Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

Mugwumps: Public Moralists of the Gilded Age. By David M. Tucker. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. x, 139 pp. $27.50, isbn 0-8262-1187-9.)

In this slim but lively volume David M. Tucker seeks to rescue the mugwumps from obscurity and opprobrium and to reestablish their claim to be public-spirited, virtuous citizens who valiantly struggled to reclaim American society and politics from the grasp of greedy opportunists and power-hungry politicos. Scholars such as Richard Hofstadter who questioned this image "regarded ethical concerns as irrelevant for politics" or were "cheerleaders for the welfare state." Tucker insists that mugwumps "participated in politics and advocated free-market economics not to advance any self-interest but to promote the public welfare and to perform their altruistic duty." In short, we should take them at their word and celebrate their great successes—including abolishing slavery and ending American imperialism. . . .

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