We Need Radical Republicans

Following the Civil War was a tenuous period for the United States. It was a time of great division and unresolved tensions. The South still wanted to retain their hegemony over their former slaves and enacted the short lived Black Codes that essentially squelched black civil rights, making indentured servitude their only real recourse, thus creating slavery under a new lighter name. And, President Johnson, despite his racist rhetoric, made it his mission to bridge the political divide between the North and South through presidential reconstruction. To a modern person, this looks like a moderate and conciliatory path; a path of bridge-building. This captivated most Republicans of a conservative background.

Conservative Republicans were not necessarily pro-black. They were largely abolitionists, but did not place blacks on the same social scale as whites and they believed that despite slavery's end, the black man was still essentially needed to fill his old economic position, though he was not now technically a slave. This approach was little better than slavery or the Black Codes. The country contended with what to do about post-slavery blacks and King Cotton demanded black labor nonetheless. How to accomplish this without the pockmark of slavery? That was the main debate. 

But, there was a wing of the Republican Party that was staunchly abolitionist and supported the fullness of black citizenship, including the vote: the Radical Republicans. Without their voices, Congressional or Radical Reconstruction would not have likely succeeded in passing the Reconstruction Amendments of the Constitution. Had their collective voice been heeded earlier and more fully, it would not likely have taken another hundred years for Civil Rights to be more fully unpacked. Yet, without their voice at all, black Americans would still be essentially slaves, but under a softer light. 

We need this kind of boldness in the Republican Party today. No, it is not the MAGA crowd. These are the ultra-conservatives that refuse to make accommodations for other political voices and are as immovable as the conservative Republicans that meshed with pro-slavery Democrats of the 1860s. Interestingly, Johnson and Trump share similar aggrandizing personas and impeachment paths. Today's Radical Republicans are those in the party being called RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). They are the ones who boldly stand on the moral principles of republicanism (representative democratic government) and not the authoritarian domineering of a party that dismisses the voices of the people for the tyranny of a minority. These are the Liz Cheneys and Adam Kinzingers. 

If only the MAGA Republicans could evaluate their identity as being closer to that of the Republicans that largely partnered with the old Democrats of the South, even in their rhetoric, we might be able to steer the party to its bolder form... The form that actually helped win the Civil War and emancipate the slaves.