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> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
> Date: July 19, 2020 at 7:13:50 AM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org>
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-Socialisms]:  Bekken on Keith, 'When It Was Grand: 
> The Radical Republican History of the Civil War'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> LeeAnna Keith.  When It Was Grand: The Radical Republican History of 
> the Civil War.  New York  Hill and Wang, 2019.  352 pp.  $30.00 
> (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8090-8031-1.
> 
> Reviewed by Jon Bekken (Albright College)
> Published on H-Socialisms (July, 2020)
> Commissioned by Gary Roth
> 
> When Republicans Were Radicals
> 
> _When It Was Grand: The Radical Republican History of the Civil War_ 
> focuses on the emergence of the Republican Party from the 1850s 
> through the brief triumph of Reconstruction, with particular emphasis 
> on its Radical faction and their determination to bring an end to 
> slavery. The Radicals, LeeAnna Keith contends, dominated the 
> Republican Party in its early years, transforming the American polity 
> in the process: "The Radicals were culture warriors, committed to a 
> nearly mystical vision of representative government based on free 
> labor. Prizing equal opportunity and expansion, they championed 
> government spending for education and transportation 
> infrastructure.... These Republicans appealed to populism without 
> demonizing capital" (p. 4). This is a stirring narrative, with much 
> emphasis on armed conflict and political intrigue. But some of the 
> broader facets of this radicalism are eclipsed by the focus on what 
> was indisputably the major issue of the day. Keith notes the 
> important role of women's suffrage advocates in the movement and the 
> insistence of many (by no means all) Radicals on full racial 
> equality, not simply an end to the institution of slavery. But while 
> slavery was certainly the central issue, the struggle for its 
> abolition was part of a larger social ferment that saw the formation 
> of utopian colonies, the emergence of unions, and movements for 
> religious and social reform. Indeed, as it was moving from the Whigs 
> to the Republicans, the _New York Tribune_ published a series of 
> articles praising Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism and gave Karl 
> Marx a regular column that ran for a decade. 
> 
> The political system was already in crisis when debates over the 
> expansion of slavery forced the long-suppressed issue to the fore. 
> Keith suggest that Stephen Douglas was (inadvertently) "the founding 
> father of the Republican Party" through his 1854 Kansas-Nebraska 
> bill, which overturned the Missouri Compromise in an effort to 
> appease increasingly aggressive southern slaveholders (p. 10). But 
> the two-party system was already in tatters. Never a stable political 
> formation, the Whigs had been united primarily by their opposition to 
> Andrew Jackson and their commitment to building infrastructure to 
> promote commerce and industry. Democrats and Whigs shared a common 
> commitment to preserving the status quo on slavery, if only because 
> the South's electoral strength made it difficult to win national 
> elections without carrying at least some southern states. But the 
> status quo was not sustainable. Southern politicians saw westward 
> expansion as an existential threat to their political dominance and 
> so demanded the extension of slavery to the new 
> territories--something that was both economically untenable and an 
> intolerable affront to the growing numbers appalled by slavery. 
> Ultimately, this dispute shattered both parties. Western Democrats 
> like John Wentworth originally condemned abolitionists as fanatics, 
> but could tolerate neither the expansion of slavery nor their party's 
> increasingly implacable opposition to internal improvements. 
> (Wentworth correctly saw Chicago's future as inextricably bound up 
> with the development of canals and railroads.) In 1848 he opposed the 
> new Free Soil Party on the grounds that it threatened to deliver 
> Illinois's electoral votes to the Whigs he still despised (noting in 
> his _Chicago Democrat_ that Whig presidential nominee Zachary Taylor 
> was a slave owner). Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, Anti-Nebraska 
> Democrats (such as Wentworth), and the remnants of the Whigs 
> ultimately coalesced under the Republican Party banner, united by 
> little else but their opposition to slavery's expansion. 
> 
> Keith discusses the coalescing of these forces and the early battle 
> (political and military) for Free Kansas as a struggle that drew 
> abolitionists and homesteaders alike to fight the slave interests for 
> control of the new territory. Both preachers and abolitionists 
> embraced the need for force, portraying rifles as religious weapons 
> in the cause of moral purification. Struggles against the Fugitive 
> Slave Act were equally militant, and brought the reality of slavery 
> home to communities that previously experienced it as a distant 
> tragedy. But slaveholders, too, were enraged by the changing 
> politics, accustomed to deference from the national government and 
> seeing the source of their wealth under siege. As the federal 
> government stepped up to enforce slavery, the Radical (and even many 
> moderate) Republicans were reinforced in their fervor, forced to 
> choose between allowing African Americans to be taken into captivity 
> in their hometowns and resistance. The slave catchers were armed and 
> often supported by local law enforcement, so perforce their opponents
> must take up arms as well. Hundreds of rescues across the northern 
> states fostered a spirit of resistance to injustice that Keith argues 
> became part of the "genetic code" of the emerging Republican Party. 
> When Sherman Booth faced trial for his part in a Milwaukee uprising 
> that smashed down a courthouse door to free an alleged slave, he 
> proclaimed that "I would prefer to see every federal officer in 
> Wisconsin hanged on a gallows" than to abide the Fugitive Slave Law 
> (p. 36). 
