Radical Republicans

Faction of the 19th-century U.S. Republican Party

This article is about the 19th century abolitionist faction. For the modern movement made up largely of ultraconservatives in the Republican Party, see Radical right (United States). For other uses, see Radical Republicans (disambiguation).

Radical Republicans

Leader(s)| • John C. Frémont
• Benjamin Wade
• Henry Winter Davis
• Charles Sumner
• Thaddeus Stevens
• Hannibal Hamlin
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Schuyler Colfax
Founded| 1854
Dissolved| 1877
Succeeded by| certain factions became the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party
Ideology| Radicalism
Abolitionism[1]
Reconstruction[2]
Unconditional unionism
Developmentalism[3]
Free labor
National affiliation| Republican Party

* Politics of United States
* Political parties
* Elections

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 goal of immediate, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States. However, the Radical faction also included strong currents of nativism, anti-Catholicism, and support for the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. These policy goals and the rhetoric in their favor often made it extremely difficult for the Republican Party as a whole to avoid alienating large numbers of American voters of Irish Catholic, German, and other White ethnic backgrounds. In fact, even German-American Freethinkers and Forty-Eighters who, like Hermann Raster, otherwise sympathized with the Radical Republicans' aims, fought them tooth and nail over prohibition. They later became known as "Stalwarts".[4][5]

The Radicals were opposed during the war by the Moderate Republicans (led by President Abraham Lincoln), and by the Democratic Party. 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.[6]

During the war, Radicals opposed Lincoln's initial 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 passing their own Reconstruction plan through Congress in 1864. Lincoln vetoed it, as he was putting his own policy in effect through his power as military commander-in-chief. Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865.[7] Radicals demanded for the uncompensated abolition of slavery, while Lincoln wished instead to partially emulate the British Empire's abolition of slavery by financially compensating former slave owners who had remained loyal to the Union. The Radicals, led by Thaddeus Stevens, bitterly fought Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson. After Johnson vetoed various congressional acts favoring citizenship for 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.[8]

## Radical coalition

[edit]

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens

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.[9]: 1ff.  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.[10] Many and perhaps a majority had been Whigs, such as William H. Seward,[11] 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 leading Radical newspaper. 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:

> [T]he word Radical as applied to political parties and politicians ... means one who is in favor of going to the root of things; who is thoroughly in earnest; who desires that slavery should be abolished, that every disability connected therewith should be obliterated.[12]

The Radicals were never formally organized and there was movement in and out of the group. Their most successful and systematic leader was Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in the House of Representatives. The Democrats were strongly opposed to the Radicals, but they were generally a weak minority in politics until they took control of the House in the 1874 congressional elections. The "Moderate" and "Conservative" Republican factions usually opposed the Radicals, but they were not well organized. Lincoln tried to build a multi-faction coalition, including Radicals, "Conservatives," "Moderates" and War Democrats as while he was often opposed by the Radicals, he never ostracized them. Andrew Johnson was thought to be a Radical when he became president in 1865,[13] but he soon became their leading opponent. However, Johnson could not form a cohesive support network. Finally in 1872, the Liberal Republicans, who wanted a return to classical republicanism,[14] ran a presidential campaign and won the support of the Democratic Party for their ticket. They argued that Grant and the Radicals were corrupt and had imposed Reconstruction far too long on the South. They were overwhelmingly defeated in the 1872 election and collapsed as a movement.

On issues not concerned with the destruction of the Confederacy, the eradication of slavery and the rights of Freedmen, Radicals took positions all over the political map. For example, Radicals who had once been Whigs generally supported high tariffs and ex-Democrats generally opposed them. Some men were for hard money and no inflation while others were for soft money and inflation. The argument, common in the 1930s, that the Radicals were primarily motivated by a desire to selfishly promote Northeastern business interests, has seldom been argued by historians for a half-century.[15] On foreign policy issues, the Radicals and moderates generally did not take distinctive positions.[16]

## Wartime

[edit]

Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury

After the 1860 elections, moderate Republicans dominated the Congress. Radical Republicans were often critical of Lincoln, who they believed was too slow in freeing slaves and supporting their legal equality. Lincoln put all factions in his cabinet, including Radicals like Salmon P. Chase (Secretary of the Treasury), whom he later appointed Chief Justice, James Speed (Attorney General) and Edwin M. Stanton (Secretary of War). Lincoln appointed many Radical Republicans, such as journalist James Shepherd Pike, to key diplomatic positions. Angry with Lincoln, in 1864 some Radicals briefly formed a political party called the Radical Democratic Party,[17] with John C. Frémont as their candidate for president, until Frémont withdrew. An important Republican opponent of the Radical Republicans was Henry Jarvis Raymond. Raymond was both editor of The New York Times and also a chairman of the Republican National Committee. In Congress, the most influential Radical Republicans were U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens. They led the call for a war that would end slavery.[18]

## Reconstruction policy

[edit]

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### Opposing Lincoln

[edit]

Henry Winter Davis, one of the authors of the Wade–Davis Manifesto opposing Lincoln's "ten percent" reconstruction plan

The Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln's terms for reuniting the United States during Reconstruction (1863), which they viewed as too lenient. They proposed an "ironclad oath" that would prevent anyone who supported the Confederacy from voting in Southern elections, but Lincoln blocked it and once Radicals passed the Wade–Davis Bill in 1864, Lincoln vetoed it. The Radicals demanded a more aggressive prosecution of the war, a faster end to slavery and total destruction of the Confederacy. After the war, the Radicals controlled the Joint Committee on Reconstruction.

### Opposing Johnson

[edit]

After Lincoln's assassination, War Democrat Vice President Andrew Johnson became president. Although he appeared at first to be a Radical,[19] he broke with them and the Radicals and Johnson became embroiled in a bitter struggle. Johnson proved a poor politician and his allies lost heavily in the 1866 elections in the North. The Radicals now had full control of Congress and could override Johnson's vetoes.[citation needed]

### Control of Congress

[edit]

After the 1866 elections, the Radicals generally controlled Congress. Johnson vetoed 21 bills passed by Congress during his term, but the Radicals overrode 15 of them, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and four Reconstruction Acts, which rewrote the election laws for the South and allowed blacks to vote while prohibiting former Confederate Army officers from holding office. As a result of the 1867–1868 elections, the newly empowered freedmen, in coalition with carpetbaggers (Northerners who had recently moved south) and Scalawags (white Southerners who supported Reconstruction), set up Republican governments in 10 Southern states (all but Virginia).

