The Mad Dreams of Thaddeus Stevens by Michael J. Barton is a book that every Thaddeus Stevens admirer should own. It is not a biography; it is a tribute, telling why Thaddeus Stevens was a visionary who changed the United States.
The book originated with an epic poem written by Barton, a Michigan attorney who devoted his retirement to studying the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the so-called Reconstruction Amendments. “In that type of study, all roads lead to Thaddeus Stevens,” he writes in his book.
The Thaddeus Stevens Society reprinted the poem in our spring 2025 newsletter which can be found at this link: Barton Poem
This led to the Society asking Barton to put together a print-on-demand book that would include his poem and others written in the 19th century. He threw himself enthusiastically into the venture and added several chapters about how other authors celebrated Stevens and described schools, museums, and statues that honor the Great Commoner. The book can be found on the Barnes & Noble web page by typing in “The Mad Dreams of Thaddeus Stevens.” The book is also available in paperback at the same site.
The book starts with an essay about how Stevens was ahead of his time. “He does not seem to be a product of his time,” Barton writes. This is followed by chapters on Stevens lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., his inspirational grave in Lancaster, PA, the eulogies read in Congress, as well as poems written by Civil War era authors.
Then there is a gem of a letter by Frederick Douglass, written in 1869 in response to an inquiry from Edward McPherson, Stevens’s longtime protege. And even though he never met Stevens, Douglass had great admiration for him.
“My impressions of the man derived from close observation of his manner and bearing on the floor of the house, whether in debate or in repose, are very vivid and will never be forgotten,” Douglass wrote, adding that Stevens’s “great qualities of his mind and heart — which made him more potent in Congress and in the country than even the President and Cabinet combined.”
Barton then describes Stevens’s involvement in the Christiana Resistance case of 1851 and even how a Stevens quote helped win the famous 1954 Supreme Court case that outlawed school segregation. There are also essays on what W.E.B. Du Bois and Carl Sandburg said about him.
The book ends with a revised version of Barton’s 45-page poem that draws on American history as well as Greek mythology. And it ends with Stevens’s inspirational epitaph on his grave in Lancaster:
“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 my death the principles which I advocated during a long life: Equality of Man before his creator.”
Ross Hetrick is president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which operates the Thaddeus Stevens Museum at 46 Chambersburg St. in Gettysburg, PA
More information about the Great Commoner
