The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their determinations to facilitate the rapid, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States through constitutional means, without resorting to a direct legislative or executive assault on the institution in established slave states.Oakes, 2021 p. 19: "In the 1850s even the most radical Republicans - Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, John Hale, Benjamin Wade - repeatedly confirmed the federal consensus" that barred direct interference within the existing slave states.Wilentz, 2005 p. 746: "[T]he radicals of the 1850s berated more conventional antislavery advocates for their toleration of anything short of speedy emancipation and full racial equality."Foner, 1970 p. 115-116, p. 17: "...complete abolition was their ultimate political aim." And p. 207: "To the radicals, slavery so immense an evil that a Republican administration would be morally delinquent if it did not use all its constitutional powers to eradicate the institution." Their peacetime political approach was to exclude slavery from areas under federal government authority, including territorial lands, the District of Columbia and international waters so as to confine slavery within its existing state boundaries. There the institution was expected to decline and undergo dismantling by the state governments themselves with federal encouragement.Foner, 1970 pp. 115-117:See here for radical belief that limiting the extension of slavery would lead to its demise. "It can not be overemphasized that the radicals adopted this program as a sure means towards abolition, and one which would command far more popular support than unconstitutional interference with slavery in the states."Oakes, 2021 p. 87-88: "Cordon of Freedom" approach, restricting slavery to the existing slave states, favored by Lincoln and radical Republicans. Radical Republicans of the 1850s exhibited "a persistent refusal to compromise with the South on any question involving slavery," insisting upon a "denationalization" of the institution.Foner, 1970 p. 104: "persistent refusal…" And p. 206: "...denationalization..." When war broke out in 1861, radicals supported immediate military emancipation of slaves in the rebellious statesOakes, 2021 p. 141: See here for pre-war support by radicals concerning the legitimacy of wartime emancipation including John A, Bingham and James Ashley, as well as conservative Orville Browning.
On the issues of nativism, anti-Catholicism and prohibition of alcoholic beverages, radical Republicans regarded these as distractions or impediments to their abiding mission to eradicate slavery.Foner, 1970 p. 232: "[M]any Republicans who shared nativist suspicions regarding Catholics and immigrants, and who supported the temperance cause, strenuously opposed the emergence of nativism as a political movement…[R]adical's opposition to nativism was their calculation of the movement's effect on the political fortunes of anti-slavery…divert[ing] attention from the anti-slavery cause and divid[ing] its adherents." Though many Republicans held anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and pro-temperance sentiments, they emphatically opposed these becoming politicized and alienating key demographics that they wished to enlist in the anti-slavery cause.Oakes, 2021 p. 94: Lincoln understood that "nativists who were as hostile to Catholics as they were to slavery" would have to be enlisted in the anti-slavery Republican coalition. To the extent that radicals tolerated nativism, it was largely that the nativists Know-Nothings were expected to undermine the Whig and Democratic Parties and clear the way for the rise of the Republican Party.Wilentz, 2005 p. 931-932: See footnote 37 on radical Henry F. Wilson and his support for nativism only "on pragmatic grounds" so as to effect the decline of Whigs and Democrats.Foner, 1970 p. 232: The radicals "did welcome the new movement, for the nativist upsurge of 1854-1855 helped accomplish what the radicals had long desired - the breakup of one or both of the national parties." Nativists ultimately cast their votes for Republican politicians, their ideology was never embraced by the party establishment which regarded them with suspicion.Foner, 1970 p. 258: "[W]hile most nativists eventually cast their lot with the Republicans, they were absorbed into a party which had made no concession to them in their platform, and which viewed their support as a distinct political liability in spite of the necessity of obtaining their vote."
In the late 1850s, moderate Republicans drew closer to the radical wing of the party in their hostility toward the Slave Power.Foner, 1970 p. 209: The events during the 1950s "led moderate Republicans to side more often with radicals than conservatives…radicalized by what they considered the aggressions of the Slave Power."Oakes, 2021 p. xiv: "By the 1850s abolitionists…were now part of a vast and increasingly powerful anti-slavery movement" and Lincoln "was much closer to the left than to the right." And p. 94: Lincoln "embedded" his support for a total ban on slavery in the territories "in a robust anti-slavery constitutionalism, thereby appealing to the more radical base of the party."
