Key members of the Republican Party, generally led by U. S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens (Pennsylvania), that believe strongly in equal political rights for African Americans (including former slaves) and that the Southerners should be punished for their role in the war.

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

Here, the question is missing. Indeed, it is a statement with no question. If it is a true or false question, then the correct answer is true.

It is true that key members of the Republican Party, generally led by U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens (Pennsylvania), that believe strongly in equal political rights for African Americans (including former slaves) and that the Southerners should be punished for their role in the war.

Conservative Republicans were the ones that supported US President Abraham Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction for the former Confederate states. But that was not the case with Radical Republicans in the US Congress. What Radical Republicans did was to support harsh punishment to the southern states. That is why the supported the Wade-David Bill, which finally was vetoed by President Lincoln.

social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they liv