When it was grand : the radical Republican history of the Civil War / LeeAnna Keith.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020Edition: First editionDescription: 340 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780809080311
- 0809080311
- Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) -- History -- 19th century
- Political parties -- United States -- History -- 19th century
- Antislavery movements -- United States -- History -- 19th century
- Radicalism -- United States -- History -- 19th century
- African Americans -- Politics and government -- 19th century
- African Americans -- Civil rights -- History -- 19th century
- United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1877
- United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
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Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 973.71 K28 | Available | 33111009586716 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A Civil War Monitor best book of 2020
A group biography of the activists who defended human rights and defined the Republican Party's greatest hour
In 1862, the ardent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison summarized the events that were tearing apart the United States: "There is a war because there was a Republican Party. There was a Republican Party because there was an Abolition Party. There was an Abolition Party because there was Slavery."
Garrison's simple statement expresses the essential truths at the heart of LeeAnna Keith's When It Was Grand . Here is the full story, dramatically told, of the Radical Republicans--the champions of abolition who helped found a new political party and turn it toward the extirpation of slavery. Keith introduces us to the idealistic Massachusetts preachers and philanthropists, rugged Midwestern politicians, and African American activists who collaborated to protect escaped slaves from their captors, to create and defend black military regiments and win the contest for the soul of their party. Keith's fast-paced, deeply researched narrative gives us new perspective on figures ranging from Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Brown, to the gruff antislavery general John Fremont and his astute wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, and the radicals' sometime critic and sometime partner Abraham Lincoln.
In the 1850s and 1860s, a powerful faction of the Republican Party stood for a demanding ideal of racial justice--and insisted that their party and nation live up to it. Here is a colorful, definitive account of their indelible accomplishment.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Prologue: Great Old Party -- Filibustering in Kansas -- The antislavery resistance -- Transcendental politics -- Free soil, free men, Fremont -- Dred Scott nullification -- John Brownism -- House divided -- Harper's Ferry -- Wide awake -- Military emancipation -- Wolf killers -- Arming African Americans -- Turning the Mississippi -- Revolution by confiscation -- Republican nation-building -- Never surrender the flag -- Wearing the brass letter -- Black Republicans -- Postscript: Age of transcendence.
"A history of antiracist and abolitionist activism in the Civil War-era Republican Party"-- Provided by publisher.