Why Were The Radical Republicans Radical?

[Bill Richter]

Well, Tom, in general the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks in the South were left to immigrant labor, primarily Irish until the war. And after, no one had a stake in protecting blacks as slaves, so such work devolved on them often through the chain-gangs.

Liz remarks that ignorance tends to breed acquiescence. But as Alexander Pope wrote in his An Essay on Criticism, 1709:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.