The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 / Edition 1

by William E. Gienapp

Overview

During the 1850s, the Jacksonian party system broke down in the North and a new sectional party, the Republicans, succeeded the Whigs in the nation's two party system. Using demographic, voting, and other statistical analysis, as well as the more traditional methods and sources of political history, William Gienapp demonstrates that the organization of the Republican party was a difficult, complex, and lengthy process, and explains why, after an inauspicious beginning, it ultimately became a potent political force

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195055016
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/17/1988
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	582
Product dimensions:	6.19(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.26(d)

Editorial Reviews

"[The] definitive political history of the early 1850s...Gienapp offers fresh, new interpretations of Republican beginnings. His chapter on ideology is superb. The bibliography is exhaustive. This is scholarly history at its finest."—Library Journal

"A magnificent achievement. Its sweep is broad, its research astonishingly thorough, its command of detail superb, its analysis compelling. This is absolutely the best book about the formation of the Republican Party ever written."—Michael F. Holt, University of Virginia

"This book provides one of the clearest narratives and analyses of the complex processes by which the American political system was profoundly transformed in the 1850s and the country set on a collision course toward civil war."—James M. McPherson, Princeton University

From the Publisher