Nothing less than a second American Revolution was necessary to achieve that goal, which in practice would have meant that the planter class of the Confederacy be regarded and treated like Loyalists after the war for independence, their estates confiscated and the land distributed among their former slaves. A few Radical Republicans endorsed such a policy, and a gesture in that direction was made with the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau and its “forty acres and a mule” agenda.
