Radical Republican (USA) - Historiography

Historiography

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, new battles took place over the construction of memory and the meaning of historical events. The earliest historians to study Reconstruction and the Radical Republican participation in it were members of the Dunning School led by William Archibald Dunning and John W. Burgess. The Dunning School, based at Columbia University in the early 20th century, saw the Radicals as motivated by a lust for power at the expense of national reconciliation and an irrational hatred of the Confederacy. According to Dunning School historians, the Radical Republicans reversed the gains Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson had made in reintegrating the South, established corrupt shadow governments made up of Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags in the former Confederate states, and, to increase their support base, foisted political rights on the freed slaves that they were unprepared or incapable of utilizing. For the Dunning School, the Radical Republicans made Reconstruction a dark age that only ended when Southern whites rose up and reestablished a "home rule" free of Northern, Republican, and black influence. Despite efforts by some historians such as W. E. B. Du Bois to provide the perspective of the freedmen, the Dunning School's negative view of Reconstruction and opposition to voting rights for African Americans was influential in textbooks for years. In the 1930s, attempts by leftist historians to reevaluate the era in an economic light emphasized class conflict. They were also hostile towards the Radicals, casting them as economic opportunists who sought to dominate the South by thrusting northern capitalism upon it.

The role of Radical Republicans in creating public school systems, charitable institutions and other social infrastructure in the South was downplayed by the Dunning School of historians. Since the 1950s the impact of the moral crusade of the Civil Rights movement, as well as the "Black Power" movement, led historians to reevaluate the role of Radical Republicans during Reconstruction. Their reputation improved. These historians, sometimes referred to as neoabolitionist because they reflected and admired the values of the abolitionists of the 19th century, argued that the Radical Republicans' advancement of civil rights and suffrage for African Americans following emancipation was more significant than the financial corruption which took place. They also pointed to the African Americans' central, active roles in reaching toward education (both individually and by creating public school systems) and their desire to acquire land as a means of self-support.

Historians have long puzzled over why most Republicans—even extreme abolitionists—gradually lost interest in the fate of the Freedmen after 1868. Richardson (2004) argues that Northern Republicans came to see most blacks as potentially dangerous to the economy because they might prove to be labor radicals in the tradition of the 1870 Paris Commune, or the labor radicals of the violent American strikes in the 1870s. Meanwhile it became clear to Northerners that the white South was not bent on revenge or the restoration of the Confederacy. Most of the Republicans who felt this way became opponents of Grant and entered the Liberal Republican camp in 1872.