THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION ★^581Only one was executed— Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prison,
where thousands of Union prisoners of war had died. Most of the Union army
was swiftly demobilized. What motivated the North’s turn against Johnson’s
policies was not a desire to “punish” the white South, but the inability of the
South’s political leaders to accept the reality of emancipation. “We must see to
it,” announced Republican senator William Stewart of Nevada, “that the man
made free by the Constitution of the United States is a freeman indeed.”
The Radical Republicans
When Congress assembled in December 1865, Johnson announced that with
loyal governments functioning in all the southern states, the nation had been
reunited. In response, Radical Republicans, who had grown increasingly disen-
chanted with Johnson during the summer and fall, called for the dissolution of
these governments and the establishment of new ones with “rebels” excluded
from power and black men guaranteed the right to vote. Radicals tended to
represent constituencies in New England and the “ burned- over” districts of
the rural North that had been home to religious revivalism, abolitionism, and
other reform movements. Although they differed on many issues, Radicals
shared the conviction that Union victory created a golden opportunity to insti-
tutionalize the principle of equal rights for all, regardless of race.
The Radicals fully embraced the expanded powers of the federal govern-
ment born during the Civil War. Traditions of federalism and states’ rights, they
insisted, must not obstruct a sweeping national effort to protect the rights of all
Americans. The most prominent Radicals in Congress were Charles Sumner, a
senator from Massachusetts, and Thaddeus Stevens, a lawyer and iron manu-
facturer who represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives. Before
the Civil War, both had been outspoken foes of slavery and defenders of black
rights. Early in the Civil War, both had urged Lincoln to free and arm the slaves,
and both in 1865 favored black suffrage in the South. “The same national
authority,” declared Sumner, “that destroyed slavery must see that this other
pretension [racial inequality] is not permitted to survive.”
Thaddeus Stevens’s most cherished aim was to confiscate the land of dis-
loyal planters and divide it among former slaves and northern migrants to the
South. “The whole fabric of southern society,” he declared, “must be changed.
Without this, this Government can never be, as it has never been, a true repub-
lic.” But his plan to make “small independent landholders” of the former slaves
proved too radical even for many of his Radical colleagues. Congress, to be sure,
had already offered free land to settlers in the West in the Homestead Act of
- But this land had been in the possession of the federal government, not
private individuals (although originally, of course, it had belonged to Indians).
Most congressmen believed too deeply in the sanctity of property rights to be
What were the sources, goals, and competing visions for Reconstruction?