Thaddeus Stevens Leads Congress's Radical Reconstruction Push

Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of PA floor-managed the 14th Amendment, the Reconstruction Acts, and multiple Freedmen's Bureau bills over Johnson's vetoes. He consistently argued land redistribution was necessary for meaningful freedom and proposed confiscating Confederate estates for 40-acre homesteads — a proposal that failed. He died in August 1868 and was buried in a Black cemetery to protest segregation.