsylvania. It's what I gleaned from your book.

Because even in saving education in Pennsylvania, as the way the legislature was going, was it because of he was such a great writer or a great orator, or he just really pushed things politically. He knew who to push when or was able to engage the masses to support his cause.

What made him who he was back in the state of Pennsylvania when he was in the state legislature there.

Bruce: 00:10:36

So we're now back in the: 1830

We're back into the mid-: 1830

But then there was a reaction against that passage on the part of citizens who had a very narrow view, by modern standards, of what the government should be doing and what their responsibilities were to their fellow citizens, who felt that each individual should be in charge of obtaining education for his or her own children, but not for the children of others.

And that public pressure for a time got the measure that Stevens helped to pass reversed, withdrawn, and Stevens fought very hard to have it restored.

And at one point, when he was in the state Constitutional Convention, if I remember this correctly, it was a very effective speech that he delivered about the importance of public education for all that turned the tide in the convention and salvaged that law.

Arnold: 00:12:15

Was this his feeling about what I'm going to call the underdog of society. Because he grew up poor? Was it because of the people who he mixed with or rubbed shoulders with?

But his support of public education, for all, his support of blacks being freed and having equal status in society was really way ahead of where the rest of the country was at that time. Where did this come from?

Bruce: 00:12:44

Yeah, I think there are multiple sources.

I read pretty deeply into the sources on his childhood and youth, and what came to light was that there were multiple sources, multiple influences on his early devotion to what you rightly called the underdogs of society.

First of all, he was raised in a state, Vermont, that was probably the most radically democratic in the Union in the early years, in part because that state had been through a major struggle precisely for the rights of the underdogs, the rights of small farmers, and the rights of people to have a government that was responsible, responsive to them. And Vermont created the early state of Vermont for itself, a state government that was one of the most democratic in structure in the country.

It was also the state whose constitution was the most hostile to slavery in the country. It's the only state in the Union at that point that specifically denounces slavery.

His family's religion, Baptism, furthermore, was a radically democratic religion, at least in the northern states. It derived from the 17th century revolution in England against the monarchy.

And that was another influence upon him because members of that religion, including, and perhaps specifically in Vermont, were very devoted to democratic rights, partly to defend themselves against religious persecution of the kind that they had faced back in England.

And, of course, he, as you say, did indeed credit his own early poverty with empathy for others who had not the advantages of the wealthy, and especially the hereditarily wealthy people who had inherited wealth from their parents and grandparents.

So these and other multiple influences shaped him, and they continued to shape him as he went through school and read various books and spoke to teachers who had one or another of these same views.

Mark: 00:15:15

He was born with a disability, too, I believe, and that probably, I would think, affected how people looked at him and his family as he grew up back in that time.

Bruce: 00:15:27

Yes, he was born with a club foot, and a neighbor recalls that other boys made fun of him and that this really stung. And it's been suggested that this, too made him more sympathetic with people who, in general, were disadvantaged.

And that seems to me quite possible, though Stevens himself, to my knowledge, never said so. But it seems logical to me that he would have carried that feeling forward.

Mark: 00:16:01

I agree.

Arnold: 00:16:02

This is Arnold Stricker With Mark Langston of St. Louis in Tune, we're talking to Bruce Levine. He's the author of the book we're talking about, Thaddeus Stevens.

And we'll post that, folks, so you can get that book on. It's on Amazon, and it's a really good read. Bruce, you've done some extreme thorough research about this.

I had wanted you to continue with his life because he went from Vermont, he was just not poor. He got a law degree, he went to Pennsylvania, and he was a businessman also. Can you talk about his career prior to him getting into the US Congress?

Bruce: 00:16:35

Yeah, he was. He. He was, as you say, an attorney. By all accounts, a very good, very effective attorney.

An individual able to understand quickly what was involved in any case that came before him and able to express clearly, more clearly than most others, before a jury or before a judge, the rights and wrongs of the case that made him an effective attorney and a popular attorney. So he prospered as an attorney.

