Andrew L. Slap
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227099
- eISBN:
- 9780823234998
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227099.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
In the Election of 1872 the conflict between President U. S. Grant and Horace Greeley has been typically understood as a battle for the soul of the ruling Republican Party. This book ...
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In the Election of 1872 the conflict between President U. S. Grant and Horace Greeley has been typically understood as a battle for the soul of the ruling Republican Party. This book argues forcefully that the campaign was more than a narrow struggle between Party elites and a class-based radical reform movement. The election, it demonstrates, had broad consequences: in their opposition to widespread Federal corruption, Greeley Republicans unintentionally doomed Reconstruction of any kind, even as they lost the election. Based on close readings of newspapers, party documents, and other primary sources, the book confronts one of the major questions in American political history: How, and why, did Reconstruction come to an end? Its focus on the unintended consequences of liberal republican politics is a provocative contribution to this important debate.Less
In the Election of 1872 the conflict between President U. S. Grant and Horace Greeley has been typically understood as a battle for the soul of the ruling Republican Party. This book argues forcefully that the campaign was more than a narrow struggle between Party elites and a class-based radical reform movement. The election, it demonstrates, had broad consequences: in their opposition to widespread Federal corruption, Greeley Republicans unintentionally doomed Reconstruction of any kind, even as they lost the election. Based on close readings of newspapers, party documents, and other primary sources, the book confronts one of the major questions in American political history: How, and why, did Reconstruction come to an end? Its focus on the unintended consequences of liberal republican politics is a provocative contribution to this important debate.
