Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) was an American lawyer and Radical Republican leader who dominated the House of Representatives during the American Civil War and early Reconstruction. Born into poverty with a club foot in Vermont, Stevens moved to Pennsylvania, becoming a master trial attorney and ironmaster who defended fugitive slaves without fee.

As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Stevens financed the Union war effort through the Legal Tender Act and national banking legislation. An unyielding egalitarian, he pressured Lincoln for the Emancipation Proclamation, authored the Reconstruction Acts, and drafted the core equal protection text of the Fourteenth Amendment. Refusing burial in segregated white cemeteries, he chose to be buried in an integrated Lancaster cemetery, with his tombstone stating he did so to illustrate in death 'the principle which I advocated through a long life: Equality of Man before his Creator'.