Former Free Soiler Salmon Chase was a major candidate for the presidential nomination at the 1860 Republican National Convention, but Abraham Lincoln defeated Chase, Seward, and other candidates to win the party's presidential nomination. After Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, several Southern states seceded, eventually leading to the Civil War. During the war, a faction of the Republican Party known as the Radical Republicans emerged; these Radical Republicans generally went farther than other Republicans in advocating for racial equality and the immediate abolition of slavery. Many of the leading Radical Republicans, including Giddings, Chase, Hale, Julian, and Sumner, had been members of the Free Soil Party. Some Radical Republicans sought replace Lincoln as the 1864 Republican presidential nominee with either Chase or Frémont, but Lincoln ultimately won re-nomination and re-election. In 1865, the Civil War came to an end with the surrender of the Confederacy, and the United States abolished slavery nationwide by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans exercised an important influence during the subsequent Reconstruction era, calling for ambitious reforms designed to promote the political and economic equality of African Americans in the South.