| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans' First Generation. Ed. by Robert F. Engs and Randall M. Miller. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. x, 202 pp. Cloth, $46.50, ISBN 0-8122-3674-2. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-8122-1820-5.)

This book is a collection of original essays by six prominent historians of the Civil War period that examines the history of the Republican party from its origins in the 1850s through the 1870s. The authors offer their differing perspectives on the party's evolution from a fragile antislavery coalition to a majority party during the war and Reconstruction. Eric Foner in his essay mainly repeats his earlier interpretation that the Republican party arose because of its strong commitment to a free labor and antislavery ideology. This moral commitment continued during the Reconstruction period when both radical and moderate Republicans, in the face of Andrew Johnson's obstructionism, came to an agreement that civil equality was an essential attribute of freedom. Foner perhaps claims too much when he writes that the Republicans produced a social revolution within the South and "the rewriting of the Constitution during Reconstruction" (p. 20).

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