And with the proceeds of that prosperity, he began to invest in real estate and in ironworks, which were, of course, by later standards, pretty small scale, but nonetheless invested in them and had substantial number. Those ironworks didn't always do very well, but Stevens would never close the ironworks down so that those employees would continue to have work.

And those who worked for him were quite attached to him.

And during the Civil War, when Confederate troops were approaching his ironworks in Pennsylvania, it was his employees that made sure that he got the hell out of there before the Confederates could reach the works. Because Stevens was a marked man in the eyes of the Confederates.

r of the convention called in: 1836

And he played an important role there on a number of issues and was a member of various political parties before the Republican Party was formed.

Arnold: 00:18:43

Yeah. My next question you rolled. You must be looking at my questions here, because there's the dynamics.

, in the: 1850

And the dynamics of these multiple parties, strife within parties, strife between parties. He seemed to move through all that dynamics to still accomplish things. How did he do that?

Bruce: 00:19:13

He was somebody who had a pretty good idea of what he stood for and a pretty good idea of how to navigate choppy political waters. And so as party organizations rose and fell, he managed to leap from one to the next as though they were icebergs passing in front of him.

Not sure how good a metaphorical image that is, but I hope you understand what I mean.

Mark: 00:19:43

I get it.

Bruce: 00:19:43

He first belonged to something very oddly named the Anti Masonic Party, A party dedicated, as its name implied, to fighting the order of the Masons.

hey appeared to people in the: 1820

It was a secret society whose members pledged themselves secretly to support one another over all others in all aspects of life, including both business and politics.

And to somebody who believed in democracy and believed that secret political alliances and secret political organization was dangerous to democracy, the Masons looked, I think, legitimately quite dangerous. And it was Stevens insistence on democracy and hostility to secrecy that drove him forward and drove that party forward.

And it exercised a considerable political attraction for the population and considerable political power for some years until the point was reached that the Masons actually were forced into retreat. And only at that point did the Anti Masonic Party lose its purpose and people like Stevens had to find someplace else to go.

And that's when he went into what was called the Whig Party, W H I G, which is named after an English party from earlier period, end from the 19th century as well.

Mark: 00:21:42

Now that's a different party than the Whig Party that was at the beginning of our democracy. Wasn't. Was.

Bruce: 00:21:49

Yes.

Mark: 00:21:50

Okay, so Washington was in the Whig Party, Was he or no, I think.

Bruce: 00:21:55

You'Re thinking of the Federalists.

Mark: 00:21:57

Okay.

Bruce: 00:21:58

Because there was as yet, people referred to themselves in the revolutionary era as Whigs with a small wood. But it was an informal category. It wasn't the political party.

Mark: 00:22:10

Okay, thank you. Thank you for clearing that.

Bruce: 00:22:13

Sure. The Whig Party doesn't form until a number of decades later.

And it forms as the party which is most single mindedly devoted to what we would call the development of American capitalism and to state support for that development.

And Stevens very strongly believed in the development of again, what we call capitalism, what they call free labor society, and believed that this was the engine of human progress in general. And so his adherence to the Whig Party was quite natural and seemed quite logical.

Arnold: 00:22:59

What was underlying all these parties and his Jumping from what I would call iceberg to iceberg was the anti slavery movement was really the abolition of slavery. And how they all believed that, to the extent that they believed it and how he was pushing them, it seemed like he would.

That party's really not coming out as strong. This party is coming out stronger. And that was even presented when presidential candidates were put up from these particular parties. Correct.

Am I reading that correctly in your book?

Bruce: 00:23:32

You are reading that correctly.

When he was in the anti Mason Party, it was he and his fellow members of that party who in the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention most consistently fought for the rights of black people in Pennsylvania.

When he went into the Whig Party, his natural allies were members of that party who were the most determined to do away with slavery and to give equal rights to former slaves or to free black residents of the North.

And ultimately, when the Whig Party proved unwilling to do what Stevens considered necessary along those lines, he left the Whig Party and set out to join the Republican Party, which of course was much more committed to anti slavery policies.

But even there, he was way ahead of most members of that party and had to struggle in order to get that party to adopt the measures that he deemed necessary both before, during, and after the war.

Mark: 00:24:51

He's answering questions, answering questions that I want to ask about the Republican Party. Seems like they were on the cutting edge, even though they weren't moving as quickly as he wanted them to.

They were on the cutting edge, though, of everything.

Bruce: 00:25:05

Yeah, they were. In the mid-: 1850

To call yourself anti slavery, to fight against slavery, did indeed put you on the cutting edge. And as.

. But the Republican Party in: 1856

But I say only, even though that was still a pretty radical position at the time, at least in many parts of the country, it stood only for preventing the further expansion geographically, of slavery, said nothing about doing away with slavery and made no pretension to doing away with slavery.

Mark: 00:26:22

Interesting.

Arnold: 00:26:23

Yeah. Just to make sure California and New Mexico didn't have slavery.

Mark: 00:26:27

Yeah.

Bruce: 00:26:27

And it was on that basis that Abraham Lincoln gets elected to the presidency four years later.

Mark: 00:26:33

Wow. Crazy.

Arnold: 00:26:35

We're talking to Bruce Levine. He is the J.G.

randall Distinguished professor of History, Emeritus at the University of Illinois and we're talking about his book, Thaddeus Stevens, Civil War revolutionary and fighter for racial justice. We're going to come back and talk more to Bruce about some other questions and other items about Thaddeus Stevens. So don't go away.

This is Arnold Sterk with Mark Langston of St Lucian. Tunes as strange as it may sound, at Better Rate Mortgage we love talking to people about mortgages. Everyone in St.

Louis promises a better mortgage rate. But what you really need to turn that perfect house into your dream home is a better mortgage.

At Better Rate Mortgage, we open the door to so much more. So where are you in the home buying process? Researching, maybe wondering how much you can afford? House hunting.

Get a pre approval from Better Rate Mortgage Ready to buy.

Our team is ready to make your mortgage process fast and easy, whether you're purchasing your first home or taking cash out to make your dream home even dreamier. Our door is open. Come on in and get started. Today we'll show you how.

-: 3293

Mark: 00:27:56

I didn't know you could read so fast.

Bruce: 00:28:00

Foreign.

Arnold: 00:28:06

Welcome back to St. Louis in Tune. This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston.

,: 1850

I entertain no ill will toward any human being, nor any brute that I know of, not even the democratic skunk across the way to which I referred. Least of all would I reproach the South. I honor her courage and fidelity. Even in a bad, a wicked cause, she shows a united front.

All her sons are faithful to the cause of human bondage because it is their cause. But the north, the poor, timid, mercenary, driveling north, has no such united defenders of her cause, although it is the cause of human liberty.

She has offered up a sacrifice to propitiate Southern tyranny, to conciliate Southern treason. We were able to dig that out of the St. Louis in tune archives. Bruce, I don't know if you were able to hear that when you were doing your research.

Bruce: 00:29:19

That can't be Thaddeus Stevens himself, because there were no such devices that could record A person's voice in those days.

Arnold: 00:29:30

Very good. Very good.

Mark: 00:29:31

Letting us see behind the curtain.

Arnold: 00:29:33

Yeah, yeah. Don't open that curtain up.

Bruce: 00:29:36

But those were certainly his words.

Arnold: 00:29:38

Yes, he had.

Something I gleaned from your book is that even though he may have disagreed with things that were going on or the direction that they were going on, he would abide by them because they were part of the law. But he wouldn't stop trying to push the envelope, per se, to correct it into the course that he thought was a more accurate and true course.

Bruce: 00:30:07

al. The Fugitive slave law of: 1850

And that, of course, was precisely the purpose of the Underground Railroad. So Stevens in general, abided by the law, but not always.

Arnold: 00:30:46

He even used. I don't say used is probably not the right word for that. I'm finding my note.

His secretary, or what we would call maybe common law wife at the time, helped with that.

