The most extreme and ultimately most powerful wing of the Republican Party during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Radical Republicans saw the goal of the war to be the abolition of slavery and the r [..]

Politicians who believed that black people were equal to whites in every respect and that it was morally wrong for black people not to have the same liberties and rights that whites have. Thaddeus Ste [..]

those members of Congress who felt President Johnson’s plan for reconstructing the South was too lenient and allowed the freedmen to remain subjugated by the white elite in the South; the Radical Republicans lobbied for and succeeded in passing stiffer requirements for southern states to regain statehood in the Union.