Radical Republican (USA)

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Frémont (left),1856 Republican parade banner
Frémont (left),
1856 Republican parade banner

The Radical Republicans is a term applied to a loose faction of American politicians within the Republican party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War) until after Reconstruction. In 1864 some of them briefly formed a political party called the Radical Democracy Party with John C. Frémont as their candidate for president, until he withdrew.

The Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln's "too easy" terms for reuniting the United States following the end of the Civil War. Using membership within the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans demanded a more aggressive prosecution of the war, the faster end to slavery and defeat of the Confederacy.

During the American Civil War, and later into the primary part of Reconstruction, the leading Radicals were Thaddeus Stevens in the House, Charles Sumner in the Senate, and John C. Frémont as the 1864 U.S. presidential candidate of the Radical Republicans. Ulysses Grant ran and was elected as a moderate Republican in 1868. Business interests were hopeful that he would provide stable conditions for Southern investment.

Because they had a majority in Congress, the Republicans pursued impeachment of President Andrew Johnson when he tried to subvert their duly passed legislation.

Contents

[edit] Wartime

Henry Jarvis Raymond.
Henry Jarvis Raymond.

After the 1860 elections, moderate Republicans dominated the United States Congress. Radical Republicans were often critical of Lincoln, whom they believed was too slow in freeing slaves and supporting their legal equality. Lincoln put all factions in his cabinet, including Radicals like Salmon P. Chase (Secretary of the Treasury), whom he later appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, James Speed (Attorney General) and Edwin M. Stanton (Secretary of War). Lincoln appointed many Radical Republicans, such as journalist James Shepherd Pike, to key diplomatic positions.

An important Republican opponent of the Radical Republicans was Henry Jarvis Raymond. Raymond was both editor of the New York Times and also a chairman of the Republican National Committee. In Congress the most influential Radical Republicans during the war and later reconstruction were U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens (who died in 1868). They led the call for a war that would end slavery.

[edit] Reconstruction

U.S. Rep.Thaddeus Stevens
U.S. Rep.
Thaddeus Stevens
U.S. SenatorCharles Sumner.
U.S. Senator
Charles Sumner.

During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans increasingly took control, led by Sumner and Stevens. They demanded harsher measures in the South, and more protection for the Freedmen, and more guarantees that the Confederate nationalism was totally eliminated. Following Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Andrew Johnson, a former War Democrat, became President.

The Radicals at first admired Johnson's hard-line talk. When they discovered his ambivalence on key issues by his veto of Civil Rights Act of 1866, they overrode his veto. This was the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made African Americans United States citizens and forbade discrimination against them. It was to be enforced in Federal courts. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1868, (with its equal protection under the law clause) was the work of a coalition formed of both moderate and Radical Republicans.

By 1866 the Radical Republicans supported federal civil rights for freedmen. 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 and northerners who had settled in the South, sometimes called Carpetbaggers. The Radical Republicans impeached Andrew Johnson in the House but failed by one vote to remove him from office.

Grant's last outrage in Louisiana in Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaperJanuary 23, 1875
Grant's last outrage in Louisiana
in Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper
January 23, 1875

The Radical Republicans led the Reconstruction of the South. All Republican factions supported Ulysses S. Grant for president in 1868. Once in office, Grant forced Sumner out of the party. Grant used Federal power to try to break up the Ku Klux Klan organization. Insurgents, however, and community riots continued harassment and violence against African Americans and their allies into the early 20th century. By 1872 the Liberal Republicans thought that Reconstruction had succeeded and should end. Many moderates joined their cause as well as Radical Republican leader Charles Sumner. They lost as Grant was easily reelected.

In state after state in the south, the Redeemers movement seized control from the Republicans, until only three Republican states were left in 1876: South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. Rutherford B. Hayes was a moderate Republican. When he became president after the Compromise of 1877, he ordered the removal of federal troops and Redeemers took over.

Liberal Republicans (in 1872) and Democrats argued the Radical Republicans were corrupt by the acts of accepting bribes (notably during the Grant Administration) and by violating the founding American principle of government of consent of the governed. Foner's history of Reconstruction pointed out that sometimes the financial chicanery was as much a question of extortion as bribes.

The Southern Democrats' concern about "consent of the governed" is debatable. The Democrats promptly took actions to reduce civil rights of African Americans, including the freedom of persons to control their own labor. By the late 19th and early 20th century, Southern states completed actions through constitutional and legislative changes to disfranchise African Americans, a population of nine million. Although African Americans continued to pay taxes, their schools and services were consistently underfunded. They would not succeed in getting their citizens' rights of suffrage and civil rights restored and protected until their achievements of moral leadership in the Civil Rights era.

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, new battles took place over the construction of memory and the meaning of historical events. During the years from the 1890s to the 1940s, for instance, the Dunning School at Columbia University had outsize influence. It focused on corruption in state governments during Reconstruction, and ignored the social progress that was made despite the turmoil of postwar years. Despite efforts by W.E.B. Du Bois, among other historians, to provide context and perspective of the freedmen's role, the negative Dunning view of Reconstruction and Negro suffrage held for years.

The progressive and responsible role of African Americans in creating public school systems, charitable institutions and other social infrastructure in the South was ignored. Since the 1960s and the influence of the moral crusade of the Civil Rights era, historians have uncovered new sources and reevaluated the periods of Reconstruction and the terrorism during Redemption. They believed 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.

[edit] Leading Radical Republicans

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Secondary sources

  • Belz, Herman. Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era Fordham University Press, 1998 online edition
  • Belz, Herman. Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era (1978) online edition
  • Belz, Herman. A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedman's Rights, 1861-1866 (2000)
  • Benedict, Michael Les. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1999)
  • Castel, Albert E. The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (1979)
  • Donald, David. Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (1970) Major critical analysis.
  • Donald, David. "Lincoln" (1996).
  • Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005).
  • Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (2002), major synthesis; Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize, Avery O. Craven Prize and Trilling Prize.
  • Harris, William C. With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (1997) Lincoln as moderate and opponent of Radicals.
  • Hesseltine; William B. Ulysses S. Grant: Politician (1935), postwar years. online edition
  • McFeeley, William S. Grant: A Biography (1981). Pulitzer Prize.
  • McKitrick, Eric L. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1961).
  • Milton, George Fort; The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (1930).
  • Nevins, Allan. Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (1936) Pulitzer Prize.
  • Randall, James G. Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure (1955).
  • Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume 6 and 7 (1920) Pulitzer Prize.
  • Stampp, Kenneth M. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1967).
  • Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868 (1991).
  • Simpson, Brooks D. The Reconstruction Presidents (1998).
  • Summers, Mark Wahlgren.The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865-1878 (1994)
  • Trefousse, Hans. The Radical Republicans (1969).
  • Trefousse, Hans L. Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (2001)]. Standard biography online edition
  • Williams, T. Harry. Lincoln and the Radicals (1941).

[edit] Primary sources

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