The American Civil War

An Alternative View

Michael T. Griffith

President Abraham Lincoln

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

General George B. McClellan

Jefferson Davis, Confederate President

Fort Sumter, South Carolina

There is a view of the American Civil War that rarely gets a hearing. It is the view that the Radical Republicans played a major role in causing the Civil War, and that their treachery delayed the end of the war by at least one year, causing the needless deaths of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers. It is the view that the war could have been avoided if the Radical Republicans had not recklessly stirred up hate and fear. It is the view that a compromise to end secession could have been achieved in the Senate if the Radical Republicans had not blocked it. It is the view that Radical Reconstruction was excessively harsh and caused decades of bitterness and violence, an outcome that could have been avoided with the Reconstruction plan that Abraham Lincoln had envisioned.

This is not to say that Southern pro-slavery hardliners did not play a major role in causing secession and the war--they most certainly did--but the Radical Republicans also played a large role in causing those tragic events.

Before the Civil War began, the majority of Americans favored some kind of compromise on the issue of slavery, especially slavery in the territories. The Crittenden Compromise, for example, appears to have been supported by a majority of people in the North and the South. In the 1860 presidential election, the three candidates who supported a compromise on slavery in the territories received 60.1% of the popular vote. The issue of slavery's extension into the territories was largely a phantom, phony issue anyway.

Few history books tell the whole story about how the Radical Republicans despised Lincoln, opposed his reelection, cheered his death, and abandoned his reasonable and moderate plan for Reconstruction.

ARTICLES AND BOOKS

Gideon Wells and the Radical Republicans

Unwanted Evidence: Evidence that Lincoln Was Killed by a Radical Republican Plot

The Smearing of General McClellan

Otto Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered? (book)

Not Wanted: Victory in the East (chapter 24 in Why Was Lincoln Murdered?)

Proof that the Union Was Supposed to Be Voluntary

Answering Some Criticisms of General George B. McClellan

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: The Conspiracy and the Cover-Up

Otto Eisenschiml, The Hidden Face of the Civil War (free book on Internet Archive)

David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (free book on Internet Archive)

Otto Eisenschiml, In the Shadow of Lincoln's Death (book)