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Heather Cox Richardson

To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party Hardcover – September 23, 2014

by Heather Cox Richardson (Author)

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When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet while visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their attempts to use government to guard against the concentration of wealth have repeatedly been undone by the country’s moneyed interests and members of their own party. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of big business—and the ensuing financial crisis—is the latest example of this calamitous cycle, but it is by no means the first.

In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession, showing how Republicans’ ideological vacillations have had terrible repercussions for minorities, the middle class, and America at large. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Men Free explains how a relatively young party became America’s greatest political hope—and, time and time again, its greatest disappointment.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

September 23, 2014
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.65 x 9.65 inches
ISBN-10

0465024319
ISBN-13

978-0465024315
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
“At its Lincolnian best, the G.O.P. has been not just grand but good. In To Make Men Free, the eminent political historian Heather Cox Richardson superbly brings the Republican Party's history to life, while offering sharp and often surprising interpretations of its rises and declines, when it heeded Lincoln's legacy and when it did not.”

Eric Rauchway, Professor of History, University of California, Davis
“Heather Cox Richardson tells a great story, full of fascinating figures, of how the Republican Party has enjoyed extraordinary political success in a country full of poor people, while doing much to serve the rich. It's a vital chapter in the history of American conservatism.”

T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
“In To Make Men Free, one of our most admired historians takes on one of the most important topics of our past and present: the 160-year story of the Republican Party. From Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, from Radical Republicans to Movement Conservatives, Heather Cox Richardson recounts the GOP's dramatic history with unimpeachable insights and crisp, vivid writing. How did the anti-slavery party become the party of the Solid South? How did the anti-trust party of Theodore Roosevelt become the party of Wall Street and the Club for Growth? In this brisk account, Richardson make sense of a twisting tale that shapes our lives every day.”

Ari Kelman, Bancroft Prize-winning author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek
“Heather Cox Richardson has written a much-needed book: a comprehensive and balanced history of the Republican Party. The prose is engaging, the research is deep, the argument is persuasive; To Make Men Free is the work of a major talent at the top of her craft.”

Publishers Weekly
“[An] opinionated history...Richardson aptly ends by wondering if the modern Republican Party ‘will find a way to stay committed to the ideals of its founders.'”

Ruy Teixeira, co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority
“Heather Cox Richardson's concise history of the Republican Party shows how a party that once saw government as the guarantor of equal opportunity for all morphed into today's intransigently anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation GOP. Richardson convincingly demonstrates that the Republican Party has oscillated throughout its history between equal opportunity and protection of property rights as its lodestar. Those seeking clues to how the GOP might evolve in the future will want to read this important book.”

New York Times Book Review
“A readable and provocative account of the many paths that Republicans have taken to their current state of confusion.”

Los Angeles Times
“The most comprehensive account of the GOP and its competing impulses... an important contribution to understanding where we are today.”

Washington Post
“The book offers a lively survey of Republican politics in all its diversity, from the ‘transformational presidency' of Abraham Lincoln (to borrow a 21st-century term) to the conservative ascendancy of Ronald Reagan.”

Washington Spectator
“A rich portrait of the thinking and times of Abraham Lincoln and those closest to him in the founding of the Republican Party... perceptive and persuasive.... Readers of Richardson's history of the GOP will come away with a good sense of the complex path that led the party to the abnegation of the Lincoln legacy.”

New Republic
“[Richardson's] theory of the party's historical cycle is intriguing.”

Open Letters Monthly
“Sharp and readable.”

Kirkus
“Richardson makes a bold, pertinent argument.... A hard-hitting study that will surely resonate with ongoing attempts to regenerate the GOP.”

About the Author

Heather Cox Richardson is a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of West from Appomattox, The Greatest Nation of the Earth, and The Death of Reconstruction, she lives in Winchester, Massachusetts.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (September 23, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465024319
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465024315
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.65 x 9.65 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #292,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #161 in Political Parties (Books)
- #682 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
- #1,018 in History & Theory of Politics

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c.r. l

Informative

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 10, 2023

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This book gave me a better understanding of how the party of the president who governed during the abolition of slavery transformed into one ripe with racist and policies contrary to the ones on which this nation was founded on. With the current actions of republicans in regards to an individual with autocratic aspirations, it's a wonder why so many intelligent people would still support ANY republican for political office.

Helpful

Susan Braider

A Historical Scholar and Writer We Should All Follow

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 29, 2023

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Heather Cox Richardson is a scholar who has not lost her love of teaching, that is, she is not interested in showing the reader how smart she is, she wants to unravel and explain the dynamics that brought Lincoln to power, the issues with which he struggled during the lead up to the Civil War, and the reasons he made the decisions he did during the war's course. Her book resonates with many of the issues we are confronting today. Since I lacked a real knowledge of the Civil War Era and Reconstruction, I only had a vague idea about the way we continue to struggle with the same issues that led to the war. Many of the complexities remain identical

Helpful

fluteguy

Read the book first and consider it in terms of a basic conflict in American history

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 24, 2014

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I am wondering how several amazon reviewers are able to comment supposedly so knowingly and in such claimed depth on a book that was released only today, September 23, 2014. Are you all professional reviewers who have received advance copies from the publisher?

