Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens was an American politician and lawyer who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, being one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party during the 1860s. A fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against black Americans, Stevens sought to secure their rights during Reconstruction, leading the opposition to U.S. President Andrew Johnson. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the American Civil War, he played a leading role, focusing his attention on defeating the Confederacy, financing the war with new taxes and borrowing, crushing the power of slave owners, ending slavery, and securing equal rights for the freedmen.

4 April 1792

Born on the same birth day (4 April): Aki Kaurismäki • Brian Hewson • Dave Brown (rugby league, born 1913) • Dorothea Dix • Frank Kaminsky • Geoff Braybrooke • Grinling Gibbons • Jamie Lynn Spears • Kitty Kelley • Louis Archambault • Magnus Sveningsson • Maya Angelou • Natasha Lyonne • Piotr Anderszewski • Richard Coogan • Shing-Tung Yau • Simcha Jacobovici • The Fat Duck • William Strachey • Đặng Thân

Born in the same month (April 1792): Francisco de Paula Santander • John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham • Thomas Romney Robinson