[GOPcapitalist]

Again, you are trying to misdirect the debate, away from the evidence about the $100,000 which contradicts your charges agaist Stevens.

What on earth are you talking about? It was a fact of history that, as of 1863, Stevens' factory that got burned was not a great profit maker. He was a chronic gambler and, for some time, alcoholic, both of which hurt his finances severely. He may have been offered payment for the factory, but it certainly wasn't market value or a representation of the financial losses it imposed on him because his finances were already shot by personal habits of far greater cost than anything the confederates could have ever done to him.

[Grand Old Partisan]

You claim Stevens was broke by 1863 -- all the more reason to revere him for donating that $100,000 to charity.

Stevens was a teetotaler since his 20s, after the shock of dropping off a drunken friend one winter's night, only to learn that the guy had frozen to death on the doorstep.

Stevens usually made money gambling, which he also gave to charity. There's a famous story of a black minister asking him for a donation on his way home from gambling. Stevens made a game of giving him the first bill that he could fish out of his pocket. It was a $100 bill, and the minister declined to accept so much (several months salary for a working man), but Stevens insisted, quoting the title of a classic hymn "God Works In Mysterious Ways, His Wonders To Peform".

Yeah, a real scumbag!