A clash of radical Republicans and conservative Democrats

[redcliffsw]

Once again, I must warn readers that the Democrats of that era had almost nothing in common with the Democrat Party of today. In those days, Democrat and conservative were close political synonyms. Democrats North and South might have differed on how to handle slavery issues, preserve the Union, or execute War policies, but they tended to be Jeffersonian Constitutional conservatives. Moreover, the Republican Party of that day was still largely a Whig party with majority sympathies more inclined to big industrial, railroad, shipping, and banking interests and consolidated national power. The Radical Republicans that dominated the Republican Party for more than a decade after Lincoln's assassination were dedicated to ruthlessly preserving their own power and prosperity with only nominal lip service to the common good. Lincoln was a big-business-big-government "moderate," who the Radicals did not trust to smash any possibility of Southern cultural or Jeffersonian political recovery.
-Mike Scruggs

Read on:
http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2018/03/22/part-seven-the-1871-congressional-investigation-of-the-klan-a-clash-of-radical-republicans-and-conservative-democrats/