which the radicals might develop their campaign. The next day at a caucus of
the Union party the plan went through without arousing the suspicion of the
supporters of the Administration. Next, through the influence of Stevens,
Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted from the roll call of the
House the names of the members from the South. The radical program was then
adopted and a week later the Senate concurred in the action of the House as to
the appointment of a Joint Committee on Reconstruction.

On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly
defined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens, Sumner,
Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom were Fessenden
and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan,
and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the ablest were Reverdy Johnson,
Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the extreme radicals were willing to
support the President or to come to some fairly reasonable compromise. But at
no time were they given an opportunity to get together. Johnson and the
administration leaders did little in this direction and the radicals made the
most skillful use of the divisions among the conservatives.

Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstruction policy
and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity of those who
carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens, vindictive and
unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders, bitter in speech and
possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of making ridiculous those who
opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the proscription or exile of leading
whites, the granting of the franchise and of lands to the Negroes, and in
Southern states the establishment of territorial governments under the control
of Congress. These states should, he said, "never be recognized as capable of
acting in the Union . . . until the Constitution shall have been so amended as
to make it what the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy