Why Were The Radical Republicans Radical?

[Thomas Thorne]

The South feared a Republican administration would permit the dissemination of abolitionist literature and would foster through the use of patronage the disaffection of non slave holding whites who might undermine slavery.

This explains the hysteria in the South caused by Hinton Rowan Helper"s book "The Impending Crisis of the South." Helper, a North Carolinian, was a racist who was also an abolitionist. He believed that slavery was retarding the progress of the South. Helper's book was banned in many parts of the South and was gleefully endorsed by many prominent Republicans to the horror of Southern politicians.

But what was the greatest emotional combustible thrown onto the fire was the Southern reaction toward John Brown's attempt to incite a slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry. Southerners knew the fate of the French slaveholders in Santo Domingo-modern Haiti-destroyed by a victorious slave insurrection in the 1790's. They saw their own fate in successful John Browns and did not believe Republican denunciations of Brown were sincere. John Brown's activities were financed by prominent people and endorsed by the cultural aristocracy of the North. I believe it was Emerson who said that John Brown "made the gallows as glorious as the cross." The tolling of many New England church bells in Brown's memory and the attempt to adjourn the Ohio legislature in Brown's memory made many Southerners cringe at the thought of what a Lincoln administration would bring.
Tom