History 269 The Civil War and Reconstruction
The Radical Republicans
Thaddeus Stevens and Charles SumnerThe Republican Party was formed in 1854 by a merger of old Free-Soilers, antislavery Democrats, Liberal Whigs, and other political factions whose common theme was opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Their platform initially demanded a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law and abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. Republicans also opposed the spread of slavery into the western territories, arguing that it would be disastrous to white farmers and laborers who had to compete with slave labor. Until 1858 the Republicans to some extent downplayed their strong antislavery roots and broadened their appeal to voters, embracing anti-Catholic nativism and economic policies popular among both urban and farm folks who opposed all black labor, slave and free. The most effective strategy for strengthening the Republicans in their bid for national power was an attack on the Southern slave aristocracy who, they claimed, threatened free men and free labor as well as free soil. By 1858, Senator William H. Seward of New York spoke for many Republicans when he proclaimed that expansion of the nation and its economic system placed the North and South on an inevitable collision course: “an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.” Abraham Lincoln articulated this same belief in his famous speech, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln branded slavery “a moral, social, and political wrong.”
In 1860 the Democrats split over the contentious issue of slavery, holding two conventions and nominating both John C. Breckinridge as the proslavery Democratic candidate and Stephen Douglas as the antislavery Democratic candidate. Seeking to attract northern Democrats, the Republicans adopted a platform that still opposed the extension of slavery but also condemned John Brown’s raid and affirmed the right of existing states to “control their own domestic institutions” (including slavery); it also supported a protective tariff, cheap western lands for homesteaders, construction of a transcontinental railroad, and citizenship of immigrants. For their presidential nominee they selected Lincoln because of his reputation as an antislavery moderate and his image as a western “common man.” Southerners closed ranks mostly around Breckinridge. Lincoln won the election with just 40% of the popular vote but a majority of electoral votes and the Republicans swept the North. During the next three months, the slave states of the deep South reacted to Lincoln’s election by holding secession conventions and, like falling dominos, voting to leave the Union.
Lincoln regarded slavery as a “monstrous injustice” but he also accepted white supremacy and was skeptical about the benefits of emancipation. Thus in essence he was fatalistically conservative on the issue of race relations. Many in his party, known as the Radical Republicans, had no reservations about abolitionism, and as the nation tumbled into war, they saw an opportunity to purge the cancer of slavery once and for all. Lincoln was a skillful politician and above all a pragmatist despite his strong moral convictions. Time and again he stated that his goal was to reunite the country, and if he could do so with or without abolishing slavery, either way was fine. His emancipation proclamation was a calculated political decision designed to seize the moral advantage and undermine the foundation of the Confederacy. By the time of his second inaugural address in March 1865, the defeat of the South, and with it the extinction of slavery, was only a matter of time. Lincoln sermonized that “this terrible war” was sufficient punishment for two centuries of slavery on American soil; the postwar era should be a time of forgiveness and reconciliation, not retribution. “With malice toward none; with charity for all . . . let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up a nation’s wounds [and to] achieve a just and a lasting peace.” His assassination a month later left the challenges of restoring the union in the hands of Andrew Johnson, a Southern Unionist Democrat, and the Radical Republicans in Congress. The Radicals probably would have been unable to overpower or outwit Father Abraham, but they easily pushed Johnson aside once he revealed himself to be a political enemy rather than an ally. Impeachment failed to remove him from office, but it did effectively make Johnson a political nonentity.
The Radical Republicans rejected Lincoln’s view, shared by Johnson, that the Southern states had never legally left the Union and that restoration was simply a matter of repudiating slavery and proclaiming loyalty to the United States. Led by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the Radicals insisted that the former Confederate states had to be “reconstructed” in such a way that the old status quo, minus slavery, could not be restored. Those responsible for secession and the bloody war were traitors to be punished by stripping them of their political power. In addition, firm steps were necessary to protect the rights of freedmen. In his last cabinet meeting on April 14, 1865, hours before his assassination, Lincoln had expressed misgivings about military occupation of the defeated South, stating: “We can’t undertake to run state governments in all these states. The people must do that—though I reckon that at first some of them may do it badly.”
It seems reasonable to speculate that Lincoln would have endorsed the three Reconstruction Amendments and the Freedmen’s Bureau, but the Reconstruction Acts passed by Congress went far beyond anything Lincoln seemed to want in his vision of reunion. The three Reconstruction Acts passed in March 1867 abolished existing governments in all of the former Confederate states except Tennessee, divided them into five military districts, instituted martial law, disenfranchised ex-Confederate leaders, established guidelines for rejoining the union, authorized the army to register voters and oversee elections, and ensured that black and white Republicans would rule. The only proposal the Radicals failed to impose on the former Confederate states was confiscation of planter’s land and distribution of homesteads to freedmen (forty acres and a mule). This was too radical even for the Radicals.
Congressional Reconstruction was softened by Ulysses Grant, who said "Let us have peace," then served two terms as president and demonstrated less stomach for fighting political battles in the South than he had for waging war. Grant shared Lincoln’s pragmatic view that, for better or worse, the Southern people had to sort out the implications of emancipation among themselves. The removal of federal troops, marking the end of Radical Reconstruction, ultimately was part of the political compromise that settled the disputed election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. This was also the end of the Radical Republicans, as the party and the nation turned to economic development and away from social engineering. With the Democrats, the status quo, minus slavery, was restored in the South, and the freedmen were back on the bottom rail.
DH 5/04
