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Civil War History 49.3 (2003) 299-300



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The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans' First Generation. Edited by Robert F. Engs and Randall M. Miller. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Pp. 202. Cloth, $46.50.)

The Birth of the Grand Old Party is a collection of six essays by leading Civil War historians on aspects of the party's genesis and growth from 1854 to 1879. The essays are contextualized by the editors' preface, introduction, and brief narrative history of the Republican Party, James McPherson's Afterward, and a short bibliographic essay. The book grew from an October 2000 exhibition on "The Genesis of Republicanism" at The Library Company of Philadelphia, and one of the book's virtues is the inclusion of over fifty superbly selected and captioned illustrations culled from newspapers, campaign literature, lithographs, books, speeches and other sources in the Library Company's Collections.

All of the essays examine the ideological appeals, electoral success, or political achievements of the party. In an essay on Republican Party ideology throughout the Civil War era, Eric Foner contended that wartime emancipation and the postwar political crisis over issues like the Black Codes resulted in unprecedented use of Federal power by the Republicans to protect the equal rights of all citizens. Although many Republicans retreated from this position by 1872, which contributed to Reconstruction's demise, Foner admired the "enduring legacy" (28) left by the Reconstruction Amendments. In an essay on the origins of the party, Michael Holt maintains that the Republicans won the 1860 election primarily because they successfully inflamed Northern fear of a Slave Power conspiracy. In particular, Holt argues that this strategy enabled the Republicans to blunt the possible emergence of a bi-sectional anti-Democratic party that would have competed for Republican voters after 1856. Focusing on the economy, Philip Shaw Paludan concludes that the imperative of saving the nation during wartime enabled the Republicans to begin representing the interests of big business. The Republicans used Union troops to squash strikes while implementing a wide variety of policies that favored capitalists. Mark E. Neely Jr. examines the intersection of religion and politics during the war, seeking to explain why radical Republicanism triumphed during wartime despite its antebellum political weakness. After studying Lincoln's mail, Neely concludes that Northern Protestants "purified politics" (103) by strongly advocating antislavery reform. This purification encouraged moral denunciations of slavery and weakened racist hostility to emancipation. Yet Jean Baker observed that even radical Republicans had their limits. Examining the "boundaries of citizenship" (129) established by the Radicals from 1865 to 1870, Baker notes that the Republicans drew [End Page 299] sharp distinctions between the rights of black people and women. Although willing to use Federal power to protect emancipated slaves and establish black male suffrage, the Republicans rejected female suffrage and actually added sex-specific language to the Constitution. Studying the party's fortunes from 1868 to 1879, Brooks Simpson contends that the party was unable to develop a new identity or agenda independent of Civil War issues. Although dabbling with civil service reform, public education, and anti-Catholicism, party leaders repeatedly chose to wave the bloody shirt in order to arouse voter enthusiasm.

Taken as a whole, the essays highlight three characteristics of the Republicans' first generation. First, Republican Party leaders faced the difficult task of continually redefining the party's ideas and objectives because of the rapid changes produced by war and Reconstruction. Party leaders could not placidly anticipate continued success, or even presume indefinite survival, when faced with challenges including hostile Know-Nothings and Unionists in the 1850s; military reversals, emancipation, and Reconstruction in the 1860s; and depression, Liberal Republicanism, and the eclipse of southern Republicanism in the 1870s. Secondly, the party spurred a dramatic expansion of the power of the federal government. This development was most notable in the Reconstruction Amendments' redefinition of American citizenship, but the Republicans willingness to expand the economy through federal policy also marked a decisive break with pre-Civil War America. Thirdly, the Republicans developed a powerful...

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