### Impeachment

[edit]

Further information: Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Edwin McMasters Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, whom Johnson tried to remove from office

The Radical plan was to remove Johnson from office, but the first effort at the impeachment trial of President Johnson went nowhere. After Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House of Representatives voted 126–47 to impeach him, but the Senate acquitted him in 1868 in three 35–19 votes, failing to reach the 36 votes threshold required for a conviction; by that time, however, Johnson had lost most of his power.[20]

### Supporting Grant

[edit]

General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865–1868 was in charge of the Army under President Johnson, but Grant generally enforced the Radical agenda. The leading Radicals in Congress were Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Charles Sumner in the Senate. Grant was elected president as a Republican in 1868 and after the election he generally sided with the Radicals on Reconstruction policies and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 into law.[21]

The Republicans split in 1872 over Grant's reelection, with the Liberal Republicans, including Sumner, opposing Grant with a new third party. The Liberals lost badly, but the economy then went into a depression in 1873 and in 1874 the Democrats swept back into power and ended the reign of the Radicals.[22]

The Radicals tried to protect the new coalition, but one by one the Southern states voted the Republicans out of power until in 1876 only three were left (Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina), where the Army still protected them. The 1876 presidential election was so close that it was decided in those three states despite massive fraud and illegalities on both sides. The Compromise of 1877 called for the election of a Republican as president and his withdrawal of the troops. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew the troops and the Republican state regimes immediately collapsed.[23]

## Reconstruction of the South

[edit]

U.S. Senator Charles Sumner

In 1865, Radical Republicans increasingly took control, led by Sumner and Stevens. They demanded harsher measures in the South, more protection for the Freedmen and more guarantees that the Confederate nationalism was eliminated. Following Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Andrew Johnson, a former War Democrat, became president.

The Radicals at first admired Johnson's hard-line talk. When they discovered his ambivalence on key issues by his veto of Civil Rights Act of 1866, they overrode his veto. This was the first time that Congress had overridden a president on an important bill. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made African Americans United States citizens, forbade discrimination against them and it was to be enforced in Federal courts. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution of 1868 (with its Equal Protection Clause) was the work of a coalition formed of both moderate and Radical Republicans.[18]

By 1866, the Radical Republicans supported federal civil rights for freedmen, which Johnson opposed. By 1867, they defined terms for suffrage for freed slaves and limited early suffrage for many ex-Confederates. While Johnson opposed the Radical Republicans on some issues, the decisive congressional elections of 1866 gave the Radicals enough votes to enact their legislation over Johnson's vetoes. Through elections in the South, ex-Confederate officeholders were gradually replaced with a coalition of freedmen, Southern whites (pejoratively called scalawags) and Northerners who had resettled in the South (pejoratively called carpetbaggers). The Radical Republicans were successful in their efforts to impeach President Johnson in the House, but failed by one vote in the Senate to remove him from office.[18]

The Radicals were opposed by former slaveowners and white supremacists in the rebel states. Radicals were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, who shot to death one Radical Congressman from Arkansas, James M. Hinds.

"Grant's Last Outrage in Louisiana" art in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of January 23, 1875

The Radical Republicans led the Reconstruction of the South. All Republican factions supported Ulysses Grant for president in 1868. Once in office, Grant forced Sumner out of the party and used Federal power to try to break up the Ku Klux Klan organization. However, insurgents and community riots continued harassment and violence against African Americans and their allies into the early 20th century. By the 1872 presidential election, the Liberal Republicans thought that Reconstruction had succeeded and should end. Many moderates joined their cause as well as Radical Republican leader Charles Sumner. They nominated New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, who was also nominated by the Democrats. Grant was easily reelected.[24]

## End of Reconstruction

[edit]

By 1872, the Radicals were increasingly splintered and in the congressional elections of 1874, the Democrats took control of Congress. Many former Radicals joined the "Stalwart" faction of the Republican Party while many opponents joined the "Half-Breeds", who differed primarily on matters of patronage rather than policy.[25]

In state after state in the South, the so-called Redeemers' movement seized control from the Republicans until in 1876 only three Republican states were left: South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. In the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner following the Compromise of 1877 (a corrupt bargain): he obtained the electoral votes of those states, and with them the presidency, by committing himself to removing federal troops from those states. Deprived of military support, Reconstruction came to an end. "Redeemers" took over in these states as well. As white Democrats now dominated all Southern state legislatures, the period of Jim Crow laws began, and rights were progressively taken away from blacks. This period would last over 80 years, until the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement.

## Historiography

[edit]

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, new battles took place over the construction of memory and the meaning of historical events. The earliest historians to study Reconstruction and the Radical Republican participation in it were members of the Dunning School, led by William Archibald Dunning and John W. Burgess.[26] The Dunning School, based at Columbia University in the early 20th century, saw the Radicals as motivated by an irrational hatred of the Confederacy and a lust for power at the expense of national reconciliation.[26] According to Dunning School historians, the Radical Republicans reversed the gains Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson had made in reintegrating the South, established corrupt shadow governments made up of Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags in the former Confederate states, and to increase their power, foisted political rights on the newly freed slaves that they were allegedly unprepared for or incapable of utilizing.[27] For the Dunning School, the Radical Republicans made Reconstruction a dark age that only ended when Southern whites rose up and reestablished a "home rule" free of Northern, Republican, and black influence.[28]

In the 1930s, the Dunning-oriented approaches were rejected by self-styled "revisionist" historians, led by Howard K. Beale along with W.E.B. DuBois, William B. Hesseltine, C. Vann Woodward and T. Harry Williams.[29] They downplayed corruption and stressed that Northern Democrats were also corrupt. Beale and Woodward were leaders in promoting racial equality and re-evaluated the era in terms of regional economic conflict.[30] They were also hostile towards the Radicals, casting them as economic opportunists. They argued that apart from a few idealists, most Radicals were scarcely interested in the fate of the blacks or the South as a whole. Rather, the main goal of the Radicals was to protect and promote Northern capitalism, which was threatened in Congress by the West; if the Democrats took control of the South and joined the West, they thought, the Northeastern business interests would suffer. They did not trust anyone from the South except men beholden to them by bribes and railroad deals. For example, Beale argued that the Radicals in Congress put Southern states under Republican control to get their votes in Congress for high protective tariffs.[31][32]

