t five or six weeks of the third session of the
Thirty-seventh Congress, Stevens improved his time in free and sarcastic
remarks on the reconstruction policy of the Government, which he
characterized as puerile and feeble, and at length, on the 8th of
January, he gave utterance to his feelings, maintaining that "with
regard to all the Southern States in rebellion, the Constitution has no
binding influence or application." He averred that "in his opinion they
were not members of the Union"; that "the ordinances of secession took
them out of the Union"; that he "would levy a tax wherever he could upon
these conquered provinces"; said he "would not only collect the tax, but
he would, as a necessary war measure, take every particle of property,
real and personal, life estate and reversion, of every disloyal man, and
sell it for the benefit of the nation in carrying on this war."

Several members of Congress hastened to deny that these sentiments and
purposes were those of the Republican party; this Mr. Stevens admitted.
He said "a very mild denial from the pleasant gentleman from New York
[Mr. Olin], and the somewhat softened and modified repudiation of the
gentleman from Indiana" (Mr. Colfax), would, he hoped, satisfy the
sensitive gentlemen in regard to him, and he "desired to say he did not
speak the sentiments of this side of the House _as a party_."; that
"for the last fifteen years he [Stevens] had always been ahead of the
party in these matters, but he had never been so far ahead but that the
members of the party had overtaken and gone ahead; and they would again
overtake him and go with him before the infamous and bloody rebellion
was ended." "They will find that they must treat those States, now
outside of the Union, as conquered provinces, and settle them with new
men, and drive the present rebels as exiles from this country." "Nothing
but extermination, or exile, or starvation, will ever induce them to
surrender to the Government."

Not very consistent or logical in his policy and views, this
subsequently Radical leader proposed to treat the Southern people
sometimes as foreigners and at other times as rebel citizens; in either
case he would tax, starve, and exile them--make provinces of their
States, and overturn their old established governments. Few,
comparatively, of the Republicans were at that time prepared to follow
Stevens or adopt his vindictive and arbitrary measures. Shocked at his
propositions, the "