Charles Graham Halpine.
The leader of this coterie was Thaddeus Stevens. He declared the South was in a state of anarchy, demanded that it be placed under military rule and that suffrage be extended to the negroes. In February, 1868, he introduced a resolution that "Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in office," but at the trial which followed the proceedings were shown to have been actuated by partisan bitterness and the President was acquitted. The verdict was a heavy blow to Stevens. He had burned himself out and died in August.
THADDEUS STEVENS
DIED AUG. 11, 1868
An eye with the piercing eagle's fire,
Not the look of the gentle dove;
Not his the form that men admire,
Nor the face that tender women love.
Working first for his daily bread
With the humblest toilers of the earth;
Never walking with free, proud tread—
[Crippled and halting from his birth].
Wearing outside a thorny suit
Of sharp, sarcastic, stinging power;
Sweet at the core as sweetest fruit,
Or inmost heart of fragrant flower.
Fierce and trenchant, the haughty foe
Felt his words like a sword of flame;
But to the humble, poor, and low
Soft as a woman's his accents came.
Not his the closest, tenderest friend—
No children blessed his lonely way;
But down in his heart until the end
The tender dream of his boyhood lay.
His mother's faith he held not fast;
But he loved her living, mourned her dead,
And he kept her memory to the last
As green as the sod above her bed.