Thaddeus

Back in the 1950s, when I was being badly educated, I learned that Thaddeus Stevens, a prominent congress member in the Civil War era, was a horrible man. I was taught that Stevens was a "Radical Republican," who pushed hard to punish the South for its sins, making knitting the divided nation together in 1866 difficult. Thaddeus Stevens wouldn't let the wounds heal.

That made good sense if you didn't know that Stevens had devoted his life--and risked it--to fighting slavers. He was a working-class guy whose mother somehow managed to put him through Dartmouth, which led him to a leadership position. He was known for what we now call empathy and generosity. Once when he learned that a widow was about to lose her home, he bought it and gave it to her. He was also known for brilliant maneuvers and sarcastic wit on the floor of congress. 

The negative view in California history texts of the Radical Republicans went along with admiration for the chivalrous Robert E. Lee,  who once had an enslaved black woman whipped for insolence. 

What had actually made Thaddeus Stevens a villain in American history texts--I discovered many years later-- was his absolute insistence that black men be given citizenship and the right to vote, to sit on juries and to own property after the Civil War.  Stevens--who lived with a woman of mixed race and left her a pension when he died-- had no doubt that all men are created equal. At the time (and for the next hundred years), many white men considered that view radical, absurd, even evil.

A few years ago there was a popular movie about a short section of Lincoln's life, and in it, Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, was accurately portrayed as a tough and witty progressive who knew when to compromise. The times they are a'changing.