The role of Radical Republicans in creating public school systems, charitable institutions, and other social infrastructure in the South was downplayed by the Dunning School of historians. Since the 1950s, the impact of the moral crusade of the civil rights movement led historians to reevaluate the role of Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, and their reputation improved.[33] These historians, sometimes referred to as neoabolitionist because they reflected and admired the values of the abolitionists of the 19th century, argued that the Radical Republicans' advancement of civil rights and suffrage for African Americans following emancipation was more significant than the financial corruption which took place. They also pointed to the African Americans' central, active roles in reaching toward education (both individually and by creating public school systems) and their desire to acquire land as a means of self-support.[34]

Democrats retook power across the South and held it for decades, restricting African American voters and largely extinguishing their voting rights over the years and decades following Reconstruction. In 2004, Richardson argued that Northern Republicans came to see most blacks as potentially dangerous to the economy because they might prove to be labor radicals in the tradition of the 1871 Paris Commune or Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and other violent American strikes of the 1870s. Meanwhile, it became clear to Northerners that the white South was not bent on revenge or the restoration of the Confederacy. Most of the Republicans who felt this way became opponents of Grant and entered the Liberal Republican camp in 1872.[35]

### Notable Radical Republicans

[edit]

* Amos Tappan Akerman: attorney general under the Grant administration who vigorously prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan in the South under the Enforcement Acts
* Adelbert Ames: Governor of Mississippi in 1868–1870 and 1874–1876
* James Mitchell Ashley: representative from Ohio[36]
* John Armor Bingham: representative from Ohio and principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Austin Blair: Governor of Michigan in 1861–1865
* George Sewall Boutwell: representative from Massachusetts and Treasury Secretary under President Grant from 1869 to 1873[37]
* William Gannaway Brownlow: publisher of the Knoxville Whig, Tennessee governor and senator[38]
* Rufus Bullock: Governor of Georgia 1868–1871[39]
* Benjamin Butler: Massachusetts politician-soldier who was hated by rebels for restoring control in New Orleans[37]
* Zachariah Chandler: senator from Michigan and Secretary of the Interior under President Grant[40]
* Salmon P. Chase: Treasury Secretary under President Lincoln and Supreme Court chief justice who sought the 1868 Democratic nomination as a moderate[41][42]
* Schuyler Colfax: Speaker of the House (1863–1869) and the 17th Vice President of the United States (1869–1873). Was called the Christian statesman[9]: 239ff. [43]
* John Conness: senator from California
* John Creswell: elected Baltimore Representative to the House in 1863 during the Civil War, Creswell worked closely under Radical Republican Baltimore Representative Henry Winter Davis and was appointed Postmaster-General by President Grant in 1869, having vast patronage powers appointed many African Americans to federal postal positions in every state of the United States
* Edmund J. Davis: Governor of Texas in 1870–1874
* Henry Winter Davis: representative from Maryland[37]
* Charles Daniel Drake: senator from Missouri
* Reuben Fenton: Governor of New York in 1865–1868
* Thomas Clement Fletcher: Governor of Missouri in 1865–1869
* John C. Frémont: the 1856 Republican presidential candidate[44]
* James A. Garfield: House of Representatives leader, less radical than others and president in 1881
* Horace Greeley: the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, which became the most radical newspaper of the day. Greeley initially strongly supported Radical Reconstruction, but over time became disenchanted with the corruption associated with it, and broke with the Radical Republicans to run for president on the Liberal Republican ticket against Grant.
* Joshua Reed Giddings: representative from Ohio and an early leading founder of the Ohio Republican Party[45]
* Ulysses S. Grant: president who signed Enforcement Acts and Civil Rights Act of 1875 while as General of the Army of the United States he supported Radical Reconstruction and civil rights for African Americans[46]
* Galusha A. Grow: representative from Pennsylvania and Speaker of the House 1861 to 1863[47]
* John Parker Hale: senator from New Hampshire and one of the first to make a stand against slavery. He was a former Democrat who broke away because of slavery[48]
* Hannibal Hamlin: Maine politician and vice president during Lincoln's first term[49]
* Friedrich Hecker: leader of the German-American Forty-Eighters
* James M. Hinds: Congressman from Arkansas, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1868
* William Woods Holden: Governor of North Carolina in 1868–1871
* Jacob M. Howard: senator from Michigan[45]
* Timothy Otis Howe: senator from Wisconsin
* George Washington Julian: representative from Indiana and principal framer of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution[50]
* William Darrah Kelley: representative from Pennsylvania[37]
* Samuel J. Kirkwood: senator from Iowa
* James H. Lane: senator from Kansas and leader of the Jayhawkers abolitionist movement[45]
* John Alexander Logan: senator from Illinois
* Owen Lovejoy: representative from Illinois[51]
* David Medlock, Jr: Texas House of Representatives for the 12th Texas Legislature – 1870 to 1873 and was on the Federal Relations Committee.
* Oliver P. Morton: Governor of Indiana (1861–1867) and senator
* Franklin J. Moses, Jr.: Governor of South Carolina in 1872–1874
* Samuel Pomeroy: senator from Kansas[45]
* Harrison Reed: Governor of Florida in 1868–1873
* Samuel Shellabarger: representative from Ohio and principal drafter of the Civil Rights Act of 1871[37]
* Rufus Paine Spalding: representative from Ohio who took a leading role in the Congressional debates over Reconstruction
* Edwin McMasters Stanton: Secretary of War under the Lincoln and Johnson administrations
* Thaddeus Stevens: Radical leader in the House from Pennsylvania[52]
* Charles Sumner: senator from Massachusetts, dominant Radical leader in the Senate and specialist in foreign affairs who broke with Grant in 1872[53]
* Albion W. Tourgée: novelist[54]
* Lyman Trumbull: senator from Illinois with strongly anti-slavery sentiments, but otherwise moderate[55]
* Daniel Phillips Upham: Arkansas politician-soldier who was ruthless in a campaign that would temporarily rid the South of the Ku Klux Klan
* Benjamin Franklin Wade: senator from Ohio, next in line to become president if Johnson were removed[56]
* Henry Clay Warmoth: Governor of Louisiana in 1868–1872
* Elihu Benjamin Washburne: representative from Illinois
* George Henry Williams: senator from Oregon (1865–1871) and attorney general under President Grant
* Henry Wilson: Massachusetts Senator, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee during the Civil War, and vice president under Grant[40]
* James F. Wilson: representative from Iowa, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Johnson and senator from Iowa
* Richard Yates: Governor of Illinois in 1861–1865 and Senator[57]