> 
> Many government officials sided with resisters, though Keith 
> sometimes confuses political expedience for conviction. For example, 
> she suggests that Judge Benjamin Curtis "was silently aligned with 
> the liberators" when he presided over the trial of seven Bostonians 
> charged with attempting to liberate a fugitive slave from federal 
> custody. But the evidence she offers (pp. 39-41) suggests rather the 
> opposite. Curtis encouraged the grand jury to indict, denounced 
> "organized disobedience [as] rebellion," and dismissed the charges 
> only as the defense was about to launch its case. In doing so, Curtis 
> denied them the opportunity they coveted to use the courtroom as a 
> platform and avoided the danger of a jury acquittal that would have 
> further undermined the Fugitive Slave Law. As resistance mounted, 
> Democrats relied on their control of the federal government, 
> particularly the Supreme Court, to hold back the tide. Their victory 
> in the 1856 election and the 1857 Dred Scott decision made it clear 
> that a radical break was needed. There was no role for moderation 
> under the circumstances, and so the Radical Republicans' history of 
> extralegal action proved attractive to many. Even many moderates 
> supported John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, rhetorically and 
> financially. Back in Chicago, Wentworth's newspaper, which just a 
> couple of years earlier had vehemently denounced abolitionists as 
> fanatics, devoted several columns to praising Brown's heroism. 
> Radical Republicans advocated full citizenship rights for African 
> Americans as well as integrated public facilities, and used their 
> growing control of northern states to openly support fugitives in 
> their flight to freedom--even hosting one in the New York State 
> capitol building. In Ohio, an integrated force of five hundred armed 
> abolitionists freed John Price from the slavers and the federal 
> marshal who had captured him. 
> 
> So the Radical Republicans were a real force, and their rhetoric and 
> their agitation played a significant role in hastening the inevitable 
> conflict. And yet it is not true that they "dominated their party," 
> even if they may have "transformed the nature of government to 
> achieve their goals" (p. 6). The need to eventually wage all-out war 
> and then reconstruct the South certainly led to a stronger federal 
> government, both absolutely and in relation to the states. Yet the 
> Radicals were but one of several factions in the party. Leading 
> Republicans like Abraham Lincoln carefully navigated these currents, 
> avoiding talk of abolition or equality and trying to rein in those 
> (like Wentworth) who were less circumspect. Moderate Republicans 
> opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories, sometimes 
> hinted at gradual emancipation, and professed to believe that absent 
> active federal government support slavery would succumb to natural 
> extinction. But they were politicians first and foremost, wary of 
> frightening more conservative voters by advocating active resistance 
> to what even the most timid among them recognized as a monstrous 
> evil. 
> 
> Even so, the attack on Harpers Ferry was undertaken with the 
> financial support of many eminently respectable men, and its defeat 
> badly frightened leading Republicans. Though some feared being 
> implicated, more were concerned that it would drive away moderate 
> voters. Nonetheless, Radicals like Henry David Thoreau rallied to the 
> cause, and many Radicals soon found the courage to join in. Here, as 
> elsewhere, Keith tells a stirring tale, giving a lively rendition of 
> the plotting and the subsequent scramble to frame the failed 
> uprising. Plots and intrigue are Keith's forte; _When It Was Grand_ 
> is less about ideas and social factors than the maneuvers of 
> politicians and generals, although, as she makes clear, many of the 
> most radical experiments (such as arming battalions of former slaves 
> or confiscating plantations) arose more out of the expedience of the 
> hour than out of a grand vision. Indeed, as she notes in her 
> conclusion, few Republicans had close relationships with African 
> Americans or were willing to embrace them as equals. 
> 
> Along with LeeAnna Keith's previous book about the end of 
> Reconstruction (_The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black 
> Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction_, 2008), and her 
> work in a number of archival collections, the notes to _When It Was 
> Grand_ indicate a deep familiarity with the literature. It is a book 
> well worth reading, even if its conclusion simultaneously attributes 
> too much power to the Radicals and accordingly too much venality to 
> the party's abandonment of the freed slaves and of Reconstruction: 
> "Achieving victory, [Radicals] stood astride what they called 
> conquered provinces, intent on creating a revolutionary new social 
> order. Their aims were not pure, and even during the Civil War the 
> Radicals manifested a venality and love of power that coexisted 
> uneasily with their humanitarian goals" (pp. 290-91). Keith 
> attributes the abandonment of the crusade for racial justice to 
> Radical Republicans' becoming conservatives, and certainly some did. 
> But the Republicans' subsequent alignment with big business and 
> conservative social values is less shocking if one realizes that it 
> never was, nor sought to be, a revolutionary party. The Radicals were 
> always on the political margins, and slavery was for many part of a 
> broader emancipatory vision. But events--coupled with the Radicals' 
> determination to confront the slave power when more "prudent" 
> politicians sought accommodation--forced the party's hand, leading to 
> an all-too-brief window in which it seemed a more egalitarian nation 
> might be at hand. Other historians--notably Eric Foner in several 
> volumes, including _Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution_ 
> (revised edition 2014), but also a number of local histories such as 
> Douglas Egerton's _The Wars of Reconstruction_ (2014)--have done a 
> better job of analyzing that moment and the reasons why the Radical 
> vision did not prevail. 
> 
> Citation: Jon Bekken. Review of Keith, LeeAnna, _When It Was Grand: 
> The Radical Republican History of the Civil War_. H-Socialisms, H-Net 
> Reviews. July, 2020.
> URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54972
> 
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States 
> License.
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