Lincoln (2012)

Tommy Lee Jones: Thaddeus Stevens

Photos 

Quotes 

• Thaddeus Stevens : How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio? Proof that some men ARE inferior, endowed by their maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot, red blood! YOU are more reptile than man, George, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you!

  George Pendleton : How dare you!

  Thaddeus Stevens : Yet even YOU, Pendleton - who should have been gibbetted for treason long before today - even worthless, unworthy you ought to be treated equally before the law! And so again, sir, and again and again and again, I say, I do not hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law! Nothing more.

• Thaddeus Stevens : A point of order, Mr. Speaker, if you please. When will Mr. Wood conclude his interminable gabble? Some of us breathe oxygen, and we find the mephitic fumes of his oratory a lethal challenge to our pulmonary capabilities!

  [laughter and applause from Republicans] 

• Thaddeus Stevens : The people elected me to represent them, to lead them, and I lead. You ought to try it.

  Abraham Lincoln : I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter. Then the border states would've gone over to the Confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.

  Thaddeus Stevens : Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them, but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country's infinite abundance with Negroes.

  Abraham Lincoln : A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you true north from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... what's the use of knowing true north?

• Thaddeus Stevens : Trust? Gentlemen, you seem to have forgotten that our chosen career is politics.

• Thaddeus Stevens : The greatest measure of the Nineteenth Century. Passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.

• Thaddeus Stevens : We shall oppose this amendment and any legislation that so affronts natural law insulting to God as to man. Congress must never declare equal those whom God created unequal.

  Thaddeus Stevens : Slavery is the only insult to the natural law, you fatuous nincompoop.

• Thaddeus Stevens : Lincoln the inveterate dawdler, Lincoln the Southerner, Lincoln the capitulating compromiser, our adversary, and leader of the God forsaken Republican Party, our party... Abraham Lincoln has asked us to work with him to accomplish the death of slavery in America. Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.

• Abraham Lincoln : When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they're ready to...

  Thaddeus Stevens : Shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for. I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the *good* of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And now I look a lot worse without my wig.

• Asa Vintner Litton : Have you lost your very soul, Mr. Stevens? Is there nothing you won't say?

  Thaddeus Stevens : I'm sorry you're nauseous, Asa. That must be unpleasant. I want the amendment to pass, so that the constitution's first and only mention of slavery is its absolute prohibition. For this amendment, for which I have worked all my life and for which countless colored men and women have fought and died and now hundreds of thousands of soldiers... No, sir, no, it seems there's very nearly nothing I won't say.

• Thaddeus Stevens : Nothing surprises you, Asa, therefore nothing about you is surprising. Perhaps that is why your constituents did not re-elect you to the coming term.

• Thaddeus Stevens : Read it to me again, my love.

  Lydia Smith : "Proposed..."

  Thaddeus Stevens : And adopted.

  Lydia Smith : Adopted. "An Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Section One: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

  Thaddeus Stevens : Section Two...

  Lydia Smith : "Congress shall have power to enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation..."

• Thaddeus Stevens : It's late, I'm old and I'm going home.

• George Pendleton : Instruct us, oh, Great Commoner. What is unnatural, in your opinion? Niggrahs casting ballots? Niggrah representatives? Is that natural, Stevens? Intermarriage?

  Thaddeus Stevens : What violates natural law? Slavery and you! Pendleton, you insult God. You unnatural noise.

  [an avalanche of boos and cheers as Democrats rally to Wood, Republicans rally to Stevens] 

  James Ashley : Mr. Colfax! Please, use your gavel! They are...

  [to Democrats] 

  James Ashley : You are out of order!

  Schuyler Colfax : [banging the gavel]  Order in the chamber!

  James Ashley : [shouting to Colfax]  Direct the sergeant of arms to suppress this!

  [to Democrats] 

  James Ashley : We are in session!

• Thaddeus Stevens : [presents a copy of the 13th Amendment to Lydia]  A gift for you.

• Thaddeus Stevens : [knock at the door]  It opens!

  [a nervous man enters hesitantly, closing the door behind] 

  Thaddeus Stevens : You are Canfrey?

  Alexander Coffroth : Coffroth, Mr. Stevens, Alexander Coffroth, I'm... I'm...

  Thaddeus Stevens : [skeptically]  Are we representatives of the same state?

  Alexander Coffroth : [stammers]  Y... yes sir! We sit only three desks apart.

