The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their determinations to facilitate the rapid, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States through constitutional means, without resorting to a direct legislative or executive assault on the institution in established slave states. Their peacetime political approach was to exclude slavery from areas under federal government authority, including territorial lands, the District of Columbia and international waters so as to confine slavery within its existing state boundaries. There the institution was expected to decline and undergo dismantling by the state governments themselves with federal encouragement. Radical Republicans of the 1850s exhibited “a persistent refusal to compromise with the South on any question involving slavery,” insisting upon a “denationalization” of the institution. When war broke out in 1861, radicals supported immediate military emancipation of slaves in the rebellious states