Why Were The Radical Republicans Radical?

[L Verge]

I'm very weak on everything that occurred during the reconstruction of the South - frankly, the word Reconstruction signaled the end of what I was interested in in American history all through my schooling years! My mind only focused on what happened in the U.S. before 1866.

Over the past ten years, I have forced myself to at least consider the years 1866-1899. That said, I think Gene's reply above is definitely one of the answers to Kate's question. Also, I think I'm correct that the Freedmen's Bureau (it had a much longer name) was created in March of 1865 to function for just one year. It ended up being sanctioned through 1872, when Grant disbanded it. I thought its chief reason for disbanding had to do with budget crunches - the funding from Congress dried up as national laws to protect the freedmen went into effect.

I'm not sure that the bureau's life depended on the Radical Republicans, even though that group did support the rights of the newly freed Negroes. They did help to get critical legislation through that protected (or tried to protect) those rights: The Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th and 15th Amendments, and things called Enforcement Acts when white-protection groups such as the Klan and others threatened the rights. Didn't there also come a point where the states were supposed to be protecting their black citizens instead of the federal government??

Therefore, I'm inclined to say that the Radical Republicans didn't drop their interest in helping the freedmen. Time, legislation, and other issues just caused things to move on to other areas.