## Notes

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1. ^ "Radical Republican". britannica.com. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 13, 2022. "Radical Republican, during and after the American Civil War, a member of the Republican Party committed to emancipation of the slaves and later to the equal treatment and enfranchisement of the freed blacks."
2. ^ "The Radical Republicans". battlefields.org. American Battlefield Trust. June 30, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2022. "As the end of the war drew near, the Radicals strongly disagreed with President Lincoln's proposed post-war Reconstruction plans. Whereas Lincoln wanted to peacefully recreate coexistence between the Union and the Confederate States, the Radical Republicans felt that the rebel states needed a strong hand of justice and the administration of harsh punishments for their actions."
3. ^ Foner, pp. 44, 429
4. ^ John G. Sproat, "'Old Ideals' and 'New Realities' in the Gilded Age," Reviews in American History, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 565–570
5. ^ Riddleberger, Patrick W. (April 1959). "The Break in the Radical Ranks: Liberals vs Stalwarts in the Election of 1872". The Journal of Negro History. 44 (2): 136–157\. doi:10.2307/2716035. JSTOR 2716035. S2CID 149957268.
6. ^ Trefousse, Hans (1991). Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction. pp. 175–176.
7. ^ William C. Harris, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (1997), pp. 123–170.
8. ^ The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 By Manisha Sinha, 2024
9. ^ a b Howard, Victor B. (2015). Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860–1870. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-6144-0.
10. ^ Trefousse (1969), p. 20.
11. ^ Trefousse (1969), p. 6.
12. ^ Pamphlet bound into Cullom, Shelby Moore (1867). Speech of Hon. Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, on Reconstruction: Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 28, 1867. pp. 1–2.
13. ^ Foner 2002, p. 44.
14. ^ Slap, Andrew L. (2010). The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era. Fordham Univ Press. pp. 21–. ISBN 978-0-8232-2711-2.
15. ^ Coben, Stanley (June 1959). "Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Re-examination". Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 46 (1): 67–90\. doi:10.2307/1892388. JSTOR 1892388.
16. ^ Trefousse (1969), pp. 21–32.
17. ^ "1864: Lincoln v. McClellan". HarpWeek: Explore History. Retrieved May 31, 2010.
18. ^ a b c Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (2001)
19. ^ Senator Chandler, a Radical leader, said the new president was "as radical as I am"; Blackburn (1969), p. 113; also McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (1961) p. 60.
20. ^ Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1999)
21. ^ Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents ch. 5, 6 (2009)
22. ^ Trefousse (1969)
23. ^ Scroggs (1958)
24. ^ Patrick W. Riddleberger, "The Break in the Radical Ranks: Liberals vs Stalwarts in the Election of 1872." Journal of Negro History 44.2 (1959): 136–157 online.
25. ^ John G. Sproat, "'Old Ideals' and 'New Realities' in the Gilded Age," Reviews in American History, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 565–70
26. ^ a b Foner, p. xi.
27. ^ Foner, pp. xi–xii.
28. ^ Foner, p. xii.
29. ^ Beale, Howard K. (1940). "On Rewriting Reconstruction History". American Historical Review. 35 (4): 807–27\. doi:10.2307/1854452. JSTOR 1854452.
30. ^ Williams, T. Harry (1946). "An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes". Journal of Southern History. 12 (4): 469–86\. doi:10.2307/2197687. JSTOR 2197687.
31. ^ Beale, Howard K. (1930). "The Tariff and Reconstruction". The American Historical Review. 35 (2): 276–94\. doi:10.2307/1837439. JSTOR 1837439.
32. ^ LaWanda Cox, "From Emancipation to Segregation" in John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolan, eds. Interpreting Southern History (1987), pp. 199–253
33. ^ Cox, "From Emancipation to Segregation" (1987), p. 199
34. ^ Hugh Tulloch, The Debate on the American Civil War Era. (1999); Thomas C. Holt, "Reconstruction in United States History Textbooks." Journal of American History 1995 81(4): 1641–51.
35. ^ Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865–1901 (2004)
36. ^ Trefousse (1969), p. 13.
37. ^ a b c d e Trefousse (1969), p. 15.
38. ^ William G. Brownlow pamphlet, 1869. The University of Memphis. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
39. ^ Lyons, Philip B. (2014). Statesmanship and Reconstruction: Moderate versus Radical Republicans on Restoring the Union after the Civil War. Lexington Books. pp. 289–. ISBN 978-0-7391-8508-7.
40. ^ a b Trefousse (2014), p. xvii.
41. ^ Trefousse (1969), p. 7.
42. ^ Trefousse (2014), p. xv.
43. ^ Trefousse (1969), pp. 14–15.
44. ^ Gustafson, Melanie (2001). Women and the Republican Party, 1854–1924. University of Illinois Press. pp. 31–. ISBN 978-0-252-02688-1.
45. ^ a b c d Trefousse (1969), p. 11.
46. ^ Grant was perceived by Radicals as either a Radical himself or sympathetic to their aims. Smith, Jean Edward (2001). Grant. p. 444. ISBN 978-0-684-84926-3.
47. ^ Trefousse (1969), p. 14.
48. ^ Trefousse (2014), p. xvi.
49. ^ Trefousse (2014), p. xviii.
50. ^ Trefousse (1969), p. 12.
51. ^ Trefousse (1969), pp. 13–14.
52. ^ Trefousse (1969), pp. 12–13.
53. ^ Hans L. Trefousse (2014). The Radical Republicans. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 13–. ISBN 978-0-8041-5392-8.
54. ^ Tourgée, Albion W. (2009). Bricks Without Straw: A Novel. Duke University Press. pp. 453–. ISBN 978-0-8223-9234-7.
55. ^ Trefousse (1969), pp. 10–11.
56. ^ Trefousse (1969), pp. 7–8.
57. ^ Reavis, L. U. (1881). The Life and Public Services of Richard Yates, the War Governor of Illinois: A Lecture Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Springfield, Illinois, Tuesday Evening, March 1st, 1881. J.H. Chambers & Company. p. 30 – via Google Books.

