USA > Vermont > Vermonters : a book of biographies > Part 16
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Henry Stevens wrote with a straight forwardness and force of authority, touched with sympathetic feeling and warmth of color, displaying an effective turn of phrase, clarity of statement, pith and pungent native wit, a kind of writing characteristic of him when he discussed in his prefaces and essays and brochures men and books, the kind of writing that caused one of his admirers, bearing the initials of Lucius E. Chittenden, to pen in careful handwriting over the introduction to one of the Stevens' volumes in the University of Vermont library:
"I consider this explanatory note one of the finest articles ever written upon bibliography."
So we find Henry Stevens of Vermont, native of Barnet, student of books and makers of books and all things bookish,
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to be a distinguished son of that state of which he always, no matter how far removed or long absent, loyally wrote himself down as a citizen. Indeed, a passion for books was in the blood, for a brother, Benjamin Franklin Stevens, who attended the University of Vermont, also became a noted collector and author- ity. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA in its comments on Henry says that he was born in Barnet, August 24, 1819, and died at South Hampstead, England, February 28, 1886; that he was a student at Middlebury College, graduated from Yale in 1843, and then studied for a year at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Law School; that in 1845 he went to London, where for most of his life he was employed as a collector of Americana for the British Museum and for various public and private American libraries; that he was engaged by Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarian of the British Museum, to collect historical books, documents, journals and other matter concerning North and South America, that he was purchasing agent for the Smithsonian Institute and for the Library of Congress, as well as for James Lenox of New York and the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island; that in 1877 he was a member of the committee which organized the Caxton Exhibition, for which he catalogued the collection of Bibles.
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THADDEUS STEVENS
By Walter H. Crockett
I TF a referendum had been taken at any time during the past fifty years to determine the ten most-hated men in Ameri- can history, it is probable that a very substantial portion of the electorate would have included in this list the name of Thaddeus Stevens. He would not have been so designated for any act giving aid and comfort to the enemies of his country, but the choice would have been made because of the ruthless vigor with which he fought for some of the public measures which he advocated and in which he believed, taking issue with. Abraham Lincoln in the restoration of the Southern States which had attempted to set up a separate government, policies which the verdict of history has condemned as unwise and harmful.
Stevens was a great lawyer, a master of parliamentary prac- tice and a skilled and resourceful debater. In his later years his powerful intellect was housed in a frail body. He was a gaunt, grim figure of a man, possessed of a savage, biting wit, a person to inspire fear rather than affection; and yet beneath his rough exterior, far beneath, it is true, there was much human kindness, but it was carefully concealed from public view.
During the Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed, critical years in American history, he exercised a powerful influence upon public opinion and public affairs. He hated slavery and all its works with a consuming hatred. No soldier, unless we except Sherman in his Atlanta campaign, fought the Southern Confederacy more ruthlessly than did Stevens in the forum of debate on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Thaddeus Stevens, son of Joshua and Sally Stevens, was
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born in Danville, Vermont, April 4, 1792, one year after Ver- mont's admission to the Union and seven years after the settle- ment of the township was begun. There was much poverty in this frontier township and the Stevens family suffered many hardships. Thaddeus was a sickly child, and his mother, a woman of rare courage and ability determined to send the lad to college. The family removed from Danville to Peacham to permit the sons to attend Peacham Academy. Thaddeus Stevens attended both the University of Vermont and Dart mouth College, but the records of his college career are ob- scure. Governot McCall of Massachusetts, in his biography, gives the impression that Stevens began and ended his col- lege work at Dartmouth. The Vermont records show that he studied at Burlington in 1812-13. It is known that he par- ticipated in a public discussion at Vermont as a part of the commencement exercises in 1813, and during the same period a tragedy which he had written, THE FALL OF HELVETIC LIBERTY was presented, in the presentation of which the author partici- pated. The old story to the effect that Stevens left the Uni- versity of Vermont when that institution was closed for a year, (1814-15) during the War of 1812, the War Department having taken over the main college building as barracks, is not accurate, because Stevens graduated from Dartmouth in 1814 before the suspension of studies at the University. Pos- sibly a college prank at Vermont, recorded by McCall, may have induced Stevens' transfer to Hanover for his senior year.
