Ohio History Journal

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THE MOTIVATION OF A

RADICAL REPUBLICAN:

BENJAMIN F. WADE                             by HANS L. TREFOUSSE

As David Donald, the biographer of Charles Sumner, has so clearly pointed

out, in the historiography of the Civil War and Reconstruction there is

no group which has been traduced more consistently than the radical

Republicans.1 Called Jacobins and Vindictives, cold-blooded demagogs and

irresponsible self-seekers, they have been accused of sins ranging from

rabble rousing to incitement to murder; from near treason to instigation

of civil war. Their aims have been disparaged, their motives questioned,

their work belittled, so that they have entered history as pitiful carica-

tures of their real selves. Edwin M. Stanton and Salmon P. Chase in

the cabinet, Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens in congress -- all

have been singled out for abuse, but among the group as a whole, few

have fared worse than Benjamin F. Wade, long-time senator from Ohio.

NOTES ARE ON PAGES 126-127