The central thesis of the book (as per the excerpt in the Washington Post last Sunday and several of the reviews I have read) is that there is a conflict in the Republican party between egalitarian ideals (Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ike) and property rights advocates / apologists for the entitlements of the wealthy (Andrew Johnson,Reagan, Paul Ryan) and that this conflict has in fact been central from the founding of the party. I have not yet received my copy so i cannot claim any more than this. However the conflict between equality and property rights is as old as this country, cf the Federalists (Alexander Hamilton, 1780:"unite the interests and credit of rich individuals with the state." "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give, therefore, to the first class a distinct.permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and... ever maintain good government") and the original Jeffersonian Democrats (George Mason, June 12, 1776, Virginia Declaration of Rights [which does form a part of the Virginia Constitution still in effect today]: "Section 1: That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Section 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people;... Section 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration." Jefferson, July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed")

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s monumental Pulitzer Prize winning "The Age of Jackson"(Little Brown, 1945) discusses this essential tension in American history in the period prior to Lincoln and the formation of the Republican Party. I highly suggest reading it. Also highly relevant to the discussion is Republican Teddy Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" speech of Aug. 31, 2010 available on Wikisource.

For a cogent but somewhat critical review of "To Make Men Free" see the Geoffrey Kabaservice review in the New Republic from which the following: "Richardson is not the first to note that the Republican Party has oscillated between moderate and conservative phases. Still, her theory of the party’s historical cycle is intriguing, and her hypothesis that the Confederacy was in a sense reborn in the GOP’s conservative incarnations is both audacious and disturbing." And or read Kabaservice's book, "Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Studies in Postwar American Political Development)". Skip the Wall Street Journal review which misses the whole point and attempts to change the historically valid terms of the discussion from equality vs property to liberty vs order: ("The continuing tension in the Republican Party is not between advocates of equality and protectors of property but between proponents of liberty and proponents of order.".)

I look forward to reading what is sure to be an evocative and thought provoking book.

27 people found this helpful

Helpful

Robert V. Rose, retired education researcher

A very interesting essay on how liberals view modern conservatives.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 14, 2014

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I read this book after seeing the author interviewed on BookTV and thought it would be an interesting history.

The first half of the book indeed was. The author, a university history professor, starts with the statement that Abraham Lincoln, one of everyone's favorites, was the first Republican president who believed in equality and economic power for the middle class, favoring neither the very rich nor the vast poorer class. Theodore Roosevelt, another "true Republican", felt the same way, running for president in 1912 as the Progressive third party candidate, probably shifting enough votes from Taft to ensure Wilson's victory.

The author claims that Eisenhower (one of my own favorities) also was "moderate", in that he again favored those in the middle, finally warning us against the "military-industrial complex".

For a while I thought the author's enthusiasm for good will toward middle-of-the-road Republicans was genuine, and that her anti-modern conservative comments were only a sop for her more liberal university colleagues.

But in the last hundred pages her true colors show. She execrates the "movement Republicans" who emerged in the 1950s, with all sorts of depreciating negative words. Among those she obviously loathes are William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Nixon et al. She insists that Republicans have been over-taken by "neocons" who are racist, anti-woman, anti-logical, and lying allies of Roger Ailes and Fox News, who only care about the needs of the greedy rich.

Ironically, the author claims that modern conservatives are anti-education, apparently oblivious to the fact that our modern "progressive education" of John Dewey (a determined Trotsyite favored by Lenin) and Bill Ayers (Obama's friend who told Chavez how "our" education could help further socialism in Venezuela) is actually liberal Democrat party education, and that it has failed.

On the other hand, the concluding phrase in the book is "...perhaps, the Republican party will find a way to stay committed to its original founders".

I for one, believe that our non-racist, pro-woman, pro-prosperity Republican party is already there, and that's how I intend to vote next month.

12 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Charles Siegel

great book

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 9, 2022

Verified Purchase

All sorts of things I didn't know on almost every page and very well written.

Thomas A. Regelski

like this reader

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

This volume is a very important contribution to understanding US politics since the rise of the Republican party with Lincoln. It demonstrates, first, the initial political ideology in favor of economic ideology, and then the quick reversal of that ideology to favor wealth over the ordinary voter. It chronicles the revival of GOP original ideology in the Progressive movement of the 1920s-30s and its bling opposition to the New Deal. We also get substantial views of Rockefeller Republicanism, Regan Republicanism, Bush1&2k Republicanism and their various implications and many problems. In several respect it is a kind of "expose" of Republican ideology and its many contradictions over time. A must read for Republicans who have lost their way in the changing ideological wars within the part, including the Movement Conservatives, and certainly of major insight to political critics who, like this reader, were unaware of the vastly important changes over time of the party. Having read this, it is difficult any longer to speak of "the" Republican party/ideology, rather than refer specifically to a melange of ever-changing positions, some of which cancel earlier ones out. Too bad it covers only until the Obama challenge, until 2014. GOP and Conservative readers will be surprised to learn of the many twists and turns of their party, and of the loss of its founding message of economic, social, and political equality.

One person found this helpful

SJP

Explains a lot.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

A terrific book that helps explain US politics, particularly what is going on there right now. This is history, written by a professor with a knack for describing complex issues with simplicity. It certainly helped me cut through the political chatter that surrounds us these days and understand the context of current events. Highly recommended.

Avid Reader

Excellent book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

Well written and well researched book. Helps to explain how why the party of Lincoln has moved from wanting equality of opportunity for everyone to become a party of rich, elitist, religious conservatives. Stops as Obama elected. Recommended to those interested in US history.

Ronald

A perfect transaction

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on October 31, 2020

Verified Purchase

Great customer delight from this transaction. Everything top top top. Thanks for the beautiful book.

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