The Party of Revolution: Republican Ideas about Politics and Social Change, 1862-1867

Abstract

THE PARTY OF REVOLUTION: REPUBLICAN IDEAS ABOUT POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 1862-1867 Peyton McCrary The ideolocy of the Republican party in the 1860s is among the enduring subjects of historiographical debate.1 According to one school of thought, the Republican ideology was essentially moderate. The party's adherence to laissez-faire principles of political economy and its constitutional conservatism placed severe constraints in the path of social change. Just as clearly, the conservative racial views most Republicans shared with other Americans doomed reconstruction from the start.2 Perhaps the most extreme statement of this interpretation belongs to George M. Fredrickson. Many Republican intellectuals believed that "the American Revolution was over and that revolutionary ideology had An earlier version of this essay was delivered to the Southern Historical Association at its annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 13, 1980. The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of Michael Perman and Dale Baum, together with the financial assistance of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of South Alabama. 1 Larry G. Kincaid, "Victims of Circumstance: An Interpretation of Changing Attitudes Toward Republican Policy Makers and Reconstruction," Journal of American History 57 (June 1970): 48-66, provides a good historiographical introduction. Richard O. Curry, "The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877: A Critical Overview of Recent Trends and Interpretations," Civil War History 20 (Sept. 1974): 215-38; Michael Les Benedict, "Equality and Expediency in the Reconstruction Era: A Review Essay," ibid., 23 (Dec. 1977): 322-35; and Eric Foner, "Reconstruction Revisited," Reviews in American History 10 (Dec. 1982): 82-100, discuss more recent works. 2 Among the exponents of this view are Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960); William Dusinberre, CivilWarlssues in Philadelphia, 1856-1865 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1965); Richard O. Curry, 'The Abolitionists and Reconstruction: A Critical Reappraisal," Journal of Southern History 34 (Nov. 1968): 527-45; William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1965); V. Jacque Voegeli, FreeBut Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the CivilWar (Chicago: Univ. ofChicago Press, 1967); Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedmen: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1973); Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction , 1863-1869 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), and "Preserving the Constitution: The Conservative Basis of Radical Reconstruction," Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 65-90. THE PARTY OF REVOLUTION331 no further application to American society," he asserts bluntly. Indeed, for some conservatives "the war had permanently discredited the ideology of the Declaration of Independence and its latter-day apologists, the abolitionists."3 A second school of thought treats the ideology of the Republican party as quite radical. These historians contend that Lincoln and his party perceived thewar as a struggle to perfect the Union of their fathers by extendingthe democratic principles of 1776 to include emancipation and civil equality for blacks.4 Far from discrediting the abolitionist movement, argues James M. McPherson, the war made it more influential than ever.5 During the four years of bloody conflict, according to C. Vann Woodward, the Union government "moved from hesitant support of a limited war with essentially negative aims toward a total war with positive and revolutionary aims."6 To the ongoing debate over the nature of the Republican ideology, this essay offers a modest contribution. In an earlier study of Reconstruction in Louisiana, I found that Republicans in that state regularly characterized their organization as a party of revolution, engaged in cat3 George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 134-45, 186-87. See also Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 97-197, and "A Man But Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality,"¡oumalof SouthernHistoryAl (Feb. 1975):39-58. 4 William R. Brock, An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1867 (New York: Macmillan, 1963); LaWanda and John Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of...