“The Making of Radical Reconstruction” details both the concerns raised and the initiative prompted by the American government, or more specifically, the Radical Republican party, towards the development of policies that would serve as beneficial towards the reconstruction of the South and the reunion of a divided U.S. following the Civil War in the mid to late 1800’s. In extension to this, the author, Eric Foner implies that, despite much effort having been made in an unified front in such a process as lengthy and thought provoking as the literal reforming of a society that has been built on the very institution it no longer can legally maintain, members of the same congressional party (that is, the Radical Republicans) were bound to experiencing some internal conflict or differences that interfered with the pacing of the overall establishment of reconstruction in the South. For instance, “The preeminent Radical leaders, Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, differed in personality and political style…On the economic issues of the day no distinctive or unified Radical position existed. Stevens,…favored an economic program geared to the needs of aspiring entrepreneurs, including tariff protection, low interest rates, plentiful greenback currency, and promotion or internal improvements. On the other hand, Radicals like Charles Sumner… attuned to orthodox laissez-faire economic theory, favored a low tariff, the swift resumption of specie payments, and minimal government involvement in the economy”(Foner, 105-106). Due to their own varying individual and collective interests regarding the vision they had of the future of the economic (and assumably social and political) atmospheres of the South, as well as the fact that majority of them, the, “Congressional Radicals viewed economic issues [—of both the North and more particularly,—the South] as secondary [concerns] to those of [the general issues regarding] Reconstruction” (Foner, 106). It can be inferred that the policies that would otherwise address the future of the labor force, economic system and/or overall economy in terms of the reconstruction of the South were left unattended for a time.
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I’m glad to see you latch on to this important, yet under appreciated, aspect of Reconstruction history, especially since it is so important to Foner’s argument. However, you don’t spell out the implications of these divisions, or of your inference that the Radical Republicans lacked a unified set of economic policies towards the Reconstruction South.
In fact, despite these differences, the Radicals did share a fairly coherent economic ideology—it had to do with what Foner identifies as “free labor” and “laissez faire.” It was this ideological commitment which made them believe they could remake the South “in the image of the small-scale competitive capitalism of the North” (106–07), and which, he implies, ultimately prevented them from taking more radical steps like redistributing slaveholders’ lands to the formerly enslaved. Although his argument doesn’t fully emerge in this chapter, Foner suggests that these ideological limitations ultimately contributed to the failure of Reconstruction, despite the Radicals’ commitment to Black equality.