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• Bibliographical Essay: Contemporary Currents In Libertarian Political Philosophy By David Gordon
• I: Social Science Methodology
• Social Science Paradigms
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• Durkheim, Ideology, and Method
• Polanyi, Hierarchy & Reductionism
• Historicism: Individuality Or Pattern?
• Social Science: Game, Drama, and Text
• Alfred Schutz and Phenomenology
• Moral Honesty In Social Science
• II: Economic Analysis
• Austrian Vs. Neoclassical Economics: Equilibrium
• Frank Fetter & the Austrian School
• Subjective Vs. Objective Costs
• The Significance of Subjective Costs
• Socialist Economic Calculation
• The Welfare State: Business & Labor
• Child Labor and Capitalism
• Economics Vs. Minimum Wage Politics
• Adam Smith Vs. Neo-mercantilism
• Laissez Faire and Moral Revolution
• III: Human Rights and Ethics
• Recent Scholarship On Rights
• Two Concepts of Rights
• Establishing Human Rights
• Misunderstanding Human Rights
• Is Privacy an Absolute Right?
• Animal Rights
• Nature and the Tao
• Self-knowledge: Nietzsche, Heidegger & Buber
• The Prospects of Objective Morality
• Measuring Ethical Ideologies
• Individualism and “locus of Control”
• Should We License Parents?
• IV: The Heritage of Freedom
• How Conservatives Differ From Liberals
• English Radicalism: Rights Vs. War & Taxes.
• Liberalism: the Seedbed of American Culture
• Republican Liberty & Military Policy
• Thomas Burke: Whig Radical
• Liberal Republicans During Reconstruction
• Adam Smith & the Liberal Tradition
• Human Individuality and Autonomy

Liberal Republicans during Reconstruction

Wilbert A. Ahern

“Laissez Faire vs. Equal Rights: Liberal Republicans and Limits to Reconstruction.” Phylon 40(May/June 1979):52–65.

The stalwart Republicans of 1872 articulated and encouraged the thesis that the Liberal Republicans had abandoned the plight of the black Freedmen in postbellum American society. Though the Liberal Republicans did advocate the withdrawal of government intrusion in the affairs of Reconstruction, their reasoning was not based on promulgating racism. Paradoxically, the Liberals believed the very limitation of the powerful reach of the federal government would in fact encourage a growing willingness in the post Civil War South to accept the principle of equal rights for all men. Amnesty and friendship, rather than coercion, would best protect the new black citizens and restore peace to the nation.

The Liberal Republicans became so disillusioned with the Republican acceptance of federal involvement in the South that they defied tradition and broke with the party, supporting Horace Greeley to represent their ideology in the 1872 presidential election. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were complete as the foundation for the new society. The Liberals could not recognize any extension of the Constitution beyond “the ballot,” without seriously threatening equal rights.

However, the black citizens lacked economic independence and held an extremely vulnerable and exploitable economic and social position in the South. They needed continued government involvement on a scale the Liberals were not willing to recognize in the nineteenth century. Liberals were content with their position in society and insisted on maintaining the limited role of government to which they attributed their success. They could neither understand nor accept the demands of the oppressed and attributed the severe social disharmony to lack of education or training.

In conclusion, it was elitist, gradualist reform orientation rather than emergent racism that explains the Liberal Republican movement of 1872. Ignoring history, the Liberals depended upon the Southern leaders wisdom and desire for votes to protect and educate the black constituency. Therefore, they failed to secure protection for the new citizens despite their commitment to equal rights, but not because of a growing racism.