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Thad and Seward were the bleeding heart emotive vindicative Dems of their time. They helped start all the crap and then wanted to reap their windfall...they failed. I'm glad their aims were not met. You would have a quite a different perspective were you from down here. that the CSA lacked good leadership politically is fairly well acknowledged....and Benjamen is mostly noteworthy for being a Sephardic Jew and for absconding successfully btw....the Radical Republicans were finally squashed by the panic of 1873, the Grant Administrations excesses and the loss of popular will amongst enfranchised whites to continue on that punitive track...all with good reason.

The path the Radicals took was never what Lincoln or even Sherman wanted. It was getback for a war they contributed at least half for starting...and none of the radicals saw any action that I know of sans Sumner getting his ass kicked by Brooks.

Stevens and Seward were far from being Deaniacs. Both were from the rural portions of their states, all were for expansion of commerce nationwide and the free settlement of the western territories. Sure they were moralistic about slavery, and a little arrogant, but when you had to put up with snotty Southern landed gentry as colleagues, who defended the enslavement of blacks as part of their "way of life," you would get a little hot headed as well. The Senate has NEVER been a place for the meek and humble.

The funny thing is that Stevens and Seward were protectionists to the extreme who made Pat Buchanan look like Milton Friedman. I always get a kick out of Southern Paleocons who come across as old Yankee Republicans when it comes to "protecting jobs."

Througout the 19th Century and well into the early part of the 20th, both parties were largely defined by class and region rather than by ideology. Both Democrats and Republicans had liberal and conservative factions. Most of the Republicans were vehemently anti-slavery, but strongly anti-immigrant as well. That is why the Democrats were the party of both Southern Planters and the Irish American urban proletariat by the 1860s, while Republicans included both New England Abolitionists and "western" railroad barons and bankers.

Back to Stevens, it is well known that he had a second family with his black female servant, who he reportedly loved more than his wife. Its a shame the one movie that was done about this great (IMHO) Pennsylvanian didn't pick up on this, and instead depicted the great love of his life as a "laws of mercy" caricature.

One of the great things about visiting Beauvoir is that they were brutally honest in explaining how Jeff Davis was HATED by many, if not most, southerners for his incompetance during the war. It was only after he wrote his memoirs, and traveled through Europe (befriending Oscar Wilde!) that he revived his reputations.

I give Benjamin credit for his near successful feting of the UK for support of the Confederacy. Had the GA of the R been decisively routed at Antietam and later Gettysburg, the Royal Navy may have paid a visit to Baltimore Harbor.