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Radical Republicans (view source)
Revision as of 19:12, December 15, 2008
, 19:12, December 15, 2008add bibliog
The main leaders were Representative [[Thaddeus Stevens]] of Pennyslvania and Senator [[Charles Sumner]] of Massachusetts.
The main leaders were Representative [[Thaddeus Stevens]] of Pennyslvania and Senator [[Charles Sumner]] of Massachusetts.
[[Image:Stevens-T.jpg|thumb|280px]]
[[Image:Stevens-T.jpg|thumb|240px|Thaddeus Stevens]]
==Origins==
==Origins==
They were not a [[political party]], but more of a faction in the states, and an informal grouping among the Republicans in [[Congress]]. They began their rise to prominence in 1854, and after the election of 1860, they became a true force to be reckoned with when several of their members were given key committee chairmanships: Thaddeus Stevens (Ways and Means), Owen Lovejoy (Agriculture), James Ashley (Territories), Henry W. Davis (Foreign Relations), George W. Julian (Public Lands), Elihu Washburne (Commerce) and Henry Wilson (Judiciary).
They were not a [[political party]], but more of a faction in the states, and an informal grouping among the Republicans in [[Congress]]. They began their rise to prominence in 1854, and after the election of 1860, they became a true force to be reckoned with when several of their members were given key committee chairmanships: Thaddeus Stevens (Ways and Means), Owen Lovejoy (Agriculture), James Ashley (Territories), Henry W. Davis (Foreign Relations), George W. Julian (Public Lands), Elihu Washburne (Commerce) and Henry Wilson (Judiciary).
==Civil War==
Stevens was one of two Congressmen in July 1861 opposing the [[Crittenden-Johnson Resolution]] stating the limited war aim of restoring the Union while preserving slavery; he helped repeal it in December. In August, 1861, he supported the first law attacking slavery, the Confiscation Act that said owners would forfeit any slaves they allowed to help the Confederate war effort. By December he was the first Congressional leader pushing for emancipation as a tool to weaken the rebellion. He called for total war on January 22, 1862:
<blockquote>
"Let us not be deceived. Those who talk about peace in sixty days are shallow statesmen. The war will not end until the government shall more fully recognize the magnitude of the crisis; until they have discovered that this is an internecine war in which one party or the other must be reduced to hopeless feebleness and the power of further effort shall be utterly annihilated. It is a sad but true alternative. The South can never be reduced to that condition so long as the war is prosecuted on its present principles. The North with all its millions of people and its countless wealth can never conquer the South until a new mode of warfare is adopted. So long as these states are left the means of cultivating their fields through forced labor, you may expend the blood of thousands and billions of money year by year, without being any nearer the end, unless you reach it by your own submission and the ruin of the nation. Slavery gives the South a great advantage in time of war. They need not, and do not, withdraw a single hand from the cultivation of the soil. Every able-bodied white man can be spared for the army. The black man, without lifting a weapon, is the mainstay of the war. How, then, can the war be carried on so as to save the Union and constitutional liberty? Prejudices may be shocked, weak minds startled, weak nerves may tremble, but they must hear and adopt it. Universal emancipation must be proclaimed to all. Those who now furnish the means of war, but who are the natural enemies of slaveholders, must be made our allies. If the slaves no longer raised cotton and rice, tobacco and grain for the rebels, this war would cease in six months, even though the liberated slaves would not raise a hand against their masters. They would no longer produce the means by which they sustain the war."<ref>Woodburn 178-179</ref></blockquote>
The Radicals vigorously pushed fellow Republican, President [[Abraham Lincoln]] during the [[Civil War]] when they thought he was not moving fast enough to destroy slavery or recruit Blacks for the Army.
The Radicals vigorously pushed fellow Republican, President [[Abraham Lincoln]] during the [[Civil War]] when they thought he was not moving fast enough to destroy slavery or recruit Blacks for the Army.
==See also==
==See also==
*[[Republican Party]]
==Bibliography==
* Beale Howard K. ''The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction''. (1930)
* Belz, Herman. ''Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era'' (1978) pro-moderate. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103250477 online edition] by a leading conservative historians
* Belz, Herman. ''Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era,'' (1998) 268 pgs. by a leading conservative historians[http://www.questia.com/library/book/abraham-lincoln-constitutionalism-and-equal-rights-in-the-civil-war-era-by-herman-belz.jsp online edition]
* Belz, Herman. ''A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedman's Rights, 1861-1866'' (2000) pro-moderate. by a leading conservative historians
* Benedict Michael Les. ''A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction 1863-1869''. (1974)
* Cox, LaWanda C. ''Politics, principle, and prejudice, 1865-1866: dilemma of Reconstruction America'' (1963) [http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00364 online in ACLS E-books]
* Donald, David Herbert. ''Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man'' (1970), Pulitzer prize winning biography
* Foner, Eric. ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877'' (1988) ISBN 0-06-015851-4. Pulitzer-prize winning history and most detailed synthesis of original and previous scholarship.