Moderates also saw the political utility of stressing the moral injustice of slavery stressed by radicals.Foner, 1970 p. 210: Events "led [moderates] to agree with the radicals on the importance of encouraging the moral aversion to slavery among northern voters." By 1860, Lincoln was considered to be closer to the radicals than the conservative wing of the party.Foner, 1970 p. 214Oakes, 2021 p. xiv: "By the 1850s abolitionists…were now part of a vast and increasingly powerful anti-slavery movement" and Lincoln "was much closer to the left than to the right." During the secession crisis that unfolded after Lincoln's election, radicals initially rejected the moderate and conservative wings' efforts to placate southerners with concessions. Neither the radical anti-compromise position nor the moderates' limited conciliation satisfied the South. The right and left wings of the Republican Party coalesced under Lincoln's moderate wing: "The goals of free soil and Union were intertwined, and neither could be sacrificed without endangering the other."Foner, 1970 p. 220: On radical vs. moderate "conciliation." And p. 224-225: "In the end, the Republican party rejected compromise during the secession winter [leading to] a synthesis of the previous views of conservatives and radicals…the ground occupied by the moderates…"
Radicals led efforts after the war to establish civil rights for former slaves and fully implement emancipation. After unsuccessful measures in 1866 resulted in violence against former slaves in the former rebel states, Radicals pushed the Fourteenth Amendment for statutory protections through Congress. They opposed allowing ex-Confederate politicians and military veterans to retake political power in the Southern U.S., and emphasized equality, civil rights and voting rights for the "freedmen", i.e., former slaves who had been freed during or after the Civil War by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.
During the war, Radicals opposed Lincoln's selection of General George B. McClellan for top command of the major eastern Army of the Potomac and Lincoln's efforts in 1864 to bring seceded Southern states back into the Union as quickly and easily as possible. Lincoln later recognized McClellan as unfit and relieved him of his command. The Radicals tried to pass their own Reconstruction plan in Congress in 1864. Lincoln vetoed it, as he was putting his own policy in effect through his power as commander-in-chief. Radicals demanded the uncompensated abolition of slavery, while Lincoln wished instead to emulate the British Empire's abolition of slavery by financially compensating former slave owners who had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865.William C. Harris, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (1997), pp. 123–170. The Radicals, led by Thaddeus Stevens, bitterly fought Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson. After Johnson vetoed various congressional bills granting citizenship to freedmen, a much harsher Reconstruction for the defeated South, and other bills he considered unconstitutional, the Radicals attempted to remove him from office through impeachment, which failed by one vote in 1868.
During the Reconstruction period, Radical Republicans supported prolabor legislation, in contrast to conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans.The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 By Manisha Sinha, 2024
Radical coalition
The Radicals were heavily influenced by religious ideals, and many were Protestant reformers who saw slavery as evil and the Civil War as God's punishment for slavery.Foner, 1970 p. 111: "...conservative tendencies" that emphasized the "religious and moral" issues concerning slavery. Indeed, during the wartime issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, a radical and a Christian, added the final clause requesting God's blessing for the measure.Foner, 1970 p. 78-79: "...a deeply religious man…added the final clauses [of the proclamation]…asking the blessing of God…" As the crisis over slavery intensified in the late 1850s, radical politicians resorted to religious invective, among them Joshua Giddings, Owen Lovejoy, and Charles Sumner, each delivering inflammatory speeches characterizing slaveholders as homicidal sinners.Foner, 1970 p. 111-112: Giddings condemned the "wholesale murder" of slaves by masters, Owen Lovejoy called slavery "the sum of all villainy" and Sumner issued his "Barbarism of Slavery" speech "detailing the myriad abuses of the slave system."
The term "radical" was in common use in the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War, referring not necessarily to abolitionists, but particularly to Northern politicians strongly opposed to the Slave Power. Many and perhaps a majority had been Whigs, such as William H. Seward, a leading presidential contender in 1860 and Lincoln's Secretary of State, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, as well as Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune. The publication most dedicated to radical politics was Gamaliel Bailey's The National Era.Foner, 1970 p. 25, p. 105: Lists radicals, Greeley's Tribune. And p. 144: Bailey, editor of National Era.
There was movement in both directions: some of the pre-war Radicals (such as Seward) became less radical during the war, while some prewar moderates became Radicals. Some wartime Radicals had been Democrats before the war, often taking pro-slavery positions. They included John A. Logan of Illinois, Edwin Stanton of Ohio, Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, and Vice President Johnson; Johnson would break with the Radicals after he became president.
The Radicals came to majority power in Congress in the elections of 1866 after several episodes of violence led many to conclude that President Johnson's weaker reconstruction policies were insufficient. These episodes included the New Orleans riot and the Memphis riots of 1866. In a pamphlet directed to black voters in 1867, the Union Republican Congressional Committee stated: