To Make Men Free

A History of the Republican Party

Cover Art for 9780465024315, To Make Men Free by Heather Cox Richardson
ISBN: 9780465024315
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
Published: 1 September, 2012
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Editions:
5 other editions of this product
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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, despite the egalitarian dream at the heart of its founding, the Republican Party quickly became mired in a fundamental identity crisis. Would it be the party of democratic ideals? Or would it be the party of moneyed interests? In the century and a half since, Republicans have vacillated between these two poles, with dire economic, political, and moral repercussions for the entire nation. 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, revealing the insidious cycle of boom and bust that has characterized the Party since its inception. While in office, progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln s vision of economic freedom and expanded the government, attacking the concentration of wealth and nurturing upward mobility. But they and others like them have been continually thwarted by powerful business interests in the Party. Their opponents appealed to Americans latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. The results of the Party s wholesale embrace of big business are all too familiar: financial collapses like the Panic of

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