Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/581

Attitude of Stevens tozmi-d Conduct of Civil JVar 371 to be one of the earliest, boldest, most outspoken, and, I think, most influential of the antislavery advocates who were seeking to direct the war to antislavery ends. Stevens knew that Congress and his party were not yet ready to follow in the line of his proposals, and that the public sentiment of the country did not sustain his radical policy. But he wished to educate that sentiment and to lead his party in the direction which he clearly saw would ultimately be found to be essential. He felt that the national government in the conduct of the war so far had been weak, timid, vacillating, inef- fective, without appreciation of the formidable task before it. The country needed a tonic ; the administration needed nerve and a stif- fened spine. Stevens would infuse more energy into the prosecution of the war, and not be afraid to employ the means at hand. He did not think it a time for honeyed words and conciliation. He was not a representative of peace and good will ; he was a representative for war ; the business of war was to conquer, and in the war now forced upon the nation he stood for firm, unyielding, uncompromising force. It seems reasonable to say that in energizing the war power of the nation and leading it to lay hold of every possible weapon for over- coming resistance to the national authority there was in the national forum no stronger personal force than Thaddeus Stevens. A review of his speeches will give one a high appreciation of their educational influence in this direction. He was bitter and unsparing in his denunciation of the Southern leaders for their course, and he sought to arouse the resentment and war spirit of the nation to crush the South. Yet he manifested a better conception of the Southern spirit and character and of the consequent nature of the task before the country than that possessed by his opponents and critics. Dismissing all hope of reunion by voluntary concession from the South, he wished to have it clearly recognized, as it should have been, that from the Southern stand- point the separation was final, and that the Confederate States would consent to reunion only through the exhaustion of war. Stevens saw that the task could be accomplished only by the sacrifice of thou- sands of lives and millions of money. He recognized that the Southerners were proud, haughty, obstinate, and that their training had led them to believe that they were born to command. They had declared that they would suffer their country to become a smoking ruin before they would submit. Stevens would accept the issue. He said : It were better to lay waste the whole South than to suffer the nation to be murdered, better to depopulate the country and plant it with a new race of freemen, than to suffer rebellion to triumph. There should