Radical Republicans

A group of the Republican Party that controlled Congress briefly in the post-CiViL War period, the Radical Republicans sought a vastly changed Southern political, economic, and social world. They insisted on civil and voting rights for freedmen and opposed President Andrew Johnson’s efforts to reunite the sections without forcing major changes on the former Confederate states.

Throughout the Civil War, the Republican Party enjoyed a large majority of both houses of Congress. This majority was hardly unified, however, as ideological divisions between congressional Republicans became increasingly pronounced over the course of the war. Most Republicans were satisfied with the moderate approach to the war advocated by President Abraham Lincoln. Radicals, however, such as Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, and Thad-DEus Stevens, were constantly at odds with the president over the timing and pace of emancipation, the enrollment of black soldiers, and the advancement of equal rights for the freedpeople. Already frustrated over Lincoln’s slowness concerning racial progress, the Radical Republicans also clashed bitterly with the president over his lenient wartime Reconstruction policies.

As the war ended, Congress began to focus on plans for reconstructing the shattered nation. The Radicals believed that the end of the war represented an opportunity to remake Southern society into a free-labor, egalitarian, and racially just society. Senator Sumner of Massachusetts provided a clear justification for this position: He declared that the Southern states had committed “suicide” when they left the Union and thus had reverted to the status of territories. Conveniently, the control of territories fell to Congress.

Moderates such as James G. Blaine in the House and John Sherman in the Senate preferred a less revolutionary approach. They, like most Northerners, demanded that Southern citizens pledge loyalty to the Union, accept freedom for the African Americans, and provide basic protections to the freedpeople as they established their new lives.

Initially, these two views existed in a delicate balance. Congressional Republicans of all positions were willing to work with the new president, Andrew Johnson. They expected him to articulate his own reconstruction plan, and then compromise with Congress over points of disagree-

Railroads 321

Ment. Unfortunately, Johnson believed that control of the reconstruction process should be exclusively in his hands. Radical Republicans took the lead in organizing the opposition to presidential Reconstruction, with serious consequences for Johnson.

Johnson, a clumsy politician, managed to offend his most sympathetic congressional constituents, the moderate Republicans. Now they totally supported the actions of Radical Republicans, who persuaded their colleagues to refuse to seat Southern congressmen elected under Johnson’s reconstruction plan. Moreover, Radicals also established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, a platform from which they led the anti-Johnson movement.

Johnson vetoed both the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and Civil Rights Act Of 1866. Congress passed both over his veto, signaling the final breakdown of relations between the Radicals and the president. All in the North seemed to support using the power of the federal government to ensure freedom and safety for the vulnerable population of ex-slaves. One Republican newspaper editorialized that civil rights for the freedpeople “follows from the suppression of the rebellion. . . . The party is nothing, if it does not do this the nation is dishonored. . .”

In 1867 Congress also overrode the president’s veto of the Reconstruction Acts, which divided the South into five military districts whose commanders were to exercise authority to oversee the steps of readmittance back into the Union. African Americans were to be registered to vote, while former Confederates were disqualified. Each state wishing to rejoin the Union had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and to draft a new state constitution that guaranteed the citizenship rights of black people.

After the Tenure of Office Act was passed, forbidding Johnson to remove cabinet members without congressional approval, Johnson’s only recourse was to remove the military commanders who did not support him. The former Confederates states were in near anarchy. This was particularly dangerous for African Americans, who were left unprotected from the fury of former Confederates.

By 1868 Congress and the president had become so estranged that the Radicals were able to bring articles of impeachment against the president. Johnson escaped conviction by one vote, and the failure of impeachment signaled the beginning of the end of the Radicals’ hold on power.

The Radical Republicans lost their prominent position in the party by the election of 1868. The moderates, led by President Ulysses S. Grant, now had the responsibility of implementing congressional Reconstruction in the Southern states. The death of several of the Radicals’ most powerful and famous leaders, especially Sumner and Stevens, contributed to the decline of the faction as well.

As the years wore on, white Southern resistance to efforts by Republicans to integrate freed people into

Southern politics and society grew stronger, not weaker. The restructuring of Southern life from outside seemed useless, and the Northern public had lost its enthusiasm for it. Instead, Northerners wanted to forget the war and welcome Southerners back into the Union.

Although some historians have judged the Radical Republicans harshly for the failure or the inadequacy of their programs, other scholars argue that it is well worth recognizing the value of the goals for which the Radicals fought. Civil rights, suffrage, and the elimination of the racial hierarchy of the South seemed within their reach. After all, few could imagine in 1860 that 4 million African Americans would be free in just a few years. African Americans had achieved legal equality by the end of Reconstruction, although social and political equality would have to wait much longer. Perhaps the most important legislation in American history passed with the aid and guidance of the Radical Republicans and was the foundation for much of the racial progress in the 20th century.

See also Black Codes; impeachment Of Andrew Johnson.

Further reading: Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York: Norton, 1975); Allan Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981); Hans L. Tre-fousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (New York: Knopf, 1968).

—Fiona Galvin