Thaddeus Stevens Champions Radical Reconstruction in Congress

Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania led the House fight for Radical Reconstruction, floor-managing the Fourteenth Amendment, the Reconstruction Acts, and repeated Freedmen's Bureau renewal bills over Johnson's vetoes. Stevens consistently argued that land redistribution was necessary for meaningful freedom; he proposed confiscating Confederate estates and distributing 40-acre homesteads to freedpeople, but the proposal failed. He died in August 1868, requesting burial in a Black ceme