Stevens removed to Pennsylvania in 1815, taught school and studied law, was admitted to the bar and located at Gettysburg. He soon established a reputation as a resourceful lawyer. In 1833 he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on the Anti-Masonic ticket. The . stronghold of this party in Vermont was in Stevens' native county of Caledonia. During the session of 1834 he won a notable victory as the champion of free schools. Many legis- lators were pledged to repeal the free school act, because it
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increased taxes, and the Senate passed a repeal measure. Stevens proposed an amendment in the House substituting a new bill, eliminating the repeal clause and strengthening the existing law. In a powerful argument he converted a hostile House to his policy and as a result the Senate rescinded its vote to repeal the act and adopted the Stevens bill. It was a notable triumph and gave promise of later victories on a wider field.
He removed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he estab- lished a lucrative law practice. He was elected to Congress in 1849 as a Whig, retiring in 1853, and took an active part in the anti-slavery cause. His native state, Vermont, had long been vigorous in its opposition to slavery, being the first state to embody that hostility in its constitution. In 1858 he was re- turned to Congress, being sixty-seven years old when he took his seat. With the beginning of the Lincoln administration, Stevens was made chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which carried with it the leadership of the House. For the next ten years, and until his death, Thaddeus Stevens was probably the most forceful leader in either branch of Congress.
The outstanding policies with which Stevens' name is most prominently associated, are reconstruction and the impeach- ment proceedings against President Johnson. He reported to the House the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
President Lincoln had a definite plan for setting up govern- ments in States that had seceded, when at least one-tenth of the voters participating in the election of 1860 had taken an oath to support and defend the national government and abide by its laws and proclamations relative to slavery. Stevens frankly and openly opposed Lincoln's policy, declaring that the seceding States had abrogated all their constitutional rights, had set up an independent government and had raised an army and a navy, with which they had attacked the Union forces. In his opinion the blockading of the Southern ports
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had been a recognition of the belligerent rights of the Con- federate States.
Lincoln, with his tact and sagacity, might have secured the adoption of his reconstruction policy, but not without a strug- gle, and Stevens would have opposed it. When Andrew John- son succeeded to the presidency, he adopted ultimately a re- construction policy modeled largely upon that of his prede- cessor, but he lacked Lincoln's political skill. It is not diff- cult, looking back over a period of more than sixty years, to see that the policy of Stevens and his associates was unwise, and that Andrew Johnson was a safer and saner leader than Thaddeus Stevens. But one cannot ignore the terrible toll which the Civil War had taken in life and treasure, and its effect upon public opinion in the North. The assassination of Lincoln had caused intense anger. The acts of certain South- ern legislatures in reducing the freed negroes to semi-slavery by legislative acts intensified the bitterness against the John- son plan, which many Northern men believed would nullify to a considerable extent, the fruits of victory. In all this contest Stevens was the undisputed leader of his party. He was unable to remove President Johnson from office, and the President triumphed by the narrowest of margins, but Stevens' policy of reconstruction won. The student of history does not need to approve the wisdom of Stevens' policies to con- cede that he exerised a masterful control over the American Congress.
Only a few months after the impeachment charges against President Johnson had failed, Thaddeus Stevens died, August 11, 1868. By his request he was buried in an obscure ceme- tery, where no class or racial restrictions were imposed. The epitaph he had written for his monument was characteristic ". of the spirit. of the man, and read as follows: "I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in
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my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, (the) equality of man before his Creator."
