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WHO WSRE THE SENATE RADICALS? Edward L. Garnbül Historians' attempts to deal coherently with congressional Radical Republicans during the "Critical Year"—1866—illustrate the inadequacies often produced by traditional historical analysis of American political behavior. Specifically, they reveal the lack of attention devoted by political historians to systematic classification, and how this inattention can, in turn, produce misleading generalizations. They also point up the opportunities for applying research techniques developed by other disciplines. Scholarly investigation of Radical Republicanism in 1866 dates from the turn of the century and the work of James Ford Rhodes.1 For Rhodes, the Radicals were a handful of men, typified by Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House, who stood well in advance of northern opinion in their demands for political reconstruction of the South. Rhodes did not endow these men with the cohesion of a cabal. While they essentially sought the same basic goal of Negro suffrage, he said, they displayed marked differences at the outset of the Thirty-ninth Congress about the extent to which this goal might be realized and how it might best be achieved. That the majority of northerners eventually endorsed the Radical goal was not the result of a highly disciplined political offensive but rather stemmed from the blunders of President Andrew Johnson and southern leaders. With the publication in 1930 of Howard K. Beale's The Critical Year* interpretation of the Radicals received a new emphasis which was to remain dominant for over two decades. The germ of Professor Beale's thesis was a concept of reality owed to the influence of Charles Beard. For Beale, as for other Beardians, historical reality was "hard," "hidden," and in the last analysis, economic. The factor which had 1JaIUeS Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 18S0 to . . . 1887, V-VI (New York, 1909, 1915). ' Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year. A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York, 1930). 237 238CI VIL W AB HIS TO B Y brought the Radicals together was their common position as advance agents for an incipient industrial order. Their basic goals were the securing of tax benefits and protective tariffs for industry, the maintenance of the new national banking system, refunding of the federal debt in hard money, and the commercial exploitation of southern and western economic resources. Beale's interpretation led him to view the Radicals as a conspiratorial group. As they could not and did not openly avow their "real" aims in demands for political reconstruction of the South, they were necessarily evolving their program in secrecy behind the scenes. This, in turn, implied a high degree of cohesion and group discipline. Thus, Beale maintained, the dynamics of the Critical Year lay in a "strongly organized Radical minority hard at work to covert a passive but unconvinced majority—a minority fully aware of the difficulties of the task, but determined to win if indefatigable labor and earnestness of purpose could bring victory."3 Beale's thesis has recently undergone searching criticism from a number of historians. Professors Irwin Unger, Robert Sharkey, Stanley Coben, and Eric McKitrick have all argued that the Radicals could not have been united by common economic bonds.4 There were sharp conflicts, these scholars observed, in economic interests among Radical legislators and northern businessmen alike. High protectionist manufacturing interests in Pennsylvania and Ohio tended inevitably toward a soft-money philosophy. New England proponents of hard money, conversely, generally supported a low tariff program. Moreover, few northern businessmen were interested in southern investments in the early postwar years, and these few were hostile to Radical Republicanism . With the attack on Beale's interpretation came renewed emphasis on the political demands of the Radicals as the essential element distinguishing them from their northern colleagues. The only common denominator of 1866 that united the Radicals," asserted John and LaWanda Cox, ". . . was their determination that the South should not be reinstated into the Union until there were adequate guarantees that the slaves liberated by the nation should enjoy the rights of free men."5 McKitrick, in turn, found the Radicals of early 1866 distins Ibid., p. vii. * Irwin Unger, "Businessmen and Specie...

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