Unfortunately, infighting within the Republican Party prevented the Radical Republicans from successfully implementing their own Reconstruction policies. A split within the Republican Party was most notably brought to light during the impeachment trial of President Johnson, when several Republicans voted for Johnson's acquittal. Radical Republicans' views differed from the mainstream party line, which held views similar to those held by their former figurehead Abraham Lincoln. Unlike the more moderate stream of Republicans, the Radical Republicans favored equal rights for African-Americans and foresaw the potential disaster of neglecting to care for the needs of liberated slaves. The Reconstruction policies championed by Radical Republicans included the 14th Amendment, which offered African-Americans full citizen status and subsequently granted former slaves equal protection under the law. Opposed to the 13th Amendment, most former Confederates could not stomach the 14th. Moreover, some Radical Republicans suggested the confiscation of all Southern plantations, to divide land among former slaves, one of the most radical of all the Republican Reconstruction ideas ("Radical Republicans").

Southern states expressed vehement opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment. Their refusal to ratify the 14th Amendment proved not only an affront to civil rights but also to the Union. As a result of their stubborn dismissal of the constitutional amendment, Radical Republicans in Congress successfully enacted the Reconstruction Acts. The Reconstruction Acts, which divided the former Confederacy into five militarized zones controlled by the federal government, further antagonized Southern leaders who had resented Washington's political pressure before the Civil War. Southerners clung to slavery partly on principle, to assert independence from the federal government. The Reconstruction Acts were therefore viewed as a direct insult to the rights of the states to...

Furthermore, many Southerners opposed the 14th Amendment not only because of its infringement on states rights and its implications for the rights of freed slaves. The 14th Amendment also posed widespread implications for the character of American culture during the Industrial Revolution, when new waves of immigrants flowed into the United States. As the 14th Amendment guaranteed civil rights to new immigrants, Southerners feared a shift in sympathy toward Union and Republican ideals because immigrants tended to favor Republican social, political, and economic policies including those directed at labor unions.
Radical Republican Reconstruction plans proved unpopular and voters ousted many prominent Radical Republicans including Wade Davis in the election of 1868. However, some Radical Republicans remained in office and successfully pressured President Grant to at least assume a hard-lined stance against the Ku Klux Klan. Radical Republicans maintained a political stance of universal human rights by advocating not only the rights of African-Americans but also of women and laborers. Their socially liberal stances put them at odds with mainstream and conservative elements within the American government and especially in the South.