To Make Males Free: A Historical past of the Republican Occasion

When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Occasion on the eve of the Civil Battle, his aim was to advertise financial alternative for all People, not simply the slaveholding Southern planters who steered nationwide politics. But whereas visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their makes an attempt to make use of authorities to protect in opposition to the focus of wealth have repeatedly been undone by the nation’s moneyed pursuits and members of their very own celebration. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of huge enterprise—and the following monetary disaster—is the most recent instance of this calamitous cycle, however it’s in no way the primary.

In To Make Males Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Outdated Occasion from the antebellum period to the Nice Recession, displaying how Republicans’ ideological vacillations have had horrible repercussions for minorities, the center class, and America at giant. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Males Free explains how a comparatively younger celebration grew to become America’s best political hope—and, time and time once more, its best disappointment.