Gettysburg erects statue of Civil War abolitionist

A historical group is erecting a statue of an abolitionist and U.S. representative near the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War in an era of fast-vanishing Confederate monuments.

A bronze statue of Thaddeus Stevens will be dedicated April 2 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of a weekend of events marking the anniversary of the abolitionist’s birth.

The Thaddeus Stevens Society said it commissioned the statue to replace the Confederate monuments that have been criticized, vandalized and removed amid a national reckoning on race and justice following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

“We should be putting up more statues,” society President Ross Hetrick said in a statement.

“We should be honoring those who have led the struggle for freedom, whether they are ordinary people or elected officials, like Thaddeus Stevens,” Mr. Hetrick added. “People have tried to erase their work and legacies. Instead, we need to shine a brighter light on them.”

Peru-born artist Alex Paul Loza, who lives in Tennessee, sculpted the statue for its dedication near the Adams County Courthouse in Gettysburg — Stevens’ hometown for more than 25 years and the site of the war’s pivotal battle in 1863.

The April 1-3 celebration of Stevens’ birth will include talks by historians and economists, as well as a tour of the congressman’s home in nearby Lancaster.

The historical group said in a press release that ex-Confederates targeted the legacy of Stevens, who died in 1868 at age 76, due to his role in preventing them from reinstating slavery during the South’s postwar Reconstruction period.

Stevens moved to exclude ex-Confederates from serving in Congress in 1865 and introduced the 14th Amendment that strengthened equal citizenship rights for native-born Americans.

He also used his Lancaster home as a stop on the Underground Railroad for those escaping slavery on Southern plantations.

“The work that he and many others did are among the roots of Americans’ fights now against discrimination, for voting rights, for access to education,” Mr. Hetrick said. “They are heroes of justice, and they are among those who can inspire us and future generations.”

Kevin Gutzman, a professor of history at Western Connecticut State University, said Stevens being memorialized at Gettysburg “seems entirely fitting in a day when his message of government racial neutrality is once again increasingly controversial.”

James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the statue will serve as a reminder of those 19th-century battles.

“Honoring Thaddeus Stevens commemorates the most promising aspects of Reconstruction, especially the 14th Amendment,” Mr. Grossman said.

But Wilfred M. McClay, a historian who teaches at Hillsdale College, said the choice of Stevens for a memorial might give some people pause.

“Fact is, he was a complicated, problematic man, whose nasty personality and politically extreme positions consistently made trouble for Lincoln, and were often a liability to the noble causes he supported,” Mr. McClay said. “And yet I regard him as a hero, even if a highly imperfect one. I think he deserves an honored place in our past — as do a great many other imperfect heroes, North and South, whom present-day zealots seem too willing to cancel.”

In popular culture, actor Tommy Lee Jones portrayed Stevens in the 2012 biographical movie “Lincoln.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Alex Paul Loza, the artist who created the new sculpture of Stevens.