Radical Republicans

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Radical Republicans
Leader(s)Senator John C. Frémont (California)
Senator Charles Sumner (Massachusetts)
Representative Thaddeus Stevens (Pennsylvania)
Founded1854 (1854)
Dissolved1877 (1877)
Succeeded by Stalwarts
Ideology Abolitionism
Social Justice
National affiliation Republican Party

The Radical Republicans was a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party of the United States from around 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They called themselves "Radicals," with a goal of immediate, complete, permanent eradication of slavery, without compromise. They were opposed during the War by the moderate Republicans (led by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln), and by the pro-slavery and anti-Reconstruction Democratic Party as well as liberals in the Northern United States during Reconstruction. Radicals led efforts after the war to establish civil rights for former slaves and fully implement emancipation. After weaker measures in 1866 resulted in violence against former slaves in the rebel states, Radicals pushed the Fourteenth Amendment and statutory protections through Congress. They disfavored allowing ex-Confederate officers to retake political power in the Southern United States, and emphasized equality, civil rights and voting rights for the "freedmen," i.e. people who had been enslaved by state slavery laws within the United States. [1]


During the war, Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln's initial selection of General George B. McClellan for top command of the major eastern Army of the Potomac and Lincoln's efforts in 1864 to bring seceded Southern states back into the Union as quickly and easily as possible. Lincoln later recognized McClellan's weakness and relieved him of command. The Radicals passed their own Reconstruction plan through the Congress in 1864, but Lincoln vetoed it and was putting his own presidential policies in effect as military commander-in-chief when he was assassinated in April 1865. [2] Radicals pushed for the uncompensated abolition of slavery, while Lincoln wanted to pay slave owners who were loyal to the Union. After the war, the Radicals demanded civil rights for freed slaves, including measures ensuring suffrage. They initiated the various Reconstruction Acts as well as the Fourteenth Amendment and limited political and voting rights for ex-Confederate civil officials and military officers. They keenly fought Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee who favored allowing Southern states to decide the rights and status of former slaves. After Johnson vetoed various congressional acts favoring civil rights for former slaves, they attempted to remove him from office through impeachment, which failed by one vote in 1868.

The Radical coalition

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens Stevens thadee.jpg
U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens

The Radicals were heavily influenced by religious ideals, and many were Christian reformers who saw slavery as evil and the Civil War as God's punishment for slavery. [3] :1ff. The term "radical" was in common use in the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War, referring not to abolitionists, but to Northern politicians strongly opposed to Slave Power. [4] Many and perhaps a majority had been Whigs, such as William Seward, [5] a leading presidential contender in 1860 and Lincoln's Secretary of State, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, as well as Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune, the leading Radical newspaper. There was movement in both directions: some of the pre-war Radicals (such as Seward) became less radical during the war, while some prewar moderates became Radicals. Some wartime Radicals had been Democrats before the war, often taking proslavery positions. They included John A. Logan of Illinois, Edwin Stanton of Ohio, Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, Ulysses S. Grant of Illinois and Vice President Andrew Johnson; Johnson would break with the Radicals after he became President.






Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury Mathew Brady, Portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, officer of the United States government (1860-1865, full version).jpg
Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury


Reconstruction policy

Opposing Lincoln

Henry Winter Davis, one of the authors of the Wade-Davis Manifesto opposing Lincoln's "ten percent" reconstruction plan Hwdavis.jpg


Opposing Johnson

After the assassination of United States President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson became President. Although he appeared at first to be a Radical, [12] he broke with them and the Radicals and Johnson became embroiled in a bitter struggle. Johnson proved a poor politician and his allies lost heavily in the 1866 elections in the North. The Radicals now had full control of Congress and could override Johnson's vetoes.

