Since we have the floor next in the debate, I thought I'd suggest you might... temper your contributions so as not to frighten our conservative friends?
Thaddeus Stevens Ashley insists you're ensuring approval by dispensing patronage to otherwise undeserving Democrats.
I can't ensure a single damn thing if you scare the whole House with talk of land appropriations and revolutionary tribunals and punitive thisses and that's—
Thaddeus Stevens When the war ends, I intend to push for full equality, the Negro vote and much more. Congress shall mandate the seizure of every foot of rebel land and every dollar of their property. We'll use their confiscated wealth to establish hundreds of thousands of free Negro farmers, and at their side soldiers armed to occupy and transform the heritage of traitors. We'll build up a land down there of free men and free women and free children and freedom. The nation needs to know that we have such plans.
That's the untempered version of reconstruction. It's not... It's not exactly what I intend, but we shall oppose one another in the course of time. Now we're working together, and I'm asking you—
Thaddeus Stevens For patience, I expect.
When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow till they're ready to make up—
Thaddeus Stevens Ah, shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for! I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want! This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And I look a lot worse without the wig. The people elected me! To represent them! To lead them! And I lead! You ought to try it.
I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter; then the border states would've gone over to the Confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.
Thaddeus Stevens Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them—but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country's infinite abundance with Negroes.
A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll point you True North from where you are standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing True North?
FW Fernando Wood
I've asked you a question, Mr. Stevens, and you must answer me. Do you or do you not hold that the precept that "all men are created equal" is meant literally? Is that the true purpose of the amendment? To promote your ultimate and ardent dream to elevate—
Thaddeus Stevens The true purpose of the amendment, Mr. Wood, you perfectly named, brainless, obstructive object?
FW Fernando Wood
You have always insisted, Mr. Stevens, that Negroes are the same as white men are.
Thaddeus Stevens The true purpose of the amendment... I don't hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.
FW Fernando Wood
That's not true! You believe that Negroes are entirely equal to white men. You've said it a thousand times—
GP George Pendleton
For shame! For shame! Stop prevaricating and answer Representative Wood!
Thaddeus Stevens I don't hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.
GP George Pendleton
After the decades fervent advocacy on behalf of the colored race—
He's answered your questions! This amendment has naught to do with race equality!
GP George Pendleton
You have long insisted, have you not that the dusk-colored race is no different from the white one?
Thaddeus Stevens I don't hold with equality before in all things, only with equality before the law and nothing more.
GP George Pendleton
Your frantic attempt to delude us now is unworthy of a representative. It is, in fact, unworthy of a white man!
Thaddeus Stevens How can I hold that all men are created equal, when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio? Proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their Maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood! You are more reptile than man, George! So low and flat, that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you!
GP George Pendleton
How dare you!
Thaddeus Stevens Yet even you, Pendleton, who should have been gibbeted for treason long before today, even worthless unworthy you ought to be treated equally before the law! And so again, sir, and again and again and again I say: I do not hold with equality in all things. Only with equality before the law.
Thaddeus Stevens I wish you'd been present.
LH Lydia Hamilton Smith
I wish I'd been.
Thaddeus Stevens It was a spectacle.
LH Lydia Hamilton Smith
You can't bring your housekeeper to the House. I won't give them gossip. This is enough. This is... it's more than enough for now.
Thaddeus Stevens Read it to me again, my love.
LH Lydia Hamilton Smith
Proposed.
Thaddeus Stevens And adopted.
LH Lydia Hamilton Smith
Adopted. An amendment to the Constituion of the United States. Section One. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Thaddeus Stevens Section two.
LH Lydia Hamilton Smith
Congress shall have power to enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation.