  Thaddeus Stevens : [Stevens waves him into a chair]  I haven't noticed you.

  [Coffroth sits] 

  Thaddeus Stevens : I'm a Republican, and you, Coughdrop, are a Democrat?

  Alexander Coffroth : [stammers]  Well... uh... I... um... that is to say...

  Thaddeus Stevens : The modern travesty of Thomas Jefferson's political organization to which you have attached yourself like a barnacle has the effrontery to call itself The Democratic Party. You are a Dem-o-crat. What's the matter with you? Are you wicked?

  Alexander Coffroth : Well, I felt... um...

  Thaddeus Stevens : Never mind, Coffsnot. You were ignominiously trounced at the hustings in November's election by your worthy challenger, a Republican.

  Alexander Coffroth : No, sir, I was not, um, trounced. Uh, he wants to steal my seat. I didn't lose the election.

  Thaddeus Stevens : What difference does it make if you lost or not? The governor of our state, is... a Democrat?

  Alexander Coffroth : No, he's... he's a...

  [stammers] 

  Alexander Coffroth : a Re... re... re...

  Thaddeus Stevens : Re...

  Alexander Coffroth : Re...

  Thaddeus Stevens : [nods]  Pub...

  Alexander Coffroth : pub...

  Thaddeus Stevens : Li...

  Alexander Coffroth : Li...

  Thaddeus Stevens : Can.

  Alexander Coffroth : Can. Republican.

  Thaddeus Stevens : I know what he is. This is a rhetorical exercise. And Congress is controlled by what party? Yours?

  [Coffroth shakes his head] 

  Thaddeus Stevens : Your party was beaten, your challenger's party now controls the House, and hence the House Committee on Elections, so you have been beaten. You shall shortly be sent home in disgrace. Unless...

  Alexander Coffroth : I know what I must do, sir! I will immediately become a Republican and vote yes for...

  Thaddeus Stevens : No! Coffroth will vote yes but Coffroth will remain a Democrat until after he does so.

  Alexander Coffroth : Why wait to switch? I'm happy to switch...

  Thaddeus Stevens : We want to show the amendment has bipartisan support, you idiot. Early in the next Congress, when I tell you to do so, you will switch parties. Now congratulations on your victory, and get out.

• Thaddeus Stevens : [knock at the door]  It opens!

• Thaddeus Stevens : As long as your household accounts are in order, Madam, we'll have no need to investigate them.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : You have always taken such a *lively*, even prosecutorial interest in my household accounts.

  Thaddeus Stevens : Your household accounts have always been so interesting.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : Yes, thank you, it's true. The miracles I have wrought out of fertilizer bills and cutlery invoices, but I had to. Four years ago, when the President and I arrived, this was a pure pigsty. Tobacco stains in the Turkey carpets, mushrooms, green as the moon, sprouting from the ceilings. And a pauper's pittance allotted for improvements. As if your committee joined with all of Washington awaiting, in what you anticipated to be our comfort in squalor, further proof that my husband and I were prairie primitives, unsuited to the position to which an error of the people, a flaw in the democratic process, had elevated us.

• Mary Todd Lincoln : Praise heavens, praise heavens. Just when I had abandoned hope of amusement, it's the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

  Thaddeus Stevens : Mrs Lincoln.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : Madame President, if you please. Don't convene another subcommittee to investigate me, sir. I'm teasing.

• Thaddeus Stevens : I wish you had been present.

  Lydia Smith : I wish I'd been.

  Thaddeus Stevens : It was a spectacle.

  Lydia Smith : You can't bring your housekeeper to the House. I won't give them gossip.

• Thaddeus Stevens : Ashley insists you're ensuring approval by dispensing patronage to otherwise undeserving Democrats.

  Abraham Lincoln : I can't ensure a single damn thing if you scare the whole House silly with talk of land appropriations and revolutionary tribunals.

  Thaddeus Stevens : When the war ends, I intend to push for full equality, the Negro vote, and much more. Congress shall mandate the seizure of every foot of Rebel land and every dollar of their property. We'll use their confiscated wealth to establish hundreds of thousands of free Negro farmers and, at their side, soldiers armed to occupy and transform the heritage of traitors. We'll build up a land down there of free men and free women and free children and freedom. The nation needs to know that we have such plans.

  Abraham Lincoln : That's the untempered version of reconstruction. It is not - it's not quite exactly what I intend. But we shall oppose one another in the course of time. Now we're working together.