Control of Congress



Edwin McMasters Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, whom Johnson tried to remove from office Edwin McMasters Stanton Secretary of War.jpg

The Radical plan was to remove Johnson from office, but the first effort at the impeachment trial of President Johnson went nowhere. After Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House of Representatives voted to impeach him, but he escaped removal from office by the Senate by a single vote in 1868, though he had lost most of his power. [13]

Supporting Grant




Reconstruction of the South

U.S. Senator Charles Sumner Charles-Sumner-Tilton.jpeg
U.S. Senator Charles Sumner



By 1866, the Radical Republicans supported federal civil rights for freedmen, which Johnson opposed. By 1867, they defined terms for suffrage for freed slaves and limited early suffrage for many ex-Confederates. While Johnson opposed the Radical Republicans on some issues, the decisive Congressional elections of 1866 gave the Radicals enough votes to enact their legislation over Johnson's vetoes. Through elections in the South, ex-Confederate officeholders were gradually replaced with a coalition of freedmen, Southern whites (pejoratively called scalawags) and Northerners who had resettled in the South (pejoratively called carpetbaggers). The Radical Republicans were successful in their efforts to impeach United States President Andrew Johnson in the House, but failed by one vote in the Senate to remove him from office. [11]


"Grant's Last Outrage in Louisiana" art in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of January 23, 1875 Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper on January 23, 1875 art detail, entitled "Grant's Last Outrage in Louisiana" (cropped).jpg


The end of Reconstruction

The so-called "Liberal Republicans" (more conservative than the Radicals), along with Democrats, argued in 1872 that the Radical Republicans were corrupt and accepted bribes (notably since 1869, during the Grant administration). These opponents of the Radicals demanded amnesty for all ex-Confederates, thus restoring their right to vote and hold public office. Foner's history of Reconstruction pointed out that sometimes the financial chicanery was as much a question of extortion as bribes.[ citation needed ] By 1872, the Radicals were increasingly splintered and in the Congressional elections of 1874, the Democrats took control of Congress. Many former Radicals joined the "Stalwart" faction of the Republican Party while many opponents joined the "Half-Breeds", who differed primarily on matters of patronage rather than policy. [18]

In state after state in the South, the so-called Redeemers' movement seized control from the Republicans until in 1876 only three Republican states were left: South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. In the intensely disputed 1876 United States presidential election, Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes won through the Compromise of 1877 (a corrupt bargain): he obtained the electoral votes of those states, and with them the presidency, by committing himself to removing federal troops from those states. Deprived of military support, Reconstruction came to an end. "Redeemers" took over in these states as well. As white Democrats now dominated all Southern state legislatures, the period of Jim Crow laws began, and rights were progressively taken away from blacks.


In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, new battles took place over the construction of memory and the meaning of historical events. The earliest historians to study Reconstruction and the Radical Republican participation in it were members of the Dunning School, led by William Archibald Dunning and John W. Burgess. [19] The Dunning School, based at Columbia University in the early 20th century, saw the Radicals as motivated by an irrational hatred of the Confederacy and a lust for power at the expense of national reconciliation. [19] According to Dunning School historians, the Radical Republicans reversed the gains Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson had made in reintegrating the South, established corrupt shadow governments made up of Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags in the former Confederate states, and to increase their power, foisted political rights on the newly-freed slaves that they were allegedly unprepared for or incapable of utilizing. [20] For the Dunning School, the Radical Republicans made Reconstruction a dark age that only ended when Southern whites rose up and reestablished a "home rule" free of Northern, Republican, and black influence. [21]

In the 1930s, the Dunning-oriented approaches were rejected by self-styled "revisionist" historians, led by Howard K. Beale along with W.E.B. DuBois, William B. Hesseltine, C. Vann Woodward and T. Harry Williams. [22] They downplayed corruption and stressed that Northern Democrats were also corrupt. Beale and Woodward were leaders in promoting racial equality and they reevaluated the era in terms of regional economic conflict. [23] They were also hostile towards the Radicals, casting them as economic opportunists. They argued that apart from a few idealists, most Radicals were scarcely interested in the fate of the blacks or the South as a whole. Rather, the main goal of the Radicals was to protect and promote Northern capitalism, which was threatened in Congress by the West; if the Democrats took control of the South and joined the West, they thought, the Northeastern business interests would suffer. They did not trust anyone from the South except men beholden to them by bribes and railroad deals. For example, Beale argued that the Radicals in Congress put Southern states under Republican control to get their votes in Congress for high protective tariffs. [24] [25]