And he had a network that he had developed around his business in Pennsylvania, especially on the border of Maryland, and was able to see those who were escaping get names of maybe some of the slave hunters who were fighting. And he would.

Bruce: 00:31:18

That's right.

Arnold: 00:31:18

Make sure that they would know more about this than I do. I'm just regurgitating some of the things that.

Bruce: 00:31:22

But you're right. But you're right. All indications are that his offices became a secret hiding place for fugitive slaves as well.

Archaeological work that's been done on the. Really, the ruins of his office gives good indication that it was used that way.

in later years, in the later: 1850

We also have communicationswritten, communications by him saying that he knew of dangers, threats to fugitives in his area and was urging them on to Canada in order to escape those slave hunters.

So there's not much question about that at all, that he actively used whatever means were at his disposal to undermine slavery and to assist people fleeing from it.

Arnold: 00:32:30

Move a little bit into when he became a congressman and was really getting involved in the war starting. And he's now in probably one of the most powerful positions as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mark: 00:32:44

He had quite a lot of opposition, didn't he? Running for Congress. I don't think There was a lot of people against that idea of him running.

Bruce: 00:32:53

in Congress at the end of the: 1840

he opposed the Compromise of: 1850

And it also included the Fugitive Slave Law, which made it easier for slave hunters to recapture alleged fugitives and denied people accused of being fugitives virtually any right to defend themselves, whether in court or anywhere else. The Democrats and the Whigs supported it. Abraham Lincoln supported it. Abraham Lincoln, who was a Whig like Stevens supported it.

Stevens opposed it, loudly opposed it. And as a result of which his relationship with the Whig party broke down.

And the Whig party in Lancaster, where he lived refused to re nominate him for his seat in Congress and refused to nominate an ally of his for the same seat when it became clear to Stephens that he himself could not regain that seat. And that was really the end of Stevens relationship with the Whig party.

rty when he ran once again in: 1858

Mark: 00:34:57

Wow. Okay.

Arnold: 00:34:59

How did he.

Was it because his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee and because of his firm convictions that he became such a major force in the Congress during the time?

Bruce: 00:35:13

It certainly gave him that kind of formal power as chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He was the equivalent of a majority leader on the House floor.

So he had a good deal of power in organizing the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives.

But it was his personal abilities and his personal opinions that transformed that formal political power into effective anti slavery action that made him the figure that he was. He was really riding two horses at this point.

He's both a leader of the party as a whole in his capacity as chairman of that committee and as floor leader. But he's also a leader of the minority radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress.

The radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress was a minority of the Republican Party there. Excuse me. And so he managed rather amazingly to do both things at once. Excuse me.

Arnold: 00:36:29

His ideas and very good ideas.

The Freedmen's Bureau, the 40 acres in a mule and all of those things to really not make it be A conceptualize it, but make it a reality for all blacks to be equal part of a society. From the Declaration were just. He really pushed those but got shut down during a reconstruction time.

And I know he battled with Andrew Johnson fiercely. They I think Johnson really hated him a lot. Not a lot hated him completely. Didn't have anything good to say about him.

But he really wanted to press those things further and see them to fruition. And even keeping the south, those people who had decided to not secede if they wanted to come back, they had to adopt and ratify the 14th Amendment.

d the election in what is it,: 1876

Bruce: 00:37:37

76.

Arnold: 00:37:38

76. That just things fell completely away. And I often wonder what our country would be like had those things come to fruition.

Bruce: 00:37:46

But it's a good question on the issue of land, which was a major defeat that he suffered.

Stevens, as you said earlier, wanted to confiscate all the large slaveholding estates or the estates that had previously been based on slave labor and divide them up into small farms among the former slaves. And he didn't originate that idea.

The former slaves themselves originated that idea and tried to carry it out whenever they could during the war and after. But he is the one who spearheaded the measures in the Congress.

And from one point of view, one would have thought he'd have every opportunity to achieve success there.

