arty the plan went through without arousing
the suspicion of the supporters of the Administration. Next, through the
influence of Stevens, Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted
from the roll call of the House the names of the members from the
South. The radical program was then adopted and a week later the Senate
concurred in the action of the House as to the appointment of a Joint
Committee on Reconstruction.

On the issues before Congress both Houses were split into rather clearly
defined factions: the extreme radicals with such leaders as Stevens,
Sumner, Wade, and Boutwell; the moderate Republicans, chief among whom
were Fessenden and Trumbull; the administration Republicans led by
Raymond, Doolittle, Cowan, and Dixon; and the Democrats, of whom the
ablest were Reverdy Johnson, Guthrie, and Hendricks. All except the
extreme radicals were willing to support the President or to come to
some fairly reasonable compromise. But at no time were they given an
opportunity to get together. Johnson and the administration leaders did
little in this direction and the radicals made the most skillful use of
the divisions among the conservatives.

Whatever final judgment may be passed upon the radical reconstruction
policy and its results, there can be no doubt of the political dexterity
of those who carried it through. Chief among them was Thaddeus Stevens,
vindictive and unscrupulous, filled with hatred of the Southern leaders,
bitter in speech and possessing to an extreme degree the faculty of
making ridiculous those who opposed him. He advocated confiscation, the
proscription or exile of leading whites, the granting of the franchise
and of lands to the Negroes, and in Southern states the establishment
of territorial governments under the control of Congress. These states
should, he said, "never be recognized as capable of acting in the
Union... until the Constitution shall have been so amended as to make
it what the makers intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendancy to
the party of the Union."

Charles Sumner, the leader of the radicals in the Senate, was moved less
than Stevens by personal hostility toward the whites of the South, but
his sympathy was reserved entirely for the blacks. He was unpractical,
theoretical, and not troubled by constitutional scruples. To him the
Declaration of Independence was the supreme law, and it was the duty of
Congress to express its principles in appropriate legislation. U