An excellent summary of the life and character of Stevens is given in the following detached sentences from a sketch of Stevens in James G. Blaine's TWENTY YEARS OF CONGRESS:
He (Stevens) had the reputation of being somewhat unscrupulous as to political methods, somewhat careless in personal conduct, some- what lax in personal morals; but to the one object of his life, the destruction of slavery and the elevation of the slave, he was supremely devoted. ... Toward his own race he seemed often to be misan- thropic. ... He was disposed to be taciturn .... Seldom in the most careless moment, did a sentence escape his lips that would not bear the test of gramatical and rhetorical criticism. ,He possessed the keenest wit and was unmerciful in its use toward those whom he did not like. He illustrated in concrete form the difference between wit and humor. He did not indulge in the latter. ... He was kind, char- itable, lavish of his money in the relief of poverty. . . . He had char- acteristics which seemed contradictory, but which combined to make one of the memorable figures in the parlimentary history of the United States -- a man who had the courage to meet any opponent, and who was never overmatched in intellectual conflict.
Stern and unyielding in his public career, grim and for- bidding in his attitude toward the public, lacking in evidence of affection for his fellows, one reads with pleasure the clause in Stevens' will providing funds for the planting of roses "or other cheerful flowers" at the corners of his mother's grave in Peacham.
His early Vermont environment, his New England ancestry, doubtless influenced Stevens in his crusade against slavery. The hatred visited upon the man and his memory were part and parcel of a devastating war and an attempt to restore a severed Union of States. If he erred in judgment as a states- man he did not stand alone. In any event, he was a great and a distinctive figure in a notable era in American history.
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DANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON
By Charles Miner Thompson
D ANIEL PIERCE THOMPSON was born on October 1, 1795, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, at the foot of Bunker Hill. His first American ancestor was James Thomp- son, who landed in Massachusetts with Governor Winthrop in 1630. Succeeding Thompsons were plain people who worked hard and lived simply, as was the manner of the time. In the years immediately before the American Revolution, however, the family attained two distinctions. In 1753, it flowered in a man of genius, the celebrated Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, a Tory; on April 19, 1775, Daniel Thompson, an ardent patriot, was killed at the battle of Lexington. The two men were cousins. Daniel was the grandfather of the Vermont novelist. Daniel lived in Wo- burn, Mass .; Daniel his son, the novelist's father, moved to Charlestown, where he did not prosper and whence he mi- grated to Berlin, Vermont, and bought a farm.
The migration took place in 1800, when D. P. Thompson was five years old. In his youth he lived much the life of any farmer's son of today-but with fewer opportunities for education, and probably with more and harder work to do, for at the turn of the century life in that part of Vermont still approximated that of the frontier. He had a good mind, however, and he was industrious and ambitious. By hard work and with little help, he fitted himself for college. He was graduated from Middlebury College in 1820, at the ma- ture age of twenty-four. After graduating, he went to Virginia as a tutor in a wealthy family and coincidentally studied law. In 1823, he was admitted to practice in the courts of the state. In that year or the next, he returned to Vermont, and began the practice of law in Montpelier.
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Thereafter until his death on June 6, 1868, his life had two sharply contrasted sides-that of the lawyer and public ser- vant, and that of the popular novelist. It will be convenient here to deal with each side separately.
As a lawyer he seems to have done fairly well from the start; at any rate, in 1831, after seven years of professional work, he was able to marry Eunice Knight Robinson and estab- lish a home. In 1830, he had been appointed clerk of the Legislature, and he served in that position until he was as- signed the task of compiling the Laws of Vermont, a book that was published in 1835. In 1837, he became Judge of Probate, an office that he held until 1840. In 1838, he was one of four incorporators of the Vermont Historical Society, of which he was an active member until his death, and which he long served as secretary. He was always deeply interested in Vermont history. In 1843, he became clerk of the County Court and of the Supreme Court, and so continued until 1845. In 1846, he became secretary of the State Education Society; he had taught school as a young man and had sound ideas on education. In 1849, he became editor and sole proprietor of the GREEN MOUNTAIN FREEMAN. In politics he was originally a Jeffersonian Democrat, but shifted to the Liberty Party, and later was a Republican. In his newspaper, which he conducted until 1856, he did vigorous work for the Anti-Slavery cause. For two years (1853-55) he was Secretary of State of Vermont. Such was his public service, enough in itself to constitute a useful and notable career.
