ASRC 3894

Liberation Through Terror: Three Republican Dissenters

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.

In the buildup to and in the aftermath of the Civil War, there were US politicians -- especially the Whigs -- who were not only anti-slavery but committed to a policy of nonaccommodationism with the South. Charles Sumner (Senator, MA), Thaddeus Stevens (Congressman, PA), and Benjamin Wade (Senator, OH) were among those US politicians who were opposed to Abraham Lincoln's comprising attitude toward the defeated South. It is Wade who offers the most trenchant critique of Lincoln's non-punitive policy in the aftermath of the Civil War. In short, Wade, Stevens, and Sumner advocated for the full enfranchisement of the newly liberated slaves, insisting that it was the freedmen who should be the nation's priority, not appeasing the defeated South. It is Wade who gives us the concept of "liberation through terror." If the freedmen, Wade argues in the parliamentary annals, were to assert themselves through violence against their Southern tormentors, the white South would quickly recognize their rights and not abrogate it, as was the case. This course takes up Wade's injunction by reading a series of texts that deal with the question of terror.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (HST-AS)

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