The role of Radical Republicans in creating public school systems, charitable institutions, and other social infrastructure in the South was downplayed by the Dunning School of historians. Since the 1950s, the impact of the moral crusade of the Civil Rights Movement led historians to reevaluate the role of Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, and their reputation improved. [26] These historians, sometimes referred to as neoabolitionist because they reflected and admired the values of the abolitionists of the 19th century, argued that the Radical Republicans' advancement of civil rights and suffrage for African Americans following emancipation was more significant than the financial corruption which took place. They also pointed to the African Americans' central, active roles in reaching toward education (both individually and by creating public school systems) and their desire to acquire land as a means of self-support. [27]


Notable Radical Republicans


  1. Trefousse, Hans (1991). Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction. pp. 175–76.
  3. 1 2 Victor B. Howard (13 January 2015). Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860-1870. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN   978-0-8131-6144-0.
  4. Trefousse (1969), p. 20.
  5. Trefousse (1969), p. 6.
  8. Stanley Coben (June 1959). "Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Re-examination". Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 46 (1): 67–90. doi:10.2307/1892388. JSTOR   1892388.
  9. Trefousse (1969), pp. 21–32.
  10. "1864: Lincoln v. McCVlellan". HarpWeek: Explore History. Retrieved 2010-05-31.
  11. 1 2 3 Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (2001)
  13. Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1999)
  14. Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents ch. 5, 6 (2009)
  15. Trefousse (1969)
  16. Scroggs (1958)
  17. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant: Politician (1935)
  19. 1 2 Foner, p. xi.
  20. Foner, pp. xi–xii.
  21. Foner, p. xii.
  22. Howard K. Beale (1940). "On Rewriting Reconstruction History". American Historical Review. 35 (4): 807–827. JSTOR   1854452.
  23. T. Harry Williams (1946). "An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes". Journal of Southern History. 12 (4): 469–486. doi:10.2307/2197687. JSTOR   2197687.
  24. Howard K. Beale (1930). "The Tariff and Reconstruction". The American Historical Review. 35 (2): 276–294. doi:10.2307/1837439. JSTOR   1837439.
  26. Cox, "From Emancipation to Segregation" (1987), p. 199
  29. Trefousse (1969), p. 13.
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 Trefousse (1969), p. 15.
  32. 1 2 Trefousse (2014), p. xvii.
  33. Trefousse (1969), p. 7.
  34. Trefousse (2014), p. xv.
  35. Trefousse (1969), pp. 14–15.
  37. 1 2 3 4 Trefousse (1969), p. 11.
  39. Trefousse (1969), p. 14.
  40. Trefousse (2014), p. xvi.
  41. Trefousse (2014), p. xviii.
  42. Trefousse (1969), p. 12.
  43. Trefousse (1969), pp. 13–14.
  44. Trefousse (1969), pp. 12–13.
  46. Albion W. Tourgée (10 April 2009). Bricks Without Straw: A Novel. Duke University Press. pp. 453–. ISBN   978-0-8223-9234-7.
  47. Trefousse (1969), pp. 10–11.
  48. Trefousse (1969), pp. 7–8.
  49. Reavis, L. U. (February 7, 1881). The Life and Public Services of Richard Yates, the War Governor of Illinois: A Lecture Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Springfield, Illinois, Tuesday Evening, March 1st, 1881. J.H. Chambers & Company. p. 30 via Google Books.

References and further reading

Secondary sources

Primary sources


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