Radical Republicans
Anti-slavery congressional faction
Radical Republicans were a faction within the Republican Party during and after the American Civil War who pushed for immediate abolition of slavery, equal rights for freed Black Americans, and harsh punishment of the Confederacy.
They clashed with Lincoln over the pace of emancipation and later with Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction, ultimately driving his impeachment.
The Radical Republicans demanded that Southern states guarantee Black suffrage before readmission to the Union.
- abolitionistOpponent of human bondage
- Fourteenth AmendmentPost-Civil War constitutional addition
- reformersAdvocates for institutional improvement
- impeachment trialLegislative removal proceeding
- Freedmen's BureauPost-Civil War relief agency
forty acres and a mule · black suffrage · equality · civil rights · Emancipation Proclamation · slavery · sectionalism · constitutional amendments · carpetbaggers · scalawags · Reconstruction Era · social justice · Civil Rights Act · land redistribution · military rule · Union Army · racial violence · Frederick Douglass
Radical RepublicansSouthern Democrats
Historically conservative regional faction
Copperheads · white supremacists · Ku Klux Klan · conservative Democrats · planter class
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