## References and further reading

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### Secondary sources

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* Belz, Herman (1998). Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era. Fordham University Press.
* Belz, Herman (1978). Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era.
* Belz, Herman (2000). A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedman's Rights, 1861–1866.
* Benedict, Michael Les (1999). The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson.
* Blackburn, George M. (April 1969). "Radical Republican Motivation: A Case History". The Journal of Negro History. 54 (2): 109–126\. doi:10.2307/2716688. JSTOR 2716688. S2CID 149744005. Re Michigan Senator Zachariah Chandler
* Bowers, Claude G. (1929). The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln. 567 pages, intense anti-Radical narrative by prominent Democrat
* Brands, H. W. The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (Doubleday, 2013) online
* Castel, Albert E. (1979). The Presidency of Andrew Johnson. Regents Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700601905.
* Donald, David (1970). Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man. Major critical analysis.
* Donald, David (1996). Lincoln. A major scholarly biography
* Goodwin, Doris Kearns (2005). Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0684824901.
* Foner, Eric (2002). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. Major synthesis; many prizes
* Foner, Eric (1990). A Short History of Reconstruction. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-096431-3. Abridged version
* Harris, William C. (1997). With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union. Lincoln as moderate and opponent of Radicals.
* Howard, Victor B. Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860–1870 (University Press of Kentucky, 2014) online
* Lyons, Philip B. Statesmanship and Reconstruction: Moderate versus Radical Republicans on Restoring the Union after the Civil War (Lexington Books, 2014).
* McFeely, William S. (1981). Grant: A Biography. ISBN 978-0393013726. Pulitzer Prize.
* McKitrick, Eric L. (1961). Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction.
* Milton, George Fort (1930). The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals. Hostile
* Nevins, Allan (1936). Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration. Pulitzer Prize.
* Randall, James G. (1955). Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure. Fourth and final volume of a biography. The main title of all four volumes is Lincoln the President; the fourth volume was completed by Richard N. Current upon Randall's death.
* Rhodes, James Ford (1920). History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volumes 6 and 7. Highly detailed political narrative.
* Richards, Leonard L. Who Freed the Slaves?: The Fight Over the Thirteenth Amendment (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
* Richardson, Heather Cox (2007). West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War.
* Richardson, Heather Cox (2004). The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865–1901.
* Riddleberger, Patrick W. (April 1959). "The Break in the Radical Ranks: Liberals vs Stalwarts in the Election of 1872". The Journal of Negro History. 44 (2): 136–157\. doi:10.2307/2716035. JSTOR 2716035. S2CID 149957268.
* Ross, Earle Dudley (1910). The Liberal Republican Movement. Scholarly history
* Stampp, Kenneth M. (1967). The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877.
* Simpson, Brooks D. (1991). Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807819661.
* Simpson, Brooks D. (1998). The Reconstruction Presidents. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700608966.
* Summers, Mark Wahlgren. Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid Under the Radical Republicans, 1865–1877 (Princeton University Press, 2014) online.
* Trefousse, Hans (1991). Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction.
* Trefousse, Hans L. (1969). The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Justice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Favorable to Radicals
* Trefousse, Hans L. (2001). Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. Favorable biography.
* Trefousse, Hans L. (2014). The Radical Republicans. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8041-5392-8.
* Williams, T. Harry (1941). Lincoln and the Radicals. Hostile to Radicals
* Zuczek, Richard (2006). Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era. 2 vol.

### Historiography and memory

[edit]

* Bogue, Allan G. (June 1983). "Historians and Radical Republicans: A Meaning for Today". Journal of American History. 70 (1): 7–34\. doi:10.2307/1890519. JSTOR 1890519.
* Keith, LeeAnna. When It Was Grand: The Radical Republican History of the Civil War (2020) excerpt; also online review
* Launius, Roger D. (1987). "Williams and the Radicals: An Historiographical Essay". Louisiana History. 28 (2): 141–164\. JSTOR 4232573.
* Leipold, Bruno, Karma Nabulsi, and Stuart White, eds. Radical republicanism: Recovering the tradition's popular heritage (Oxford University Press, 2020) online.
* Scroggs, Jack B. (November 1958). "Southern Reconstruction: A Radical View". The Journal of Southern History. 24 (4): 407–429\. doi:10.2307/2954670. JSTOR 2954670.
* Zander, Cecily N. (March 2023). "Whither the Radicals?". Reviews in American History. 51 (1): 91–102\. doi:10.1353/rah.2023.a900725.

### Primary sources

[edit]

* Harper's Weekly news magazine
* Barnes, William H., ed. History of the Thirty-ninth Congress of the United States. (1868) useful summary of Congressional activity.
* 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 full text online
* 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 full text of vol. 2
* Hyman, Harold M., ed. The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870. (1967), collection of long political speeches and pamphlets.
* Edward McPherson, 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.]
* Palmer, Beverly Wilson and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds. The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens 2 vol (1998), 900 pp; 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
* Charles Sumner, "Our Domestic Relations: or, How to Treat the Rebel States" Atlantic Monthly September 1863, early Radical manifesto

### Yearbooks

[edit]

* American Annual Cyclopedia...1868 (1869), online, highly detailed compendium of facts and primary sources; details on every state
* American Annual Cyclopedia...for 1869 (1870) online edition
* Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia...for 1870 (1871)
* American Annual Cyclopedia...for 1872 (1873)
* Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia...for 1873 (1879) online edition
* Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia...for 1875 (1877)
* Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia ...for 1876 (1885) online edition
* Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia...for 1877 (1878)

* v
* t
* e

American Civil War

Origins

* Origins

* Timeline leading to the War
* Bleeding Kansas
* Border states
* Compromise of 1850
* John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
* Kansas-Nebraska Act
* Lincoln–Douglas debates
* Missouri Compromise
* Nullification crisis
* Origins of the American Civil War
* Panic of 1857
* Popular sovereignty
* Secession
* South Carolina Declaration of Secession
* States' rights
* Proclamation 80

|

Slavery|

* African Americans
* Cornerstone Speech
* Crittenden Compromise
* Dred Scott v. Sandford
* Emancipation Proclamation
* Fire-Eaters
* Fugitive slave laws
* Plantations in the American South
* Positive good
* Slave Power
* Slavery in the United States
* Treatment of slaves in the United States
* Uncle Tom's Cabin

Abolitionism|

* Abolitionism in the United States
* Susan B. Anthony
* James G. Birney
* John Brown
* Frederick Douglass
* William Lloyd Garrison
* Lane Debates on Slavery
* Elijah Parish Lovejoy
* J. Sella Martin
* Lysander Spooner
* George Luther Stearns
* Thaddeus Stevens
* Charles Sumner
* Caning
* Harriet Tubman
* Underground Railroad

