Transcribed by Cordes Ford and reverse-order proofed by Brad Burgess, Furman University, from the Thaddeus Stevens Papers.
Introduction:
This speech by Mr. Thaddeus Stevens was delivered on April 10, 1865 and reproduced in the Lancaster Examiner & Herald nine days later. The speech gives a straight forward assessment of Mr. Stevens' views on the South, its leaders, and the manner by which it should be reconstructed following the conclusion of the Civil War. Stevens delivers his message with a great deal of passion coupled with powerful references to the Old Testament and comparative statements singling out the recent struggle as the bloodiest and most costly of all time.
Stevens begins in this speech to the people by placing recent events into a greater historical context. In his initial references to the wave of revolution that swept across Europe in 1848 and 1849 and in other areas such as India a decade later, and the placing into context the monetary costs of the war, Stevens is successful in illustrating the colossal importance of the United States’ victory and the necessity of properly punishing the defeated and ideologically amiss Southern states.
Stevens demands that the South be cleansed and refashioned in the ways of the North. He desires equality among the races in a society based on free labor. He desires the leaders of the Confederacy, the evil plotters and ringleaders of revolt, to be dealt a swift and stern hand of punishment. In explaining these desires, Stevens refers to those who would have a different form of reconstruction. Reference is made to the well known Reverend, Henry Ward Beecher, who before the war gained popularity from his great oratorical skills and social concern, and especially, from his fervent opposition to slavery. Stevens relays a story from the Book of Judges, chapters nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one, that Beecher used to explain his wish for a moderate reconstruction process. The story tells of the Israelites method of rebuilding the tribe of Benjamin following their civil war. Stevens, looking to do the reverend one better, cites another biblical story from First Samuel, chapter fifteen that describes the Almighty’s wish for King Saul of Israel to completely destroy the enemy Kingdom of the Amalakites and "slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
The radical nature of Thaddeus Stevens and others of his colleagues
is evident in this speech. The images presented and the language
used define the level of passion within those that desired to see the leaders
of the Confederacy suffer under Reconstruction, and those that were oppressed
prosper under the auspices of new found freedom.
I thank you for the honor of being called to preside over this vast meeting of rejoicing freemen. Let us thank the Almighty Ruler of events for giving us such glorious victories. We are at what I hope is near the end of the most gigantic insurrection the world ever saw. The great Mutiny of India was the outbreak of a barbarian race against the mighty power of England. The rebellions by the Stuarts was settled by armies of a few thousand. So of Poland -- of Austria and Italy. Here millions were arrayed against millions; and armies of hundreds of thousands were in conflict. The waste of treasure and of blood has no parallel in history. The twenty years war between England and Continental Europe swelled the British debt to 800,000,000 of pounds sterling, where it still remains. Ours, when all shall be adjusted, will reach near to that amount.
I trust that a just God will be content with the scourge which has been already inflicted as a just punishment for ages of national injustice and oppression imposed by this nation on a harmless race. We are now emerging from the guilt of slavery. We have been compelled to pass through the Red sea -- through a night of darkness and an ocean of blood.
But, though now relieved of all anxiety about the war, wise statesman will look beyond it. It is your duty, taught by experience, to "look before and after." For you -- the people of this country, are the creators and instructors of statesmen. Let this nation, thus tried by fire, be purged of every element of discord, of secession, of disunion. Let the law make no castes; no grades in society. Let the poor man have equal rights with the rich. Let no Government, State or municipal, within the broad land of our original Union, be found with aristocratic or despotic features. Let no succession of lords and nobles be erected on the neck of labor; on the slavery of castes and labor. Let all men of every race and nation and color, be as equal before the law as they are before the judgment-seat of their Almighty Father. Let them be as equal in life as they are in the grave. I do not refer to social equality, and conventional associations, as some of our revilers -- the perverters of our principles -- the real advocates of despotism pretend. In those things let every man follow his own taste; but let all God’s children be equal in inalienable rights -- equal before law.
