When it was grand The radical Republican history of the Civil War

High school history teacher Keith (The Colfax Massacre) resurfaces the Republican Party's progressive, antislavery origins in this energetic yet muddled account. Beginning with the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, Keith documents how the party's "most ardent faction" helped to provoke the Civil War and laid the groundwork for constitutional amendments abolishing slavery and granting African-Americans equal protection and the right to vote. She categorizes congressmen Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, abolitionists John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison, philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, and unitarian minister Theodore Parker as "Republican Radicals," and credits the raising of the 54th Massachusetts and other African-American Union Army regiments, the funding of Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry by the "Secret Six," and the launch of Garrison's Liberator newspaper as major achievements in the cause. Keith stretches the definition of radical Republicanism to the point of distortion, claiming that it was both a political faction and a "religious and philosophical movement," and grouping nearly every American who opposed slavery, assisted freed slaves, or supported the Union cause under the same banner. Ending her account before Reconstruction, however, she obscures the Radicals' greatest legislative achievements. The result is a wide-ranging history that does little to illuminate its weighty subject. (Dec.)

In this aggressively argued book, White (The Colfax Massacre) casts Radical Republicans as the principal engine driving politics, defining rights, and transforming government in the Civil War era. She insists that antislavery Republicans moved from the fringe to dominate the party because of their determination, discipline, and ability to seize the moment. In White's accounting, the Radicals included poets, philosophers, social reformers, industrialists, and others who allied to push the Republicans to a no-compromise on slavery that endorsed any means to achieve emancipation. White writes at length and with eloquence about the role of black abolitionists in pressing for emancipation before and during the war; black military service during the war; and Radicals' efforts to use confiscation, loyalty oaths, and especially black enfranchisement to reconstruct the South during and after the war. Some scholars might be surprised by White's assertion that Radicals brought on secession and war by their uncompromising politics. VERDICT A new perspective on the Civil War. All will appreciate White's gripping accounts of partisanship, political ambition, civil disobedience, and the creative ways that Radicals used print and speech to persuade Americans to understand and accept the necessity of emancipation and the importance of equal rights.--Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

A history of the "greatest generation of American progressives," the radical faction of the early Republican Party that initiated "a revolution in race relations" in the Civil War era.In this well-researched, densely detailed account, Keith (The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction, 2008), who teaches at New York's Collegiate School for Boys, argues that a group of Republican politicians who sought to ensure civil equality and voting rights for all in the period from the mid-1850s to the end of Reconstruction were "the most courageous elected officials in our history." Most notably, they included Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner. Working with activists, ministers, and abolitionists, they initially opposed slavery by resisting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, rescuing hundreds of escaped slaves and winning themselves scorn and imprisonment. The radicals' efforts reflected both the "zeal" of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the penchant for "giving their lives to the pursuit of justice" of transcendentalists Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other key players were the Rev. Theodore Parker, minister to Boston's fugitive slaves, and industrialist George L. Stearns, a passionate anti-slavery advocate. The same radicals helped plan and fund John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry and later supported both confiscation of Rebel real estate and equal pay for white and black Union soldiers. Their actions, given "scant recognition" in recent Civil War-related debates, "anticipated the greatness" of Reconstruction, when they collaborated with black officeholders in the South. Keith also covers the question of slavery in the Kansas Territory, the conflicts between radical Republicans and the moderate Lincoln, the role of women's suffrage activists, and the illuminated political parades of the anti-slavery Wide Awakes youth organization.A deep scholarly look into a time when radicals in the Republican Party planted the roots for the civil rights movement. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.