Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1868-10-09
afliseellang.


his restless Yankee instincts. lie wa
not a scrupulous man in politics. Ill
looked upon politics as mere rendez
yousing of men to fight campaigns, an'
he set himself to fix the objects of tn
campaigns, He was honorable as sol
der to the weak and to his individual
foes, but to effect his purposes he wen
with blind hate for any of his mar
shals who would change the plan OF bis
campaign or grow timid by the way
His physical courage is not known, be
cause he was cripple and therefore
safe; there are doubts that he had the
nerve for mere muscular collisions, but
his moral courage was never questioned
He was a poor politician, and ran always
behind his ticket He began political
life the same fiery radical as at its close,
and venturing too far upon the temper
of dull commonwealth, he was driven
to the obscurity of the law for his daily
bread. This period of his life may be
called the common school period, when
he laid the foundation of public educa-
ton for Pennsylvania, and became the
legitimate. successor of Benjamin Frank
lin. Pennsylvania has been said by an
other to be Quakerism Franklinized
the second chapter of it is .Stevensiza-
ton. The gossip of this era runs upon
the " buckshot war;" a fuss in the Legis-
lature, where Stevens, with his reckless
way of carrying his point, had persuad-
ed Gov. Rttner to have the Philadel-
phia election set aside. At this the he
role Phiadelphians crowded the Legisla-
ture, drove Thaddeus out of the window,
and swept the state by the ridicule they
excited.
When Mr.. Stevens went to the law for
bread in Lancaster, he eschewed politics
SO entirely that you and and the rest of
us, out of Pennsylvania, nearly forgot
him. But his reputation in the state was
more vivid thirty years ago than now.
He was recognized as a man of proud
genius who set aside the formal morals
of life; gambled little, succeeded as
gallant, and severely staid away from
church. But he left off tobacco and Ii
quor and saved his constitution for bus-
Z ness, whereby he rose to the head of the
Lancaster bar, paid the large debt Of his
former ruin, and again looked proudly
at public life. You know the supersti-
tious awe with which ignorant market
people regard bright lawyer The old
man used to win his case in speeches of
ten or fifteen minutes apiece. He had
been a whig and protectionist, and
when the Seward men and the Fillmore
men began to divide he was the most
powerful "wooly head" out of New
York. He started newspaper, worked
for the German vote, manipulated the
whig organization, and so arose upon that
wave of wing and anti-siaveryism, which
grew and rolled on to the ultimate col
lision Of the war. Suddenly, when the
war closed in 1865, the people we're cleo
g trifed to hear johnson denounce Stevens
by name. The old man had recovered
e the rank lost thirty years before, though
newspaper readers are saying still Ste
vens only came up late in life
One man, at least, knew Stevens in
fluence, Andrew johnson accepted the
fight and named from the White House
steps Thaddeus Stevens at the head of
his enemies. To this in his reply Stew
ems spoke of :" the man at the other end
of the avenue" and then in his scornful
humor he proved by johnson that this
speech had never been made. They new
er visited each other nor looked at each
other again, in life or in death. Stevens
laughed at the executive power, sheared
johnson down to a naked patronage and
having moved upon his works, proceeded
with equal headstrongness to move upon
his person. By this time Congress was
weary of the old mans hectoring, and
doubtful as to the extremes to which he
meant to carry them. He died in the
dead ripeness of his power; next Con-
gress would have laughed at his lash.
His influence waned with the impeach-
ment failure; that was his second "buck-
shot war"
Stevens had a personal contempt for
money when balanced against a princi-
pie of political justice, and, to secure
union, and suffrage, and equal rights all
over the country, he would possibly have
accepted reputation. He hated taxes
as much as slavery, and Freemasonry as
much as rebellion. A free-trader awak-
ened as much indignation in him as a
Freemason. The whims of the man
were as powerful as his love of liberty.
He cultivated an exaggerated sort of ep-
igram, with which he summed up char
aeter, and toward the end of his DAYS he
never spoke well of anybody. He lack
ed humility mora thar 49,, III.