The Life of Thaddeus Stevens , by James Albert Woodburn , Ph. D., Professor of American History and Politics in Indiana University. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1913. Pp. 620.)

For the greater part of the most momentous decade of our history the figure of “old Thad Stevens” moved conspicuous in the very thickest of political strife. Gifted as few men have been with the powers that make for parliamentary leadership, he impressed his radical views and cynical personality upon nearly all the important policies and legislation of the years 1861 to 1868. There seems to be material in abundance for an adequate biography, and there has long been a need of something more comprehensive than the little volume by McCall in the “American Statesmen” series.

Professor Woodburn disclaims any intention of writing a definitive biography, but has tried to “enable Stevens to speak more fully for himself than he has been allowed to do by others who have treated in a more limited way his principles and policies.” The greater part of the volume is in fact drawn directly from the speeches of Stevens on the important subjects of slavery, war finances, and reconstruction policies. This side of the work is well done and the book will be very helpful to the student who wishes to get at Stevens's real views without the toil of exhuming them from the Congressional Globe. Beyond this, however, the work is disappointing. The author seems to have drawn his knowledge of the period from a very narrow range of reading; he has fallen completely under the spell of Stevens's brilliant speeches, and betrays not the slightest element of that sympathetic understanding of all sides of great controversies which is so essential to the historian. In this respect he shows far less of balanced and discriminative judgment than McCall whose book is itself not without defects of this sort.

Professor Woodburn seems wholly unable to understand the point of view of the southern men in Congress in the decade preceding the war, but tacitly assumes that Stevens's view of the situation was the correct one. The only other explanation is that he regards it as his sole duty to set forth the ideas of the Pennsylvania radical without furnishing us any other guide to that political labyrinth. With Stevens's radical opinions on the constitutional issues of the war, Professor Woodburn is in strong sympathy and one of the best chapters of the book deals with this subject. In endorsing Stevens's strictures on Lincoln's cautious policy, he seems unable to appreciate the necessity the president was under of not moving too fast for public opinion. He acknowledges himself a greenbacker, defends his hero's greenback policy with great vigor, and returns to the subject in another chapter at the end of the book. His correction of the mis-statements of certain writers of financial history as to the true policy of Stevens on this subject is conclusive; but McCall had already, though in briefer space, made this clear.

The attitude of the South at the close of the war, especially with reference to the various phases of the negro question he seems no better able to appreciate now than Stevens was then. He upholds the radical leader throughout on the main issues of reconstruction, except upon the last effort at wholesale confiscation of southern property (1867), and only because it was then too late. Nor does he seem able to see that this idea of the wholesale confiscation of the private property of “conquered public enemies” was contrary to the law of nations which according to Stevens was the only law by which the government was bound. While he admits that Stevens was unnecessarily bitter and vindictive toward the South, he excuses it by pointing out that the majority of the people of the North entertained the same feeling. President Johnson, he thinks, was an obstacle to the will of the people that should have been removed by impeachment. His reason for this is that our constitution too rigidly sets the executive apart from the legislative authority and that it should have been “democratized” by making the executive, like the English cabinet, directly responsible through political impeachment to the will of the representatives of the people. How the other necessary adjustments of the constitutional machinery were to be made he does not even suggest. In short, presidents should be removable for political opposition to a majority in congress, though they have violated no law!

The chief objection to the book is that it is lacking in the element of broad and scholarly criticism. It is intended solely as a vindication of a leader whose “disregard of the Constitution was a statesmanlike and noble contempt for the restrictions of a parchment that stood in the way of his country's realizing its highest moral ideals,” whose part it was “to press forward without regard to squeamish scruples about the Constitution” (P. 237.)

Chas. W. Ramsdell .

How to cite:
Ramsdell, Charles W., "The Life of Thaddeus Stevens", Volume 017, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 93 - 95. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v017/n1/review_24.html
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