Radical Politics and Constitutional Theory: Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan and the Problem of Reconstruction by Earl M. Maltz Congressional Republicans faced a variety of conflicting pressures during the Reconstruction era. Republicans generally were committed both to ensuring that the "slave power" would not rise from the ashes of its defeat in the Civil War to once again dominate the governments of the Southern states and to providing at least ameasure of protection for the slaves who had been emancipated by the Thirteenth Amendment. Some of the most radical members of the party, such as Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, believed that the pursuit of these goals transcended all other considerations. However, Sumner's views were shared by only a small minority of his Republican colleagues. Thus, for example, even a man such as Representative George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts?a generally thoroughgoing Radical described by one contemporary as having "the bitterness of Sumner without the idiocy"1?would bow to political reality and accept a more moderate formulation in order to attract the votes necessary to pass the Fifteenth Amendment. In other cases, even some Republicans who are generally viewed as Radicals were constrained by constitutional qualms and amore general commitment to the preservation of states' rights. The approach of Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan provides a classic example. Jacob Merritt Howard played an important role in the political history of Michigan. Born in Shaftsbury, Vermont, on July 10, 1805, Howard graduated from Williams College in 1830. He moved to Detroit in 1832 and was admitted to the Michigan state bar one year later. During the early part of his political career, Howard was an important figure in Michigan's Whig Party. He participated actively in the drive to organize the party in late 1834 and 1835, and he was first elected to the state legislature as a Whig in 1837. In 1840 Howard was elected to the House 1Cincinnati Commercial, March 5,1868, 2. Michigan Historical Re view 32:1 (Spring 2006): 19-32 ?2006 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 20 Michigan Historical Review of Representatives under theWhig banner, but he served only one term before being defeated in the Democratic sweep of the state in the next election. Although he would not stand for public office again until 1854, Howard remained actively involved in the Whig Party, serving as chairman of the state central committee during the presidential election of 1844 and campaigning hard for Zachary Taylor in 1848 andWinfield Scott in 1852. Howard occasionally lent his influence and talents to the antislavery cause during this period. For example, in 1836, while he was serving in the state legislature, he expressed support for the idea that African Americans should be provided jury trials in fugitive-slave cases, and in the early 1850s, he provided legal representation for a group of people accused of interfering with the right of a slaveholder to recover a fugitive who had escaped to Michigan. However, most of Howard's energies during this period were devoted tomore prosaic concerns, such as the reestablishment of the national bank and the promulgation of a uniform system of filing for bankruptcy. As it did for many Whigs, the dispute over the Kansas-Nebraska Act radicalized Howard and led him to focus his attention on the sectional conflict between the Northern and Southern states.2 In 1854, in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, Howard was one of the organizers of the state Republican Party?the first in the nation to adopt that name?and a principal drafter of the resolutions outlining the positions of the new organization. That same year, he was elected attorney general of Michigan under the Republican banner. Howard was first sent to the Senate on January 17,1862, after the death of the incumbent, Kinsley S. Bingham. He was reelected to a full term in 1865, but he was defeated in his bid for a second full term and left the Senate on March 3,1871. Large and florid with a purported weakness for alcohol, Howard used cologne "profusely" and continuously chewed a fine-cut blend of tobacco. He was known inMichigan as "Honest...