Because in one kind of measure after another, he had started off introducing a radical idea that had seemed too radical for most of his, even his Republican colleagues, and had won them over only when circumstances demonstrated to them that he had been right, that these things were necessary, such as, for example, bringing black men into the Union army as full fledged soldiers, which was a very radical idea at first. But on the subject of seizing land, he ran up against the brick wall and the Republican Party would not support him.

The Republican Party had moved to abolish slavery because they had always considered enslavement to be illegitimate. Even though they had not been quick to seek its abolition. They had always considered it to be a wrong.

That was not true, however, of the holding of land which they the right to hold land they held as dear as anybody else. And so when he introduces the idea of confiscating that land, the Republican party basically says no.

He's also running into the problem more broadly, as I mentioned earlier, that once the war is over and Once slavery is abolished, a substantial portion of the Northern population, which had moved steadily to the left, towards more and more radical measures against slavery. That portion of the Northern population began to back away. The job is done. They basically said the south, the threat to the Union is removed.

Slavery now is abolished. Now let's get back to business, business as usual.

Let us re knit cordial relations with the white south and let us get back to making money, which involves smooth dealings with the south and commerce between north and South.

And now the wind that had previously been in Stephen's sails suddenly dies out and he finds himself without the same power that he had prior to and especially during the war and leads him to very pessimistic conclusions on the eve of his own death.

Arnold: 00:41:17

That's something that. I haven't finished the book. I think I've got one more chapter to go. That what you just said makes perfect sense. The war is over.

Everybody wants to get back to quote unquote normal, but maybe normal for them.

But there's still the slaves and other free blacks who are still struggling to be able to vote, be able to be free, be able to have the same rights that everybody else has. And now that energy is focused in another direction. That makes perfect sense to me.

Bruce: 00:41:46

Well, that's what you just said is quite right. And it points us toward an important fact and all of this, which is the north was not anti racist. You didn't have to oppose racism to oppose slavery.

You didn't have to sympathize with black people in order to oppose slavery. The north turned en masse against slavery only when it decided that slavery threatened its own rights, its own interests.

And once that was accomplished, support for those measures dissolves. And the fact that black people are still endangered more than in danger.

The fact that black people are being killed by the tens and hundreds and thousands after the Civil War is of little import to huge numbers of whites in the North. And it didn't matter that people like Stevens kept sticking these facts under the noses of his colleagues. It did not motivate them.

It did not impress them. They had other axes to grind and most of those were the ones I mentioned a moment ago. Prosperity, commerce and political compromise.

Arnold: 00:43:11

We painted him in a. He's very truthful in what he believes and put his money where his mouth was and his actions with what he believed.

Knowing what we know now about what's going on today in the world with the tariffs and everything. And it's interesting that you mentioned about commerce. He believed in tariffs, but this was during the Civil War time. Correct.

And talk about the exertion of his belief. Was he full in on that or was it just like a temporary thing or.

I'm not comparing that to President Trump now and what's going on in our world today, but wanted to get an understanding of what his tariff belief was.

Bruce: 00:43:50

ong advocate of capitalism in: 1850

It was indeed a very progressive force.

And when Stevens equated the future of capitalism with the future of freedom, he was speaking about conditions of his day and did indeed have his finger on something.

Even people far more radical than Thaddeus Stevens, people like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, saw capitalism as a progressive force compared to slavery, feudalism and other forms of older society, and supported struggles to bet the further development of capitalism, which you can bet Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wouldn't be doing today as a young, newborn capitalist economy in a former colony. Stevens and others supported tariffs to protect what they called infant industries against the competition of the British Empire.

That we could not develop industries like iron and textiles and others without some kind of tariff protection so that these industries could at least get off the ground. We're talking about a time when probably the average number of employees in any given enterprise is something between 5 and 10.

Mark: 00:45:47

Right.

Bruce: 00:45:48

Not hundreds and thousands. And so it's. His support for the tariffs is specific to its time and place.

Mark: 00:45:57

Perfect answer.

Bruce: 00:45:58

I think.

Mark: 00:45:58

Yeah. Tariff protection is what you used. I think. And that to me explains exactly what was going on.