I am not without anxiety for the future. Under the respectable plea of humanity and conservatism, I fear we shall forget justice to living rebels and to slaughtered dead, and shall overlook our future safety, and deal too mercifully with assassins and traitors. I can understand how forgiveness should be extended to the ignorant, the poor and deluded; but to permit the ringleaders to escape with impunity, is absolute cruelty. At least, take their property, if you allow them to live. To forgive the penitent is christian; to suffer the proud murderer to escape, and thus endanger the government, is weakness. Take the riches of those nobles who would found an empire on slavery. Divide their broad manors, acquired by the unpaid toil of others -- sell enough of it to pay our national debt now weighing so heavily on our loyal tax-payers -- give a portion of it to our war-worn veterans, who have conquered it, and to freedmen. Sell enough of it to set apart a perpetual fund, to enable us to double the pensions, (as we ought to do) of our maimed and wounded soldiers, and of bereaved parents and helpless children.
If you spare the lives of those who have plotted treason for thirty years, and who have caused all this misery, it is all, perhaps more, than they have a right to claim, or true Christian humanity demands.
Recent signs of weakness in unexpected quarters have alarmed me. While eccentric editors, half cowards and half lunatics, urged foolish terms in behalf of rebeldom, I was not moved, though I know their great genius and power. But when great, eloquent, pious and patriotic men, like the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, join them, and go beyond them, with their pious scriptural paradoxes, there is real cause for alarm. In his late valedictory discourse at Plymouth church he urged a course which, in my judgment, is neither wise nor christian – for even sincere effort after piety may become excited, leap too high, and "fall on, ’ tother side." He selected for our imitation what he thought an amiable example from the Old Testament. The story is briefly as follows: A Levite went to get married; in returning with his wife he stayed over night in a city of the tribe of Benjamin. Some of the citizens took his wife and shamefully abused her to death. Her husband divided her into twelve parts, and sent one part to each tribe. The assembly of eleven tribes demanded that the murderers should be given up for punishment. The city refused. The Israelites drafted every tenth man and sent them to take the city. The rebel tribe of Benjamin met them in battle, and, like our rebels at the commencement of this war, defeated the national troops in two or three bloody fights. Finally, the Israelites prevailed; defeated the Benjamites, burnt their cities to the ground, slew every man and woman, except six hundred, who fled to a stronghold and were saved. All the property of the tribe was seized or destroyed, and every man of Israel was bound by oath not to give his daughter in marriage to the six hundred survivors. At length justice seemed to be satisfied, and it was proposed to readmit Benjamin into the Union – not the "Union as it was," but the Union with the land of Benjamin desolated. To accomplish this amiable object, they sent an army to attack a weak nation, with orders to kill all the men and women except the virgins, and give them as wives to the surviving Benjamites. They stole others to supply the deficiency. The most hard-hearted would hardly require so severe a retribution against the Southern malefactors, though their crime was ten-fold as great as that of the men of Gibeah. If the precepts of the Almighty are to be brought to screen these cut-throats, why not cite the case of Agag, where the Lord commanded the utter extermination of the nation; and because Saul saved the life of the king, he was denounced and dethroned; and the very prophet of a just and merciful God hawed the spared King to pieces with his own hand. Present civilization and christianity would shudder at such things. But why cite the holy record to justify weakness and ill-timed mercy. The reverend gentleman told his people that he was going to Sumpter to attend the raising of the old flag. If beneath the tattered folds of that banner, torn, insulted and trampled on by traitors, he intends to utter such demoralizing doctrines, he has, indeed judgment, gone on a fool’s errand.
Forgive all, say our christian statesmen, and our maudlin scribblers;
take our erring brethren to our bosoms; re-admit them with all the rights
of loyal men, to be a band of brothers. Others may do it, and again
be governed by a haughty aristocracy. But I shall be appealed to in vain,
to take to my embraces the impenitent and unwashed traitors whose garments
are still dripping with the blood of my relatives, neighbors, friends and
countrymen. I should fear the reproaches of distressed fathers, brothers,
and weeping mothers and widows. I should fear to be haunted by the
ghosts of murdered patriots stalking forth from their premature grave in
their bloody shrouds.
(benson/HST41/red/stevens3.htm)