Radicalism in the United States
The United States sat in a unique position in relation to the emergence of 19th century Radicalism due to its founding as a democratic republic in the American Revolution.
The radicals then coalesced around Jefferson's Republican Party, which supported expansion of voter suffrage, direct elections of the presidency, westward settlement and the French Revolution.
The apotheosis of his party was Andrew Jackson, the creator of the Democratic Party, a successor to the Republicans, who coerced the few remaining Northern conservative states to enact full white male voter suffrage and wanted to make democratic reforms to the American system of government, including abolishing the Electoral College, direct election of senators, a Homestead Act to give free land away to farmers who would settle the West, support for immigrants and more.
The traditional faction of the Democrats in the rest of the 19th century supported more radical reforms, such as bimetallism, extension of interest-free loans and credit to farmers, a graduated income tax, free trade, state-centric expansion of women's suffrage and making alliances with urban labor in the Midwest and Northeast.
[2] The Democratic Party maintained its pro-farmer, pro-worker and pro-immigrant stance, eventually coalescing into its crowning achievement during the Great Depression: FDR's New Deal.
With the Republicans, while Slavery was becoming a more divisive issue among Americans, the term "Radical" eventually became synonymous with Northerners opposed to Slave Power.
[4] These abolitionist Democrats, Conscience Whigs and European Revolutionaries fleeing after the largely unsuccessful Revolutions of 1848, eventually formed the backbone of the Radical faction of the Republican party.
While Radical Republicans were not unified in regards to many issues in their early years, they were unified in their desire for the immediate complete abolition of slavery, belief in the predominance of Free Labor (both agricultural and industrial) over Slave Labor, support of Land Reform, suffrage expansion, opposition to the Southern Aristocracy, and belief in civil rights for emancipated slaves.
Radical Republicans sought to guarantee civil rights for African Americans, ensure that the former Confederate states had limited power in the federal government, and promote free market capitalism in the South in place of a slave based economy.
Many liberal Radical Republicans, (Liberal in this case meaning pro-free trade, civil service reform, federalism, and generally soft money) such as Charles Sumner and Lyman Turnbull, eventually began to leave the faction for other parties and Republican factions as Reconstruction wore on to a point considered excessive and the corruption of many hardliners became evident.
The remaining radicals after this came to be referred to as the Stalwarts, and were from thereon marked primarily their advocacy of spoils system politics and African-American civil rights.
1833: American Anti-Slavery Society is founded by William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur Tappan, and Frederick Douglass.
1860: Republican Abolitionist Abraham Lincoln wins the Presidential Election, serving as the catalyst for the civil war.
1864: The Radical Democracy Party forms to oppose Lincoln in the 1864 election, but later drops out due to not wanting to act as a spoiler.
the Enforcement Act of 1870 is passed to protect the new voting rights of African Americans and fight white supremacist paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes is sworn into office as a result of the Compromise of 1877, ending reconstruction and federal protection of the African American population of the south.