They're trying to protect a brand new industry and a brand new economy. And I think it's very proper in that context to use tariffs and the tariff protection that it offers. I think that's where it really means a lot. Yeah.

Bruce: 00:46:22

If we get into the area of opinion, then it seems to me, my personal opinion is a tariff means one thing.

If it's in a little landlocked African country like Lesotho trying to protect its meager resources and industry compared to tariffs imposed by these great big powerful economies like the United States or Europe or Japan, which has an entirely different significance in my opinion today.

Mark: 00:46:54

I agree. I totally agree with you.

Arnold: 00:46:56

Perfect sense.

Mark: 00:46:57

Can I say also something I had no idea about Thaddeus Stevens? He we should be teaching in the schools. I've never heard of him. My academic career never knew about Thaddeus Stevens. I'm reading some things on him.

He even worked on the impeachment of President Johnson back then. Oh, yeah. And the education, it just goes on and on. Bruce, he's an amazing contributor, I think, to the development of our country.

Bruce: 00:47:29

I, of course, I agree, which is why I invested all the time and energy in this book to try to bring him to a bigger audience. To this day, I'm startled by how few people know about him. Even I'll say to somebody, have you seen the.

You know, I'll tell them about this book, and they'll give me a blank look and I'll say, did you see the Lincoln movie? And I'm shocked at how few people even saw that movie.

Arnold: 00:47:57

Really.

Mark: 00:47:58

Yeah, I get that, too. Yeah. I'm so glad that you did this book. I'm sorry to take the selective ramp here in this little. But I'm finding it to be fascinating to delve into.

And we've only got an hour here to talk about Thaddeus. But my goodness, even if you go to Wikipedia, it is a long page on Thaddeus Stevens and all of the contributions and different things that he did.

We should have a statue somewhere on the guy. I don't know if there's anything.

Bruce: 00:48:29

I think, in fact, in Lancaster, they did just raise a statue to him. I've got a copy of. Or at least a bust of him. I've got a copy of. It doesn't look a whole lot like him, but better than nothing.

And his offices are in the process in Lancaster of being turned into a museum.

Arnold: 00:48:48

Correct.

Bruce: 00:48:49

And I'm looking forward to its opening. And there's another, smaller museum in Gettysburg created by the Thaddeus Stevens Society and Ross Hetrick, who is its president.

I suspect, by the way, that the recording that you had earlier is Ross's words.

Arnold: 00:49:09

Very good.

Bruce: 00:49:10

Ross's voice.

Mark: 00:49:10

Yeah, Very good.

Arnold: 00:49:13

I really want to thank you, Bruce, for writing the book. And you have to have a real man just burning desire to find out about something like this.

And, folks, you don't realize how much time it takes to write a book like this. Matter of fact, Bruce, how much. How many years did it take you to do all the research and get the book completed?

Bruce: 00:49:36

The book itself took about five years, but the book was only possible.

It was only possible to do it in five years because I had been teaching about the Civil War and its causes and its aftermath for 20 to 30 years by the time I got around to this book. And during the course of all those years, I had been reading and thinking and writing Smaller things about Stevens. So it was a major undertaking.

Arnold: 00:50:04

Justice. It was published in: 2021

Oh, it's not current. It is the most current book in the last 150 years on Thaddeus Stevens.

Bruce: 00:50:23

Thank you.

Mark: 00:50:23

I'm not sure if the title really tells the tale because there's so much here about Thaddeus Stevens. Thank you for the contribution of this book to our society. Honestly, this will long live past your days and mine.

Arnold: 00:50:38

And it's a. I would encourage everyone to get this. I'll post a link to Amazon for you to be able to check that out.

Bruce, is there any effort to maybe do an abridged version or a younger version? This is. It's a pretty intense read. Not that any high school student or middle school student who really knew how to read could get the content.

But is there thoughts to make it a little more junior high schoolish?

Bruce: 00:51:05

Not to my knowledge, though I would, of course be open to it. There is also a recorded books version of this book for people who don't enjoy reading as much.

And of course, this book itself is in paperback, so it makes it a little more obtainable.

