[Gianni]

I attempted to verify your claim of the name 'radical republicans' but was unable to come up with anything. I had always been told it was due to their radical reconstruction policies, and that seems to be the gist of everything else I found this eve. Would be interested in learning more if you have a source.

[Grand Old Partisan]

A good source -- other than my "you know what" -- is "The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Justice" by Hans Trefoussse. The term "Radical Republican" predates the Civil War, and really was a reference to Republicans radically opposed to the slave system, which in no way made them the hate-crazed zealots Democrat historians would like us to believe. Thaddeus Stevens for example, the arch-Radical, opposed capital punishment altogether and offered to defend Jefferson Davis against any death sentence.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Also, bear in mind that Republican Reconstruction -- Radical or otherwise -- did not even begin until the March 1867 passage of the Reconstruction Act, which was along the lines of what President Lincoln had been considering just before he was murdered. Until then, political power in the post-war South was in the hands of Democrats -- Democrat President Andrew Johnson and the Democrats of the former Confederate leadership.