However, it is not as a public man but as an author that he won his greatest reputation and did his best work for Ver- mont. From his college days, he had always liked to write. As a man born under the shadow of Bunker Hill, and as the grandson of a man killed at the Battle of Lexington, as a resi- dent of Vermont at a time when the memories of men still alive were full of the incidents of the Revolutionary War, as a natural-born antiquary, a lover of legend and romance, he
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instinctively turned for his subjects to local folk-lore, and to the romantic story of the early struggles of Vermont. In 1835, when he was forty years of age, he wrote MAY MARTIN, OR THE MONEY DIGGERS, a folk tale, that won a prize of $50 offered by the NEW ENGLAND GALAXY. In book form it went into at least fifty editions, was republished in England, and was dramatized. In 1839, he published THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS, a tale of vigorous deeds of Ethan Allen and his companions first against the "Yorkers" and then against the British during the Revolu- tion. It had an enormous popular success. More than sixty editions were published; it was reprinted in London and in Leipzig, and nearly a hundred years after its first appearance it was still in print. It is the classic of Vermont. In 1847, he published LOCKE AMSDEN, a tale that is largely autobio- graphical. General critical opinion ranks it as his best work. Although marred by a conventional love story and by an ab- surdly melodramatic conclusion, it is in the main a simple, natural account of the experiences of a young schoolmaster under pioneer conditions, absolutely true to the life of the time and the place. In point of style it is his best piece of writing. But the sustained narrative power of THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS makes some good judges prefer it to I.OCKE AMSDEN. In 1851, came THE RANGERS, a sequel to THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS, but not so popular. In 1857 appeared GAUT GURLEY, a tale fragrant of wild lakes and untouched forests. He wrote also THE ADVENTURES OF TIMOTHY PEACOCK, 1835 an anonymous satire directed at Masonry, THE DOOMED CHIEF, 1860 and CENTEOLA, 1864, but they have little interest or value. No one, however, should overlook his short stories, which are as redolent of old Vermont as a sugar house in spring. Residents of Montpelier, at least, should not forget his HISTORY, 1860, of the town, an informal, reminiscent little volume that has both value and charm.
He was an untrained writer and often crude in style; but he had one gift that in a novelist outweighs many defects-he
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was a born story-teller. Through his love of the olden times and of the pioneer days of Vermont, he had accumulated a body of extremely interesting historical material that, fortu- nately, the example of Sir Walter Scott in Great Britain and of James Fenimore Cooper in America had taught him how to use. His great service to Vermont is that, more than any other man, he made Vermont known to the nation and to its own citizens, whose pride in its stirring and romantic his- tory he stimulated and strengthened. At least a part of the reason why every Vermonter is proud of his state is to be found in D. P. Thompson's colorful tales of its early history.
Many sketches of Judge Thompson's life have been pub- lished. The only complete biography of him, however, is THE NOVELIST OF VERMONT, by John E. Flitcroft. There the interested reader can find described many incidents and aspects of his life that in a brief article like this must be wholly omitted, or at best no more than glanced at.
ZADOCK THOMPSON
By Evan Thomas
Z ADOCK THOMPSON was born in Bridgewater, Ver- mont, May 23, 1796. His parents were among the early settlers of the town. He attended the local schools, and was prepared for college by the Rev. Walter Chapin, pastor of the Congregational church at Woodstock, and a member of the first class to graduate from Middlebury College in 1803. Owing to straitened circumstances, Thompson was not able to enter the University of Vermont until he was twenty-seven years of age, receiving his degree in 1823. Later he studied theology and was ordained deacon in the Protestant Episcopal
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church in 1837. In 1824, he was married to Miss Jennie Boyce. There were no children. He died in Burlington in 1856 of what was diagnosed ossification of the heart.
He taught at various places, serving at one time on the teaching staff of the Episcopal Institute, Burlington. At the time of his death he was Professor of Natural History in the University of Vermont, and also lectured on chemistry. Teach- ing, however, though done most conscientiously and ably, was not his forte. From youth he had a passion for research, writing and publication, for which he was superbly fitted by nature, and it was along these lines that he acquired distinc- tion.
