Strip the proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans, send forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle the plow, and you will thus humble proud traitors.

In the one brief surviving letter from Stevens to her Stevens addresses her as Mrs. "


Early life

Stevens was born in Danville Vermont on April 4 1792. Scholarly views of Stevens have swung sharply since his death as interpretations of Reconstruction have changed.

". The rise of the neo-abolitionist school in the 1950s led to a strong positive appreciation of Stevens' work on civil rights for Freedmen. Historians of the Dunning School (1890s–1940s) held Stevens responsible for demanding harsh treatment of the white South and violating American traditions of republicanism depicting Stevens as a villain for his advocacy of harsh measures in the South such as disfranchising all ex-Confederates.