The attempt of Mr. Adams on his retirement to establish a national anti-Masonic party was warmly seconded by Stevens, and with greater success in Pennsylvania than attended his distinguished leader in Massachusetts. The failure of the attempt was more severely felt by the disciple than by the master. After the annihilation of the anti-Masonic organization and the discomfiture of the buck-shot war, Stevens was less conspicuous, though prominent for a few months in 1840, when he came forward as an earnest advocate of the nomination of General Harrison in that singular campaign which resulted in the General's election. His efficiency and zeal in behalf of both the nomination and election of the "hero of Tippecanoe" were acknowledged, and he and his friends anticipated they would be recognized and he rewarded by a seat in the Cabinet. But he had given offence to the great Whig leader of that day by his preference of Harrison for President, and had moreover an unsavory reputation, which, with the declared opposition of Clay and Webster, caused his exclusion. It was a sore disappointment, from which he never fully recovered. Eight years later, with the advent of General Taylor and the defeated aspirations of the Whig leaders, who had caused his exclusion from Harrison's Cabinet, he sought and obtained an election to the thirty-first Congress from the Lancaster district. In 1856 he strove with all his power to secure the Presidential nomination for John McLane of the Supreme Court, who had or professed to have had anti-Masonic tendencies. His ill success was another disappointment; but in 1859 he was again elected to Congress, and thereafter until his death he represented the Lancaster district.
Disappointments had made him splenetic, but he was not, as represented by his opponents on the two extremes, either a charlatan or a miscreant, though possibly not wholly exempt from charges against him in either respect. In many of his ultra radical and it may be truly said revolutionary views--revolutionary because they changed the structure of the Government--he coincided with Senator Sumner, who was perhaps the leading spirit in the Senate on the subject of reconstruction, but he did not, like the Massachusetts Senator, make any pretence that his project to subjugate the Southern people and reduce their States to the condition of provinces was constitutional, or by authority of the Declaration of Independence. President Lincoln well understood the characteristics of both these men, and, though differing from each on the subject of restoration and reconstruction, he managed to preserve friendly personal relations with both--retained their confidence, and while he lived secured their general support of his Administration. Herein President Lincoln exhibited those peculiar qualities and attributes of mind which made him a leader and manager of men, and enabled him in a quiet and unostentatious way to exercise his executive ability in administering the Government during the most troublesome period of our national history.