Thaddeus Stevens devoted much of his life and resources to relieving suffering, giving money and legal aid almost without limit regardless of race, religion, national origin, or political affiliation, and even directing his physician and cobbler to treat deformed children at his expense. At his death, he held over $100,000 in unpaid notes from people he had loaned money to. In education, he saved Pennsylvania’s one-year-old public school system from repeal with an influential speech in 1835, secured state funding for Pennsylvania College in 1834, left a bequest for a non-discriminatory school for indigent orphans that evolved into Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, and consistently supported educational initiatives in the Pennsylvania Legislature and Congress. In public life, he refused to sign the 1837 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention document because it barred African-Americans from voting, pressed President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, helped pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, defended participants in the 1851 Christiana Resistance and escaped slaves, and took part in the Underground Railroad. During Reconstruction, on December 4, 1864, he helped prevent Southerners from taking seats in Congress, was one of the chief architects of measures aimed at creating an equal society in the South, including voting rights for African-American men and military occupation to protect newly freed slaves, and spearheaded the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, leaving him virtually powerless after the Senate failed to convict by one vote. Stevens was also one of the chief framers of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, requiring equal treatment for all American citizens and barring states from violating basic rights; later, its meaning was revived by the Supreme Court in the 1950s and 1960s to help dismantle segregation laws and advance the Civil Rights Movement. He chose to be buried in the only integrated cemetery in Lancaster to illustrate in death the principle he had advocated in life: equality of man before his creator.