Thaddeus Stevens At York Academy

Thaddeus Stevens At York Academy. The Underground Railroad in York. , You're looking at the former site of the York Academy, where famed abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, who helped strike the death blows to slavery, was a teacher in 1815-1816., Stevens was born in Vermont in 1792. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1814, he returned to Peacham, Vermont, to teach and study law. When a position opened at the York Academy, he traveled here to apply. His interview began in rocky fashion. He could not create a pen from a goose quill (a basic skill), wrote illegibly, and failed spelling and math questions. But when he demonstrated his knowledge of Greek, Latin, and the classics, he got the job., Stevens taught at the Academy from 1815 to 1816, receiving an annual salary of less than $100. He continued to study law, and by summer 1816 was ready to take the bar exam, but local lawyers had passed a resolution prohibiting membership to anyone who "followed any other profession while preparing for admission." Undaunted, Stevens went to Maryland to take the exam. After an examination that included legal questions and fortified wine, he passed., Stevens settled in Gettysburg and later moved to Lancaster. He went on to become a successful lawyer, a U.S. Congressman, a fierce foe of slavery, and a driving force behind the constitutional amendments that brought freedom and rights to African Americans. When he died in 1868, his funeral train to Lancaster stopped in York, a final visit to this formative site of his early life., "He was a modest, retiring young man, of remarkably studious habits." , Amos Gilbert, a fellow educator, describing Stevens at York., (captions) , 1838 portrait of Stevens by Jacob Eicholtz. Special Collections and College Archives, Gettysburg College , York Academy in 1850. Illustration by Howard Coleman Imhoff from York, Pennsylvania: A Dynamic Community Forges Ahead.