CHAPTER V. THE VICTORY OF THE RADICALS

The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had been at
home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient strength to
carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction of the Southern
states. At the end of the war, a majority of the Northern people would have
supported a settlement in accordance with Lincoln's policy. Eight months later
a majority, but a smaller one, would have supported Johnson's work had it been
possible to secure a popular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain
the victory over the conservatives? The answer to this question is given by
James Ford Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for
the Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy
and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and parliamentary
tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism."
The President stood alone in his responsibility, but his chief opponents were
the ablest leaders of a resolute band of radicals.

Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson. Lincoln had
felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he possessed the faculty of
weakening his opponents, while Johnson's conduct usually multiplied the number
and the strength of his enemies. At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's
policy in regard to slavery, and after the Emancipation Proclamation they
shifted their attack to his "ten percent" plan for organizing the state
governments as outlined in the Proclamation of December 1863. Lincoln's course
was distasteful to them because he did not admit the right of Congress to
dictate terms, because of his liberal attitude towards former Confederates,
and because he was conservative on the Negro question. A schism among the
Republican supporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when