Even before entering college he published annually an almanac known as THOMPSON'S ALMANACK, which was to Vermont what Robert B. Thomas', OLD FARMERS' ALMANACK was to Massachusetts. He learned early to make the neces- sary astronomical computations, which he continued through- out his life to make for the VERMONT REGISTER, later WAL- TON'S VERMONT REGISTER. He travelled on foot throughout the state selling his almanac, and saved enough money to meet the cost of his college education. There was current for many years a tradition that, one day, when deeply absorbed in some investigation the printer came to him to remind him that the copy had no weather prediction for July. "Snow about this time" was the hasty and absent-minded reply. As good luck for him had it, there was a fall of snow in July which greatly enhanced his reputation as a weather prophet and stimulated appreciably the sale of his almanac.
While instructor in the University he published an arith- metic, called THE YOUTH'S ASSISTANT. This was followed later by a more advanced and extended work, which included " such topics as permutations, mensuration and even discussions of mechanical principles and problems. For lucidity of treat- ment these books are unexcelled, and they had a large sale throughout the state for many years. When teaching in Can-
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ada, he published a geography of that country, which also had a large sale.
His chief claim to distinction, however, rests upon his re- searches into the history and the natural history of Vermont and the publication of the results. From a very early period he was busy in collecting material relating to the history of the state, from every available source, not omitting possible contributions from the "oldest inhabitant," whose memory reached back to the settlement of Bridgewater and the adjoin- ing towns. He was equally industrious and equally success- ful in the study of the natural history of Vermont, and in time became an authority on the geology, fauna and flora of the state. In 1845 he was made assistant state geologist, and in 1853 made state geologist and naturalist, a position which he held the remainder of his life.
He began to publish the results of these researches as early as 1833, when THE HISTORY OF VERMONT appeared. His monumental work, however, was THE NATURAL, CIVIL AND STA- TISTICAL HISTORY OF VERMONT, published in Burlington, in the early 40's. The publication was made possible by the generosity of the publisher, Mr. Chauncey Goodrich, a neigh- bor and friend of Mr. Thompson, "who offered to get out the book for him at the usual prices for labor and materials without any contingent share in the profit, and to wait for payments from the sales of the work. . . . On its appearance, the General Assembly of Vermont, regarding the work as a benefit to the state subscribed for a hundred copies and voted $500 to the author. By this means and the proceeds of other sales, he was enabled to cancel his debt to his publisher in a little more than a year." About the same time he published a text book on the geology and geography of Vermont, a work which had a large sale.
Though much of his work was done of necessity in isola- tion, he was not without stimulating contacts with men of his own interests. When a subordinate on the geological sur-
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vey his chief was Professor C. B. Adams of Middlebury, an Amherst graduate and a geologist of the first rank. He was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History, which he was invited to address in 1850. Among those with whom he became intimate was Professor W. B. Rogers, one of the or- ganizers and first president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and one of the leading geologists of the day. In Burlington one of his most intimate friends was Professor Joseph Torrey, an excellent botanist. He was greatly aided in his scientific work by his wife, who was an ardent lover of nature, and an efficient manager of household matters.
In person, Thompson was tall, angular, retiring, and yet a most companionable man with congenial spirit. He was a man of devout temper and strong religious feeling.
The late Professor Goodrich of the University of Vermont faculty, who knew him well and probably was one of his stu- dents, refers to him as modest and unassuming, indefatigable in his scientific pursuits, unselfish and unambitious, a thorough teacher, a man highly esteemed by all who knew him, a man without an enemy, whose memory is a benediction.
ISAAC TICHENOR
By Walter H. Crockett
TN the late colonial and early national periods of American 1 history, before there was such a political entity as "The West," to allure the ambitious and the dissatisfied with prom- ise of a new Land of Opportunity, Vermont, known at first as the New Hampshire Grants, afforded the most accessible unsettled area, particularly for the supposedly crowded popu- lation of southern New England. The new state attracted not
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