Thaddeus Stevens; Commoner (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt: ... is our first duty. And in a just war we have a right to put in practice against the enemy every measure that is necessary to weaken him and disable him from resisting us and supporting injustice. The slave is in a state of war with his master. Why not employ the enemy of our enemy to weaken his power? "The occasion is forced upon us, and the invitation presented to strike the chain from four millions of human beings, and create them men; to extinguish slavery on this whole continent; to wipe out, so far as we are concerned, the most hateful and infernal blot that ever disgraced the escutcheon of man; to write a page in the history of the world whose brightness shall eclipse all the records of heroes and of sages." He 6poke the truth, but, Cassandra-like, was not believed. He was ahead of his party and his time. When the repeal of the corn laws came about under the Protectionist, Peel, people said, "Ah the famine forces Peel's hand." So with Lincoln and emancipation. It was only when the invaders rushed into Maryland and were almost at the doors of the Capitol that he took his oath to liberate the blacks. Not till then. But the battle had been fought for him by Stevens in the House, and it required only the fear and terror of an invasion to force Lincoln's hand. At the beginning of the year 1862, the whole Union army amounted to more than five hundred thousand men. The second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress ended July 17, 1862. Important military events had taken place during its continuance--the battle of Fair Oaks, the Seven Days' battle of the Peninsula, Malvern Hill, the contest between the Monitor and Merrimac, the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson, the battle of Pittsburg Landing and the capture of New Orleans, were among th...