* Combatants
* Theaters
* Campaigns
* Battles
* States

| Combatants|

| Union|

* Army
* Navy
* Marine Corps
* Revenue Cutter Service

|

Confederacy|

* Army
* Navy
* Marine Corps

Theaters|

* Eastern
* Western
* Lower Seaboard
* Trans-Mississippi
* Pacific Coast
* Union naval blockade

Major campaigns|

* Anaconda Plan
* Blockade runners
* New Mexico
* Jackson's Valley
* Peninsula
* Northern Virginia
* Maryland
* Stones River
* Vicksburg
* Tullahoma
* Gettysburg
* Morgan's Raid
* Bristoe
* Knoxville
* Red River
* Overland
* Atlanta
* Valley 1864
* Bermuda Hundred
* Richmond-Petersburg
* Franklin–Nashville
* Price's Missouri Expedition
* Sherman's March
* Carolinas
* Mobile
* Appomattox

Major battles|

* Fort Sumter
* 1st Bull Run
* Wilson's Creek
* Fort Donelson
* Pea Ridge
* Hampton Roads
* Shiloh
* New Orleans
* Corinth
* Seven Pines
* Seven Days
* 2nd Bull Run
* Antietam
* Perryville
* Fredericksburg
* Stones River
* Chancellorsville
* Gettysburg
* Vicksburg
* Chickamauga
* Chattanooga
* Wilderness
* Fort Pillow
* Spotsylvania
* Cold Harbor
* Atlanta
* Crater
* Mobile Bay
* Franklin
* Nashville
* Five Forks

Involvement|

| States and
territories|

* Alabama
* Arkansas
* Arizona
* California
* Colorado
* Connecticut
* Dakota Territory
* District of Columbia
* Delaware
* Florida
* Georgia
* Hawaii
* Idaho
* Illinois
* Indian Territory
* Indiana
* Iowa
* Kansas
* Kentucky
* Louisiana
* Maine
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Michigan
* Minnesota
* Mississippi
* Missouri
* Montana
* Nebraska
* Nevada
* New Hampshire
* New Jersey
* New Mexico
* New York
* North Carolina
* Ohio
* Oregon
* Pennsylvania
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Tennessee
* Texas
* Utah
* Vermont
* Virginia
* Washington
* West Virginia
* Wisconsin

|

Cities|

* Atlanta
* Charleston
* Chattanooga
* New Orleans
* Richmond
* Washington, D.C.
* Winchester

Leaders

| Confederate|

| Military|

* R. H. Anderson
* Beauregard
* Bragg
* Buchanan
* Cooper
* Early
* Ewell
* Forrest
* Gorgas
* Hill
* Hood
* Jackson
* A. S. Johnston
* J. E. Johnston
* Lee
* Longstreet
* Morgan
* Mosby
* Polk
* Price
* Semmes
* E. K. Smith
* Stuart
* Taylor
* Wheeler

|

Civilian|

* Benjamin
* Bocock
* Breckinridge
* Davis
* Hunter
* Mallory
* Memminger
* Seddon
* Stephens

Union|

| Military|

* Anderson
* Buell
* Burnside
* Butler
* Du Pont
* Farragut
* Foote
* Frémont
* Grant
* Halleck
* Hooker
* Hunt
* McClellan
* McDowell
* Meade
* Meigs
* Ord
* Pope
* D. D. Porter
* Rosecrans
* Scott
* Sheridan
* Sherman
* Thomas

|

Civilian|

* Adams
* Chase
* Ericsson
* Hamlin
* Lincoln
* Pinkerton
* Seward
* Stanton
* Stevens
* Wade
* Welles

Aftermath

| Constitution|

* Reconstruction Amendments
* 13th Amendment
* 14th Amendment
* 15th Amendment

|

Reconstruction|

* Alabama Claims
* Brooks–Baxter War
* Carpetbaggers
* Colfax riot of 1873
* Compromise of 1877
* Confederate refugees
* Confederados
* Eufaula riot of 1874
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Freedman's Savings Bank
* Homestead Acts
* Southern Homestead Act of 1866
* Timber Culture Act of 1873
* Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
* trial
* efforts
* timeline
* first inquiry
* second inquiry
* impeachment managers investigation
* Kirk–Holden war
* Knights of the White Camelia
* Ku Klux Klan
* Ethnic violence
* Memphis riots of 1866
* Meridian riot of 1871
* New Orleans riot of 1866
* Pulaski (Tennessee) riot of 1867
* South Carolina riots of 1876
* Reconstruction acts
* Habeas Corpus Act of 1867
* Enforcement Act of 1870
* Enforcement Act of February 1871
* Enforcement Act of April 1871
* Reconstruction era
* Reconstruction military districts
* Reconstruction Treaties
* Indian Council at Fort Smith
* Red Shirts
* Redeemers
* Scalawags
* South Carolina riots of 1876
* Southern Claims Commission
* White League

Post-
Reconstruction|

* Commemoration
* Centennial
* Civil War Discovery Trail
* Civil War Roundtables
* Civil War Trails Program
* Civil War Trust
* Confederate History Month
* Confederate Memorial Day
* Decoration Day
* Historical reenactment
* Robert E. Lee Day
* Confederate Memorial Hall
* Disenfranchisement
* Black Codes
* Jim Crow
* Historiographic issues
* Lost Cause mythology
* Modern display of the Confederate flag
* Red Shirts
* Sons of Confederate Veterans
* Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
* Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War
* National Society Daughters of the Union 1861-1865
* Southern Historical Society
* United Confederate Veterans
* United Daughters of the Confederacy
* Children of the Confederacy
* Wilmington insurrection of 1898

Monuments
and memorials|

| Union|

* List
* Grand Army of the Republic
* memorials to Lincoln

|

Confederate|

* List
* artworks in Capitol
* memorials to Davis
* memorials to Lee
* Removal

Cemeteries|

* Ladies' Memorial Associations
* U.S. national cemeteries

Veterans|

* 1913 Gettysburg reunion
* 1938 Gettysburg reunion
* Confederate Memorial Hall
* Confederate Veteran
* Grand Army of the Republic
* Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the U.S.
* Old soldiers' homes
* Southern Cross of Honor
* United Confederate Veterans

