First published 1997
Heather Cox Richardson examines how the Republican party transformed America during the Civil War era. Rather than viewing wartime legislation as random responses to crisis, Richardson argues that Republicans deliberately created a comprehensive economic system. The party floated billions in government bonds and established a national currency. They imposed income taxes and protective tariffs while passing homestead acts and funding the Union Pacific railroad. Republicans wanted to build a nation where individual farmers, workers, and small business owners could prosper. They ended slavery as part of this vision. Richardson shows how these policies created an active federal government committed to unregulated economic growth. The same legislation that Republicans designed to help ordinary Americans actually enabled rapid industrial expansion and corporate power. Their efforts to construct a nation of prosperous individuals inadvertently created the conditions for the Gilded Age, complete with corruption and popular unrest.
Genres: history, 20th-century, non-fiction, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, political-thriller
Setting: America, United States
Period: Civil War Era
352 pages · Hardcover · Harvard University Press