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Review
| The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans' First Generation, Robert F. Engs and Randall M. Miller, eds. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. 202 pages, hardcover.
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| Those wishing to rethink the Republican party's historic commitment to civil rights in the wake of Trent Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader would benefit from reading The Birth of the Grand Old Party edited by Robert F. Engs and Randall L. Miller. This volume of essays by leading scholars of the origins and first twenty years of the Republican party seeks to focus attention on the interplay of principal, partisanship, and politics rather than on pivotal events and individuals.(viii) The volume originated as a symposium that called attention to an exhibit created by the Library Company of Philadelphia. It consists of an introduction that describes the birth and development of the party intended for the general reader and essays written by Eric Foner, Michael F. Holt, Phillp Shaw Paludan, Mark E. Neely, Jr., Jean H. Baker, and Brooks D. Simpson. In addition, the editors supply a very concise and clear essay entitled "The Genesis and Growth of the Republican Party." James M. Mc Pherson's commentary on the articles concludes the volume. The book is richly illustrated with images from the Library Company's exhibit throughout. The collection of essays is intended to introduce the general reader to the early history of the Republican party. |
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As a reexamination of the first generation of the GOP, the volume succeeds only partially. Most of what is written in these essays simply summarizes what these scholars have argued in previously published work. For Foner, the ideology of free labor is the glue that held the Republican party together. Although racism did not disappear during the war, the nation was redefined when winning the war required emancipation and equality before the law. The Republican party unified splinter groups in ingenious ways to succeed in 1860, according to Holt. The choice of Lincoln captured Illinois, support of a tariff brought support from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and a Republican platform that promised homesteads, railroads, education, and industrial development embraced nativists, industrialists, and the young. For Holt, the party succeeded because it did precisely what it took to gain office. Once the war began, the party enjoyed sizable majorities following the secession of most of the Democratic states. In pursuing victory, according to Paludan, the party moved from its small-producer, middle-class origins toward becoming the party of big business. (p. 66) When workers demanded wage increases as their employers became wealthy, they were "bludgeoned" with the charge of disloyalty. Baker's essay focuses on how the rights of groups who could provide political support for the Republicans were extended. All but a handful of Republicans refused to hear appeals from the largest group of potential supporters, women. Simpson/s essay dutifully recounts waning Republican commitment to Reconstruction policies and support for scalawags and freedmen. The corruption of Grant appointees and the depression of 1873 solidified increased support for Democrats in the South. By 1874 Grant would proclaim that he was "tired of this nonsense.... This nursing of monstrosities has nearly exhausted the life of the party. I am done with them, and they will have to take care of themselves."(p. 161) Neely's essay on petitions that Lincoln received from Protestant congregations is by far the most original piece in the collection. Neely claims that the petitions that called for civil rights for blacks reflect a heretofore largely unnoticed moral revolution within a large number of churches throughout the North. Indeed, Neely claims that these petitions may have shaped Lincoln's thinking about the meaning of the war after 1863. Or, at least, the petitions helped the pragmatic Lincoln to understand the pulse of the country. |
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The collection of essays in The Birth of the Grand Old Party represent a worthy introduction to the present scholarship on the early Republican Party. Like most such collections, however, the book suffers from unavoidable redundancies as historians cover the same ground. If one theme stands out, it is that the GOP was a political animal. If idealism came to infuse Republican efforts to transform American society once it was decided that destroying slavery could win the war, that idealism was narrowly defined in the lexicon of legal equality and it was relatively short lived, unable to match the terrorist ferocity of the Ku Klux Klan. As Paludan and Simpson emphasize, the GOP became the party of big business. That party would see to it that corporations would be the true beneficiaries of the language included in the 14th amendment for the balance of the nineteenth century. |
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| Holy Innocents 'Episcopal School, Atlanta |
Paul Horton |
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