* Related topics

| Military|

* Arms
* Armies
* Campaign Medal
* Cavalry
* Confederate Home Guard
* Confederate railroads
* Confederate revolving cannon
* Field artillery
* Infantry
* Medal of Honor recipients
* Medicine
* Naval battles
* Official Records
* Partisan rangers
* POW camps
* Rations
* Signal Corps
* Turning point
* Union corps badges
* U.S. Balloon Corps
* U.S. Home Guard
* U.S. Military Railroad

|

Political|

* Committee on the Conduct of the War
* Confederate States presidential election of 1861
* Confiscation Act of 1861
* Confiscation Act of 1862
* Copperheads
* Diplomacy
* Emancipation Proclamation
* Habeas Corpus Act of 1863
* Hampton Roads Conference
* National Union Party
* Politicians killed
* Radical Republicans
* Trent Affair
* Union Leagues
* U.S. Presidential Election of 1864
* War Democrats

Music|

* Battle Hymn of the Republic
* Dixie
* John Brown's Body
* A Lincoln Portrait
* Marching Through Georgia
* Maryland, My Maryland
* Names from the War
* When Johnny Comes Marching Home
* Daar kom die Alibama

By ethnicity|

* African Americans
* German Americans
* Irish Americans
* Italian Americans
* Native Americans
* Catawba
* Cherokee
* Choctaw
* Seminole

Other topics|

* Baltimore riot of 1861
* Battlefield preservation
* Bibliography
* Confederate war finance
* Confederate States dollar
* Espionage
* Confederate Secret Service
* Great Hanging at Gainesville
* Great Revival of 1863
* Gender issues
* Juneteenth
* Naming the war
* New York City Gold Hoax of 1864
* New York City riots of 1863
* Photographers
* Richmond riots of 1863
* Salt
* Supreme Court cases
* Tokens
* U.S. Sanitary Commission
* Women soldiers

Related|

* List of films and television shows about the American Civil War

* Category
* Portal

* v
* t
* e

Reconstruction era

Participants|

Federal government

* Presidents
* Abraham Lincoln
* Andrew Johnson
* Ulysses S. Grant
* Rutherford B. Hayes

* Congress
* 38
* 39
* 40
* 41
* 42
* 43
* 44
* 45
* Radical Republicans
* Moderate Republicans
* Conservative Republicans
* African-American senators
* African-American representatives
* Reconstruction Amendments
* United States Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction
* United States House Select Committee on Reconstruction

* Federal judiciary
* Taney Court
* Chase Court
* Waite Court

* Federal bureaucracy
* Edwin Stanton
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Justice Department

|

State governments

* Southern United States
* Confederate States of America

Others|

* African Americans
* Free people of color
* Freedman
* Politicians
* Carpetbaggers
* Ku Klux Klan
* Scalawag
* Redeemers
* White League
* Red Shirts
* Democratic Party
* Bourbon Democrat
* Horatio Seymour
* Samuel J. Tilden
* Republican Party
* Stalwarts
* Charles Sumner
* Thaddeus Stevens
* Lyman Trumbull
* Benjamin Wade
* John Bingham
* James Mitchell Ashley
* Freedman's Savings Bank
* Women during the Reconstruction era

Elections|

Presidential

* 1864
* DNC
* National Union Convention
* Radical Democratic Party

* 1868
* DNC
* RNC

* 1872
* DNC
* RNC
* Liberal Republican Party
* Straight-Out Democratic Party
* Victoria Woodhull

* 1876
* DNC
* RNC
* Greenback Convention
* Prohibition Convention
* Electoral Commission
* Compromise of 1877

|

U.S. Senate|

* 1864–65
* 1866–67
* 1868–69
* 1870–71
* 1872–73
* 1874–75
* 1876–77

U.S. House|

* 1864–65
* 1866–67
* 1868–69
* 1870–71
* 1872–73
* 1874–75
* 1876–77

Gubernatorial|

* 1863
* Alabama
* California
* Connecticut
* Kentucky
* Massachusetts
* Minnesota
* New Hampshire
* Ohio
* Pennsylvania
* Virginia
* Vermont
* Wisconsin
* West Virginia

* 1864
* Connecticut
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Louisiana
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Michigan
* Missouri
* New Hampshire
* Vermont
* West Virginia

* 1865
* Connecticut
* Florida
* Louisiana
* Massachusetts
* Minnesota
* New Jersey
* Ohio
* South Carolina
* Vermont
* Wisconsin

* 1866
* Connecticut
* Delaware
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Michigan
* North Carolina
* Oregon
* Pennsylvania
* Texas
* Vermont
* West Virginia

* 1867
* California
* Connecticut
* Kentucky
* Massachusetts
* Maryland
* Maine
* Minnesota
* Ohio
* Vermont
* Wisconsin

* 1868
* Alabama
* Connecticut
* Florida
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Kentucky (special)
* Louisiana
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Michigan
* Missouri
* North Carolina
* New Jersey
* South Carolina
* Vermont
* West Virginia

* 1869
* Connecticut
* Iowa
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Minnesota
* Mississippi
* Ohio
* Pennsylvania
* Rhode Island
* Virginia
* Vermont
* Wisconsin

* 1870
* Alabama
* Connecticut
* Delaware
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Michigan
* Missouri
* Oregon
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Vermont
* West Virginia

* 1871
* California
* Connecticut
* Iowa
* Kentucky
* Massachusetts
* Maryland
* Maine
* Minnesota
* New Jersey
* Ohio
* Rhode Island
* Wisconsin

* 1872
* Alabama
* Connecticut
* Florida
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Louisiana
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Michigan
* Missouri
* North Carolina
* Pennsylvania
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Vermont
* West Virginia

* 1873
* Connecticut
* Iowa
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Minnesota
* Mississippi
* Ohio
* Texas
* Virginia
* Wisconsin

* 1874
* Alabama
* Connecticut
* Delaware
* Kansas
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Michigan
* Missouri
* New Jersey
* Nevada
* Oregon
* South Carolina
* Vermont

* 1875
* California
* Connecticut
* Iowa
* Kentucky
* Massachusetts
* Maryland
* Maine
* Minnesota
* Ohio
* Ohio
* Wisconsin

* 1876
* Alabama
* Colorado
* Connecticut April
* Connecticut November
* Florida
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Kansas
* Louisiana
* Massachusetts
* Maine
* Michigan
* Missouri
* North Carolina
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Vermont
* West Virginia

