Stevens libel case

In 1831, then Gettysburg lawyer and borough councilman Thaddeus Stevens, gave a speech in Hagerstown, Maryland, where he strongly condemned freemasonry claiming that the organization was seeking to undermine the United States and enslave the American people. The newspaper, staunchly Democratic, attacked the personal appearance and character of Stevens, in an attempt to undermine the popularity of the local Anti-Masonic Party. Calling Stevens "bald" "stout" "lame" and a "harlot", and that his speech was "the vilest slanders barefaced falsehood and pandemoniac malignity against a large and respectable portion of our citizens that ever fell from the lips of any man." The newspaper also attacked Stevens place of birth for not being Pennsylvania when seeking to impact Pennsylvanian politics. In response, Stevens sued Lefever and the paper for libel, to which Lefever argued no defense and had to pay a $50 fine ($1,768.90 in 2023), retract the article, and was sentenced to three months in prison. The severity of the punishment that presiding Judge John Reed gave Lefever troubled Democratic governor George Wolf and his State Attorney Samuel Douglas, who sent his Adams County deputy, Andrew G. Miller to request Reed remit the prison sentence, Reed refused. After the trial, former state senator Zephaniah Herbert accused Reed, and the other presiding Judge, McClean, of prejudice as both were very active in local anti-masonic circles. A petition was also signed by most of Gettysburg's founding families requested they remit Lefever's prison sentence. Seventeen days after his sentencing, Governor Wolf pardoned Lefever. Later in Stevens' career, it was revealed that he bribed the editors of the Adams Sentinel and the Antimasonic Star to publish inflammatory rhetoric against The Republican Compiler which compelled Lefever to print the piece against Stevens.^[5]