Thaddeus Stevens (April 4th, 1792 - August 11th, 1868) was an American abolitionist during the American Civil War. He was from Danville, Vermont and of English, Dutch, and Norwegian descent. He treated the African American community with kindness and respect, and believed they deserved equal rights like white people and didn’t deserve to be slaves based on their skin color. He was a strong member of the Republican Party.
Biography[]
Stevens was born in Danville, Vermont on April 4, 1792. He was the second of four children, all boys, and was named to honor the Polish general who served in the American Revolution, Thaddeus Kościuszko. His parents were Baptists who had emigrated from Massachusetts around 1786. Thaddeus was born with a club foot which, at the time, was seen by some as a judgment from God for secret parental sin. His older brother was born with the same condition in both feet. The boys' father, Joshua Stevens, was a farmer and cobbler who struggled to make a living in Vermont. After fathering two more sons (born without disability), Joshua abandoned the children and his wife Sarah (née Morrill). The circumstances of his departure and his subsequent fate are uncertain; he may have died at the Battle of Oswego during the War of 1812.
Sarah Stevens struggled to make a living from the farm even with the increasing aid of her sons. She was determined that her sons improve themselves, and in 1807 moved the family to the neighboring town of Peacham, Vermont, where she enrolled young Thaddeus in the Caledonia Grammar School (often called the Peacham Academy). He suffered much from the taunts of his classmates for his disability. Later accounts describe him as "wilful, headstrong" with "an overwhelming burning desire to secure an education."
After graduation, he enrolled at the University of Vermont, but suspended his studies due to the federal government's appropriation of campus buildings during the War of 1812. Stevens then enrolled in the sophomore class at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. At Dartmouth, despite a stellar academic career, he was not elected to Phi Beta Kappa; this was reportedly a scarring experience for him.
Stevens graduated from Dartmouth in 1814 and was chosen as a speaker at the commencement ceremony. Afterward, he returned to Peacham and briefly taught there. Stevens also began to study law with John Mattocks. In early 1815, correspondence with a friend Samuel Merrill, a fellow Vermonter who had moved to York, Pennsylvania to become preceptor of the York Academy, led to an offer for Stevens to join the academy faculty. He moved to York to teach, and continued the study of law in the offices of David Cossett.