The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-08-13
Thad Stevens.

Thad Stevens was unquestlonably power
in the land. To him, with his intense express
sion of the most virulent prejudices against the
originators of the unsuccessful secessionist
movement, is chiefly due the delay of that
restoration of the Union which was the osten-
sible object of our late civil war. In Septem-
Der, 1865, when the echoes of hostile cannon
had hardly ceased to reverberate, Mr.. Stevens,
in public speech at Lancaster, declared his
policy of reconstruction. He held that the
South had committed no treason, but was q
conquered foreign power, and was therefore to
be condemned to what, with grim humor, he
styled "mild confscation." OF its three hun
dred and ninety-four million acres of land,
forty millions, he commended, should be given
to the emancipated negroes In farms of forty
acres each, and the proceeds of the sale Of the
remainder, estimated by him at three thousand
five hundred and forty million dollars, should be
applied to the extinction of the national debt.
When the President and Congress declared
war against each other Mr. Stevens became,
as he continued to be to the last, one of the
fercest antagonists of Mr.. Johnson. His angry
shaking and swapping of the lash over the
Senators whom he failed to coerce into adhe-
sion to his impeachment policy proved more
In the House of Representatives he was the
acknowledged leader of the republican
members, many of whom surpassed him
in ability, but none of them in audacity,
and, we must perhaps allow, in sincerity.
This one virtue his worst enemies
must accord to him-the courage of an openly
avowed hostility. The fact is that Thad
Stevens was, almost independently of
his own volition, an instrument for ex-
pressing and for working out the pre-
destined. purposes of the revolution through
which the American people are pass
ing. Malevolent, even malignant, as he ap-
peared to be and was in his capacity as
public man, his friends represent him as
and genial in his private intercourse
with them. Publicly he was an evil, but
nocoas~-y OWL, ena uata-aliy ons onde.od
by his antecedents and circumstances. Ac-
cepted, therefore, as a typical representative
of the party which recognized him as its
autocrat, he must always hold a historical
position.
Nor will the death of Mr.. Stevens result in
consequences less important and historical
than the position which he held while alive. It
was his marvellous obstinacy, his Hannibal
like animosity against the South, which post
poned the settlement of our national difficulties
His death, however much it may be lamented
by his immediate personal friends and by his
party, sounds the death-knell of the extrava-
giant hopes of the radicals It was he alone
refractory among his partsans. Now that the
control of his influence no longer exists, what
is to hinder the disintegration of the party to
which Mr.. Stevens more than any other repub-
lican leader had given concentration and
force2 His arrogance as party leader had
already received double check in the failure
of impeachment and in the postponement of
the impeachment resolutions which he revived
after the arrival in Washington of several new
from the Southern States,
whom he regarded as irrevocably committed
to his own revengeful policy. While we fully
the talents and the strong indi-
viduality Of the late Thaddeus Stevens, and
even whatever merit there may be in the
honesty of his open and avowed hostility to
oil his opponents, we must regard his removal
by death as o misfortune to his party rather
than to the nation.
Pleasant Scenes In the Alabama Lcsisla-
ture.
The veto by the Governor Of Alabama of the
bill authorizing the Legislature instead of the
people to cast the electoral vote for President
and Vice President provoked some very hostile
in the Legislature between two
republican members-one native Of Alabama,
rejoicing in the unique name of Jones; the
other an imported ''carpet-bag" representative
from Iowa, called Coon, name familiar to
the students of American natural history, but
apparently not indigenous to the floor Of the
Alabama Legislative halls. Jones, the native
republican member, denounced the imported
republican Coon as q "carpet-bagger" and
squatter because Of certain declarations made
by the said Coon that he would marshal any
amount of negroes and other fercely inclined
persons called ''freemen Of Alabama" (ninety
thousand, we believe, was the exact ngure) in
opposition to the Governors veto, and would
fight II out upon that line until "victory
perched upon his banner" These remarks
were designated by Jones (who, by the way,
alluded to his republican colleague as 'tho
gentleman from Iowa'D as revolutionary, and
we are slightly inclined to think that they |
were, for revolution means aggression and
resistance, and for Coon to adopt either |
measure would be revolution indeed.
But, seriously, II is deplorable to see the
Legislative action Of any Of the Southern
States at this important crisis befooled by such
nonsense as these republican members were
permitted to introduce. The revolutionary
and unconstitutional MEASURE of taking from |