* Gienapp, William. ''Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America'' (2002), short biography [http://www.questia.com/library/book/abraham-lincoln-and-civil-war-america-a-biography-by-william-e-gienapp.jsp online edition]
* Hesseltine, William. ''Ulysses S. Grant: Politician.'' (1935). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=1072175 online edition].
* Mantell, Martin E. ''Johnson, Grant and the Politics of Reconstruction.'' (1973). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=89815306 online edition]
* Milton, George Fort. ''The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals.'' (1930). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14804076 online edition], popular history; attacks Radicals
* Rhodes, James G. ''History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume: 6.'' (1920). 1865-72; Volume: 7. (1920). 1872-77; Highly detailed narrative by Pulitzer prize winner; argues was a political disaster because it violated the rights of white Southerners. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24644891 vol 6 1865-1872 online]; [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94138962 vol 7 online] [http://books.google.com/books?id=sJCsjJGGGkEC&printsec=toc&dq=editions:0h6OGE9rylxBiYR2h--0ld&sig=-0Uo5fvxEh_9X-gOp_DMaPahB7o vol 6 online at Google.books] [http://books.google.com/books?id=2H0sAAAAMAAJ&printsec=toc&dq=intitle:History+intitle:of+intitle:the+intitle:United+intitle:States+inauthor:Rhodes+inauthor:James&num=30&as_brr=1&sig=DEDU1uq-x1NIxv55x4PQzElYfEM vol 7 in Google.books]
* Simpson, Brooks D. ''Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868'' (1991).
* Stryker, Lloyd Paul; ''Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage'' (1929) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=295401 online version] anti-Radical
* Trefousse, Hans L. ''Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian'' (1997) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=97209778 online version]
* James Albert Woodburn; ''The Life of Thaddeus Stevens: A Study in American Political History, Especially in the Period of the Civil War and Reconstruction''. (1913) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=3161778 online version]
===Primary sources===
* [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=70e7f9526905ba30&idno=ABZ4229.0001.001&view=header&c=moa Barnes, William H., ed. ''History of the Thirty-ninth Congress of the United States.'' (1868) ] useful summary of Congressional activity.
* [[James G. Blaine|Blaine, James]].''Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield. With a review of the events which led to the political revolution of 1860'' (1886). By Republican Congressional leader who sometimes cooperated with the Radicals
* [[Fleming, Walter L.]] ''Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial'' 2 vol (1906). Uses broad collection of primary sources; vol 1 on national politics; vol 2 on states; [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0OnNK8pM92WrjQK2ijCaciu&id=yukLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=toc&dq=%22Documentary+History+of+Reconstruction%22&sig=KbFxeYrtnbJAFZRBvK_rApDguQg#PPR11,M1 volume 1 493 pp online] and [http://books.google.com/books?vid=0lH-_oan672uKoftngo_tzc&id=beoLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA305&lpg=PA305&dq=documentary+plantation&as_brr=1#PPR7,M1 vol 2 480 pp online]
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/holden/holden.html ''Memoirs of W. W. Holden'' (1911)], North Carolina Scalawag governor
* Hyman, Harold M., ed. ''The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861-1870''. (1967), collection of long political speeches and pamphlets.
* McPherson, Edward. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=LCCN04007498&id=kaG2Am68tuAC&pg=PP3&dq=mcpherson+period+of+reconstruction '' The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction'' (1875)], large collection of speeches and primary documents, 1865-1870, complete text online. [The copyright has expired.]
* Nicolay, John and John Hay, "The Wade-Davis Manifesto" ''Century'' (July 1889): pp 414-21 [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABP2287-0038-89 online version] hoe Lincoln vetoes the Radical plan for Reconstruction; Nicolay and Hay were top aides to Lincoln
* Palmer, Beverly Wilson and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds. ''The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens'' 2 vol (1998), 900pp; his speeches plus and letters to and from Stevens
* Palmer, Beverly Wilson, ed. ''The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner'' 2 vol (1990); vol 2 covers 1859-1874
==References==
==References==