U.S. elections|

* 1864
* 1866
* 1868
* 1870
* 1872
* 1874
* 1876

Key events|

| Prelude|

* American Indian Wars
* Slavery in the United States
* A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
* The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1838)
* Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1839)
* Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
* National Women's Rights Convention (1850)
* American Civil War
* Confiscation Act of 1861
* Confiscation Act of 1862
* District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act (1862)
* Militia Act of 1862

|

1863|

* Emancipation Proclamation
* General Order No. 143
* Lincoln's presidential Reconstruction
* Ten percent plan
* National Bank Act
* Women's Loyal National League
* New York City draft riots
* 1863 State of the Union Address

1864|

* Wade–Davis Bill
* 1864 elections
* 1864 State of the Union Address

1865|

* 13th Amendment
* Second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
* Address
* Black Codes
* Special Field Orders No. 15
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Freedmen's Bureau bills
* Confederates surrender at Appomattox
* Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
* Shaw University
* New Departure
* 1865 State of the Union Address
* Founding of the Ku Klux Klan

1866|

* Civil Rights Act of 1866
* Memphis massacre of 1866
* New Orleans Massacre of 1866
* Swing Around the Circle
* Southern Homestead Act of 1866
* Fort Smith Conference and Cherokee Reconstruction Treaty of 1866
* Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty of Washington of 1866
* Tennessee readmitted to Union
* Petition for Universal Freedom
* National Labor Union
* Ex parte Garland
* Ex parte Milligan
* Slave Kidnapping Act of 1866

* 1866 elections

1867|

* Tenure of Office Act
* Command of Army Act
* Indian Peace Commission
* Knights of the White Camelia
* Pulaski riot
* Reconstruction Acts
* Reconstruction military districts
* Constitutional conventions of 1867
* Habeas Corpus Act of 1867
* Peonage Act of 1867
* First impeachment inquiry into Andrew Johnson
* 1867 State of the Union Address

1868|

* 14th Amendment
* Second impeachment inquiry into Andrew Johnson
* Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
* Timeline
* Impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson
* Impeachment managers investigation
* Articles of impeachment
* Arkansas readmitted to Union
* Florida readmitted to Union
* North Carolina readmitted to Union
* South Carolina readmitted to Union
* Louisiana readmitted to Union
* Alabama readmitted to Union
* Opelousas massacre
* Fourth Reconstruction Act
* Georgia v. Stanton
* 1868 elections
* 1868 State of the Union Address

1869|

* National Woman Suffrage Association
* American Woman Suffrage Association
* Alabama Claims
* Proposed annexation of Santo Domingo
* Board of Indian Commissioners
* Public Credit Act of 1869
* Black Friday (1869)
* Ex parte McCardle
* First transcontinental railroad
* 1869 State of the Union Address

1870|

* 15th Amendment
* Enforcement Act of 1870
* Justice Department
* Naturalization Act of 1870
* Kirk–Holden war
* Shoffner Act
* 1870 elections
* 1870 State of the Union Address

1871|

* Ku Klux Klan hearings
* Second Enforcement Act
* Ku Klux Klan Act
* Alcorn State University
* Meridian race riot of 1871
* Treaty of Washington
* New York custom house ring
* Civil service commission
* United States expedition to Korea
* 1871 State of the Union Address

1872|

* General Mining Act of 1872
* Crédit Mobilier scandal
* Modoc War
* Star Route scandal
* Salary Grab Act
* Amnesty Act
* 1872 elections
* 1872 State of the Union Address

1873|

* Panic of 1873
* Colfax massacre
* Timber Culture Act
* Slaughter-House Cases
* Virginius Affair
* Coinage Act of 1873
* Long Depression
* Comstock laws
* 1873 State of the Union Address

1874|

* Brooks–Baxter War
* Battle of Liberty Place
* Coushatta massacre
* Red River War
* Timber Culture Act
* White League
* Election Massacre of 1874
* Vicksburg massacre
* Black Hills Gold Rush
* Sanborn incident
* Anti-Moiety Acts
* 1874 elections
* 1874 State of the Union Address

1875|

* United States v. Cruikshank
* Civil Rights Act of 1875
* Red Shirts
* Mississippi Plan
* Clifton Riot of 1875
* Yazoo City Riot of 1875
* Specie Payment Resumption Act
* Whiskey Ring
* Wheeler Compromise
* Delano affair
* Pratt & Boyd
* 1875 State of the Union Address

1876|

* Hamburg massacre
* South Carolina civil disturbances of 1876
* Ellenton massacre
* Great Sioux War of 1876
* Battle of the Little Bighorn
* United States v. Reese
* Trader post scandal
* Centennial Exposition
* Cattellism
* Safe burglary conspiracy
* 1876 elections
* 1876 State of the Union Address

1877|

* Electoral Commission
* Compromise of 1877
* Nez Perce War
* Desert Land Act
* Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Aftermath|

* Posse Comitatus Act (1878)
* Civil Rights Cases (1883)
* United States v. Harris (1883)
* Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
* Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
* Wilmington massacre
* Giles v. Harris (1903)
* Disenfranchisement

Aspects|

| Historiography|

* Bibliography of the Reconstruction era
* James Shepherd Pike
* The Prostrate State (1874)
* James Bryce
* The American Commonwealth (1888)
* Claude G. Bowers
* The Tragic Era (1929)
* Columbia University
* John Burgess
* Walter L. Fleming
* Dunning School
* William Archibald Dunning
* Charles A. Beard
* Howard K. Beale
* W. E. B. Du Bois
* Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
* C. Vann Woodward
* Joel Williamson
* William R. Brock
* The American Crisis (1963)
* John Hope Franklin
* From Slavery to Freedom (1947)
* After Slavery (1965)
* Leon Litwack
* Been in the Storm So Long (1979)
* Eric Foner
* Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988)
* Kenneth M. Stampp
* Steven Hahn
* A Nation Under Our Feet (2003)
* The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (2019)

|

Memory|

* Winslow Homer
* A Visit from the Old Mistress (1876)
* Thomas Dixon Jr.
* The Leopard's Spots (1902)
* The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905)
* D. W. Griffith
* The Birth of a Nation (1915)
* United Daughters of the Confederacy
* Gone with the Wind (1939)
* David W. Blight
* Race and Reunion (2001)

Legacy|

* Women's suffrage in the United States
* Labor history of the United States
* Gilded Age
* Jim Crow era
* Civil rights movement
* American frontier

Other topics|

* African American founding fathers of the United States
* Forty acres and a mule
* Habeas corpus
* History of the United States (1865–1917)
* Paramilitary
* Race (human categorization)
* Reconstruction Treaties
* Suffrage
* Technological and industrial history of the United States
* White supremacy
* Whitecapping

* Category

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