The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Justice (review)

BOOK REVIEWS285 level, passed into a temporary eclipse and did not emerge again for almost two years." As these shortcomings indicate, this study often lacks the factual depth for its interpretations to be convincing, particularly when the author attempts the critical task of evaluating the political significance of the race issue. To a considerable extent this difficulty stems from the failure to go beneath the rhetoric of the " 'active' racists" to analyze the racial actions and pronouncements of both of the major parties, Congress , the Lincoln administration, and state politicians. There is little or no reference to the important elections of 1862 and 1863; Negro exclusion agitation in the Middle West, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey; the wartime referendums of Negro suffrage; the debate over the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment; and the controversy over the drive to eliminate discriminatory legislation from state and federal law. Greater attention to the Republicans would have helped to gauge the political impact of anti-Negro thought and activity. Although Wood states tíiat many Republicans fell short of endorsing complete equality, he overlooks their initial opposition to the recruitment of black soldiers; their admissions that hostility toward the Negro influenced politics and policy; and their appeals to racial anxieties to win support for emancipation, Negro troops and Reconstruction—actions which only a sublime act of faith could attribute solely to expediency but which at any rate tell a great deal about the prevalence and power of racism. V. Jacque Voeceli Vanderbüt University The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Justice. By Hans L. Trefousse. (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1969. Pp. xviii, 492. $10.) This work brings to three the number of books that the author has published on the Reconstruction era, exactly the same as the number published on his other area of special interest, the involvement of the United States in World War II and the Cold War. It is a natural outgrowth of his earlier studies of two leading Radicals, Ben Butler and Banjamin F. Wade. His objective is to trace the influence of the Radical Republicans on the history of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century and to answer fundamental questions about their motives, strengths, and weaknesses. Trefousse recognizes the important contributions of recent studies to a better understanding of the Radicals, and he supports the rehabilitation of their unfavorable image so widely accepted some thirty years ago. His purpose is to present a comprehensive account of this "amorphous group" from its origins in the Free Sou movement to its disintegration in the early 1870's. Although recognizing degrees of radicalism and the diversity within the group, he generally has unstinted praise 286CIVIL WAR HISTORY for its pre-war, war, and post-war objectives and achievements. "Their accomplishments," he writes, "were astonishing. The liberation of the slaves, the enlargement of national power, and the constitutional guarantee of the Negroes' right to vote were achievements of no mean import ." Approximately the first fourth of the book covers the decade prior to the Civil War and includes sketches of such leading Radicals as Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, and Salmon P. Chase along with descriptions of lesser known figures. While recognizing the differences among Radicals on some economic and political questions , the author emphasizes their unanimity in opposing the spread of slavery, their contributions to the origins of the Republican party, and their success in keeping the party "dedicated to principle" in its first two presidential conventions and campaigns. In evaluating the causes of the war, Trefousse blames the southern extremists for precipitating the crisis and credits the Radicals with strengthening Lincoln's determination to stand firm, resist all compromise proposals, and defend Union property in the South. Emphasis is placed on the important role of the Radicals during the war years, especially in thwarting conservative influence by the removal of General McClellan and in pushing Lincoln to recognize the ending of slavery as a principal war objective. In discussing relations between the President and the Radicals, die author emphasizes collaboration rather than controversy . The more politically astute Loncoln always retained the upper hand; their essential goals...