Conceiving a New Republic: The Republican Party and the Southern Question, 1869-1900

In the wake of the Civil War, the victorious Republican Party enjoyed broad control of the national government and, as historian Calhoun (Benjamin Harrison) demonstrates in this exhaustively researched monograph, they were determined to use it to refashion Southern society in accordance with the Founders' vision-a process that came to be known as Reconstruction. Detailing three decades of rhetoric and internal debate about the ""Southern question,"" Calhoun illustrates the fervor of Republicans' early desire to ensure the freedom of the ballot against endemic intimidation and fraud throughout the old Confederacy. The bulk of the book tracks the transformation of this impulse, which, he shows, ultimately gave way before Southern intractability, mounting Northern indifference, and questions of economic policy. Calhoun focuses closely on the speeches, letters, and diaries of Republican leaders, including presidents Grant, Hayes, Harrison and McKinley, revealing what they thought they would and should achieve in the South-several pages, for example, are devoted to a thoughtful reinterpretation of Hayes's motives in the Compromise of 1877. When Booker T. Washington declared in his Atlanta Compromise speech of 1895 that black Americans should cultivate economic capacity before pursuing social and political equality, most white Republicans had already embraced this attitude and substituted a message of national unity for their former emphasis on free and fair elections. Although the book will appeal primarily to readers already familiar with the period, Calhoun has produced a useful and thorough record of a still-resonant issue: Calhoun's introduction begins with the 2005 efforts of Republicans to ""capture wider support among African Americans."" 25 b&w illustrations.