The Ku Klux Klan’s opponents were the Republican Party, especially the Radical Republicans, and although stopping racism was one of their objectives, they also wanted to reconfigure the South’s economic and social systems after those of the North. According to John Faragher, Radicals “argued that once free labor, universal education, and equal rights were implanted in the South, that region would be able to share in the North’s material wealth, progress, and social mobility.” (Out of Many, p. 365) In the Speech to the House of Representatives, Ohio Congressman Job. E. Stevenson named the Radicals as an opponent to the Klan by stating, “No man can deny that it is political. The oath swears the member to oppose Radicalism, to oppose the Radical party, to oppose the political equality of the races.” (Speech to the House of Representatives, p. 1) Throughout his testimony, Stevenson characterized himself as a Radical Republican, specifically when arguing, “If the Government and the people of the North had merely withheld their hands from the South, and left the conquered rebels to their own financial devices, the South would have sunk in bankruptcy and ruin as a man thrown into the sea with a millstone at his neck. …show more content…
2) In this argument, Stevenson demonstrated the Radical’s plan to adopt in the South economic and social systems similar to those of the