'Slaves loved their masters': GOP women's club president defends lawmaker's pro-slavery comments

[raging moderate]

28. Thaddeus Stevens was one of our greatest Americans.

Even back in the sixties, our high school history book described Thaddeus Stevens as a rigid antisocial extremist. Oh, really? Everything we now know about Thaddeus Stevens says otherwise. He hired a Black lady to be his housekeeper in his DC home, a widow with two small boys. Eventually they fell in love, but it was totally illegal for them to marry. They managed to have a common-law marriage instead. Somehow, Stevens conferred enough authority on her that she was known as "Mrs. Stevens" in their neighborhood. After they raised her two little boys together, Stevens's brother and his wife were suddenly killed in a carriage accident. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens then took in his two orphaned nephews and raised those two little boys together. Stevens also made legal provision for his common-law wife, so that Mrs. Stevens was financially secure after his death. How awful it must have been for these people to be trapped in that time and place. I think of another "rigid antisocial extremist" of that era: William Lloyd Garrison. I remember the anguish in the words he wrote in his antislavery newspaper, The Liberator: POSTERITY WILL SAY I WAS RIGHT.