Arnold: 00:51:24

And it's also available on a Kindle. That's how I have mine.

Bruce: 00:51:27

That's right.

Mark: 00:51:28

Oh, wait. Okay. All right.

Arnold: 00:51:29

Rich Levine, thank you very much for taking your time to talk to us on St. Louis in Tune today. This has been an outstanding show and a great, great understanding of who Thaddeus Stevens was.

And again, thank you, Bruce, for your time today and the book.

Mark: 00:51:42

The contribution. Yes, great contribution.

Bruce: 00:51:44

Thank you, Arnold and Mark, I really appreciate your having me on.

Mark: 00:51:47

Yeah.

Arnold: 00:51:48

You take care, sir.

Bruce: 00:51:49

Such smart questions.

Mark: 00:51:52

Thank you so much.

Arnold: 00:51:53

Have a great week, sir.

Mark: 00:51:54

Tell my wife that, would you please, that I. Smart questions. Appreciate that a lot. You too. Bye bye now. There you go.

Arnold: 00:52:03

This is one of those things, Mark, that it's like a piece of gold or a diamond that you have to work for to get, but once you get it, it's. Wow.

Mark: 00:52:17

Really? I went to Wikipedia during this because who is this Thaddeus Stevens guy? I've never really ever heard of Thaddeus Stevens before today.

And there is so much on him and so much what he did to help the country in so many different ways.

Arnold: 00:52:35

Yeah, his Wikipedia page is huge.

Mark: 00:52:37

It is.

Arnold: 00:52:37

It's really huge. And Bruce's books on there.

And folks, these are the kinds of things that we like to do here on the show to give you information and spur an interest for you to check this out. And maybe you don't get Bruce's book. Maybe you just read the Wikipedia page.

You're just that much more knowledgeable about why we are in the shape we are today. The good things about it, the bad things about it. How many guys are like that in the Congress today?

Not very many are there who have the courage and the conviction to stand for what they believe no matter what.

Mark: 00:53:15

Yeah. And he had a. All started off with a club foot. Him and his brother was even born.

Arnold: 00:53:20

Brother had two club feet.

Mark: 00:53:21

Oh, is that right? Okay, so it's. Yeah. What a tough beginning.

Arnold: 00:53:24

And dad left them when they were young.

Mark: 00:53:26

Unbelievable.

Arnold: 00:53:27

On a farm with mom. But something also interesting is he was so successful in his capitalistic enterprise that he bought, I think it's his mother, a 200 acre farm.

And when he died, he left Lydia Hamilton Smith, his secretary maybe would be called common law wife. $500 to sustain. And when she. That doesn't sound like a lot now, but it was then.

And when she died, she left money for the perpetual care of her grave.

Mark: 00:54:00

Oh.

Arnold: 00:54:02

So check these folks out. Thaddeus Steam. We'll put all the links in in the show notes so you can take a look at those.

Mark: 00:54:08

Yeah. Modest beginnings.

Arnold: 00:54:10

Yes.

Mark: 00:54:11

Didn't let that hold them back.

Arnold: 00:54:13

Perpetuate or not perpetuated propelled them forward into greatness. It did propel them forward into.

Mark: 00:54:19

I always love to see stories like that.

Arnold: 00:54:20

Yes, we do. And so folks, if you want to catch more of those stories, you can catch those@stalentune.com that's all for this hour.

We're not going to do any jokes today. Oh, you probably had all the sound ready to go.

Mark: 00:54:34

I'm ready. I know there's some in there.

Arnold: 00:54:37

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can listen to additional shows.

As I mentioned@stalentune.com Consider leaving a review on our website, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser or your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and continue to grow.

Want to thank Bob Bertha Sell for our theme music, Better Rate Mortgage, to be our sponsor, our guest, Bruce Levine and co host, Mark Langston. And we thank you, our audience, for being a part of our community of curious minds. St.

Louis in tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US Radio Network. Remember to keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy and let your light shine. For St. Louis in tune, I'm Arnold Stricker.