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DOJ Urges Citizens to Report “Extremists” Handing Out Literature | FTSN News Magazine
DOJ Urges Citizens to Report “Extremists” Handing Out Literature. If you posted an Obama Joker poster or Tea Party literature on a public
bulletin board, the Justice Department is warning you are a possible terrorist.
According to a hand-out distributed by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a
component of the Justice Department, “extremist literature distributed at the
mall or posted on public bulletin boards” is suspicious and a potential
indicator of terrorist activities.
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Is Thad Stevens Driving His Museum Into Debt? - Harrisburg history | Examiner.com
Is Thad Stevens Driving His Museum Into Debt? - Harrisburg history | Examiner.com
Is Thad Stevens Driving His Museum Into Debt?
Congressman and social activist Thaddeus Stevens
Photo: Courtesy of the Library of CongressFounding Father and Pennsylvania Renaissance man Benjamin Franklin was once quoted as saying that “creditors have better memories than debtors”. Apparently the Historical Preservation Trust of Lancaster County is learning the wisdom of Franklin’s words the hard way. It was reported recently in the Intelligencer Journal that nonprofit preservation organization is eight months behind on a debt of over $741,000 owed to the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority for costs associated with the construction and preservation of the Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Museum that will be adjoining Lancaster’s new convention center. The trust had hoped to use the new meeting area as a platform to tell the story of Stevens and Smith, but the museum now sits unfinished. Until the Preservation Trust can raise the addition funds needed for the final construction, design, and installment of the displays, the Stevens / Smith Museum will continue to be a distant goal, despite the fact that the Lancaster City Convention Center has been up and running for almost a year now. Regardless of what the money situation is, both sides are still hopeful that the debt will be settled and this whole business of the Stevens / Smith Museum can be put firmly in the past for all parties involved. As someone who has spent time studying the lives of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and his housekeeper / confidant Lydia Hamilton Smith (and who has also donated money to the Preservation Trust in the past), I think that the Stevens / Smith Museum is a great idea, but it is sad to see that the museum is still no closer to opening now than it was over a year and half ago. The story of Stevens and Smith is one that needs to be told, but sadly is often overlooked in American history classes – even here in the Commonwealth. (To read more on this story from Lancaster Online.com, click here)
Born in 1792 in Danville, Vermont and educated at Dartmouth College, Thaddeus Stevens was not your typical American politician. But then again, he wasn’t really your typical American of the mid- to late-19th Century. Upon moving to the Commonwealth in 1815, Stevens studied law and, after establishing a successful law practice in Gettysburg, began an equally successful career as a state legislator where he was an early member of the Anti-Masonic movement and a fierce advocate for public education (see past History Examiner content). It was also rumored that Stevens operated a safe house for runaway slaves on his Gettysburg property in defiance of Federal law and defended fugitive slaves in the courts. In 1842, Stevens moved from Gettysburg to Lancaster. The reasoning for his move to the Red Rose City has remained controversial to this day. According to legend, the body of an African-American woman was found in a lake on Steven’s property and, during an autopsy, it was discovered she was pregnant. Though nothing ever came of the case, rumor had it that Stevens was the father and that he had moved to Lancaster to avoid public humiliation over the scandal.
Regardless of the reasoning, Stevens purchased a stately house on South Queen Street in Lancaster and hired a former Gettysburg resident, Lydia Hamilton Smith, as his housekeeper. Not much is known about Smith’s early life other than she was a very light skinned mulatto and was raising two young boys as a single mother. For the next twenty-five years, Smith would be Stevens’ confidant and trusted companion, running his Lancaster residency and traveling with him to Washington DC, while Stevens was serving a member of the House of Representatives from 1849 till his death in 1868. Controversy and rumor continued to swirl around their relationship as historians debate whether or not Stevens and Smith engaged in a romantic affair. In his 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, Director D.W. Griffith modeled villainous congressman Austin Stoneman after Stevens, complete with a mulatto mistress modeled after Smith. Regardless of their true feelings for each other, accounts of the time indicate that the Stevens / Smith relationship was cordial and respectful on both sides, with Stevens consistently treated Smith as an equal and with great deference at a time when most educated, white, men considered women and blacks (even light skinned ones) as inferior.
Though Stevens is probably best remembered in American history as the chairman of the powerful Ways and Mean Committee, that helped to finance the Union war effort during American Civil War, or as one of the leaders of the so-called “Radical” Republicans who among other things tried to impeach and remove President Andrew Johnson from office in 1868, Stevens was also a powerful figure in the fight for equality in American society. His efforts would not just in the area of race, but also in the arena of class and physical handicap. Archeological evidence in recent years has show that a water cistern under Steven’s Lancaster home had been modified to accommodate humans and that Stevens had continued to function as an operative on the Underground Railroad well into the 1860’s. In 1851, Stevens defended Pennsylvania Quaker Caster Hanaway in the infamous Christiana Riot Treason Trial and won him an acquittal, much to the anger of Southern slaveholders. His hatred of the Southern institution of slavery was so well known that, during the Civil War, Confederate General Jubal Early ordered Stevens’ iron business, at modern-day Caledonia State Park in Pennsylvania, burned to the ground during the 1863 invasion of the mid-state and General Robert E. Lee made a point of turning Steven’s former Gettysburg residence into his headquarters during the three-day battle at Gettysburg.
Despite all of this, Stevens never lost sight of his goals of equality. Born with a club foot, he spoke often of providing safeguards for the education of other physically handicapped Americans, leaving money in his will for the founding of a technical school in Lancaster for that end. That school has evolved over the years into the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, which continues to provide educational opportunities for those less fortunate. Stevens also personally authored the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provided African-Americans with the right to vote and American citizenship. When Stevens died in August of 1868, his will requested that he be buried in Lancaster’s Shreiner-Concord Cemetery because it was the only cemetery that would accept people without regard to race.
In today’s modern day society, Thaddeus Stevens would probably be seen as an idealist. He dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. A kind of modern-day humanist, Stevens believed from his own personal experiences that being different or having a different perspective can be beneficial and enriching to society and that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed but celebrated. Hopefully the future Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Museum in Lancaster will be a showcase of Steven’s undying belief in this cause and that all us can be inspired by it to try and make our communities, our state, and our country a better place.
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Is Thad Stevens Driving His Museum Into Debt? - Harrisburg history | Examiner.com
Born in 1792 in Danville, Vermont and educated at Dartmouth College, Thaddeus Stevens was not your typical American politician. But then again, he wasn’t really your typical American of the mid- to late-19th Century. Upon moving to the Commonwealth in 1815, Stevens studied law and, after establishing a successful law practice in Gettysburg, began an equally successful career as a state legislator where he was an early member of the Anti-Masonic movement and a fierce advocate for public education (see past History Examiner content). It was also rumored that Stevens operated a safe house for runaway slaves on his Gettysburg property in defiance of Federal law and defended fugitive slaves in the courts. In 1842, Stevens moved from Gettysburg to Lancaster. The reasoning for his move to the Red Rose City has remained controversial to this day. According to legend, the body of an African-American woman was found in a lake on Steven’s property and, during an autopsy, it was discovered she was pregnant. Though nothing ever came of the case, rumor had it that Stevens was the father and that he had moved to Lancaster to avoid public humiliation over the scandal.
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