page_1032 < previous page page_1032 next page > Page 1032 the National Women's Political Caucus, co-founder and president of the board of directors of the Ms. Foundation for Women, founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and member of the International Women's Year Commission, 1977. As one of the best-known U.S. public figures who is neither a politician nor a television, movie, sports, or rock star, she has always placed her talents at the service of women and the dispossessed. CAROLYN G. HEILBRUN See also Feminist Movement. Stevens, Thaddeus (17921868), political leader. In the traditional view of Reconstruction, Thaddeus Stevens was the evil genius who wrecked President Andrew Johnson's lenient policy and turned the South over to the depredations of "black rule." Today, he is seen more sympathetically, as an outspoken foe of slavery who sought to accord blacks the rights of American citizenship and to provide an economic underpinning for their freedom. Born and educated in New England, Stevens moved as a young man to the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania, where he practiced law and entered the business of iron manufacturing. Born with a clubfoot  then considered a mark of evil  he felt at home among the dissenters and outsiders (most notably the Amish) who peopled the region. He never married, but lived for years with a black housekeeper and showed no interest in either confirming or denying rumors about their relationship. Successively an Anti-Mason, Whig, and Republican, Stevens served several terms in the Pennsylvania legislature, where he won renown as an advocate of free public education. He also emerged as an outspoken foe of slavery and defender of the rights of the state's black population. He served as a delegate to Pennsylvania's constitutional convention of 1838 but refused to sign the final document because it limited the suffrage to whites. He served in Congress between 1849 and 1853 and was reelected in 1858, in time to argue against northern concessions to the South in the secession winter of 18601861. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, Stevens came into his own as the most radical of the Radical Republicans. His personal qualities  honesty, imperviousness to criticism or flattery, willingness to use daring means to achieve his ends  won the respect even of political foes. A master of parliamentary tactics, he knew when to bully the House and when to compromise. His quick wit and sarcastic tongue were legendary  "I would sooner get into difficulty with a porcupine," one colleague remarked. During the war, as chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Stevens urged the administration to emancipate and arm the slaves. He opposed as too lenient President Abraham Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan for readmitting Confederate states to the Union during Reconstruction, and by the end of the war he was advocating black suffrage in the South and the disfranchisement of former Confederates. To Stevens, Reconstruction offered an opportunity to create a "perfect republic," shorn of racial inequality. As Republican floor leader, he shepherded to passage key measures of Congressional Reconstruction  the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Reconstruction Act of 1867  even though none of these was as radical as he desired. He was one of President Johnson's fiercest congressional critics and an early advocate of his impeachment. Stevens was most closely identified during Reconstruction with his plan for the division of planters' land among the former slaves, which, he insisted, would make them "small independent landholders, . . . the support and guardians of republican liberty." "The whole fabric of southern society," he declared, "must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost." But Stevens's plan was too radical for most Republicans, and after the passage of the Reconstruction Act, his influence waned. When he died in 1868, Stevens one last time challenged Americans to rise above their prejudices, for he was buried in an integrated Pennsylvania cemetery, with an epitaph written by  < previous page page_1032 next page >

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