To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party

by Heather Cox Richardson

When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet while visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their attempts to use government to guard against the concentration of wealth have repeatedly been undone by the country’s moneyed interests and members of their own party. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of big business—and the ensuing financial crisis—is the latest example of this calamitous cycle, but it is by no means the first.

In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession, showing how Republicans’ ideological vacillations have had terrible repercussions for minorities, the middle class, and America at large. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Men Free explains how a relatively young party became America’s greatest political hope—and, time and time again, its greatest disappointment.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, American, Law, Government

560 pages, Audible Audio

First published September 1, 2014

About the author

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College and an expert on American political and economic history. She is the author of seven books, including the award-winning How the South Won the Civil War. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Her widely read newsletter, Letters from an American, synthesizes history and modern political issues.

Reviews

[Tim Null · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a growing number of former Republicans these days, and Heather Cox Richardson's To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party is a book which should be required reading for all current and former Republicans. I believe I can honestly say this because I'm a former Republican too. When I was young, I was greatly influenced by my grandfather, who was a rugged individual. He was religious and a staunch Republican and very much a self-made man. Because I wanted to be like my grandfather, I wanted to be a religious Republican too.

When I was young, Dwight Eisenhower was the only president I had ever known. I grew up in an 'I like Ike' culture. Fortunately, as a Michigander, this was countered by 'Soapy' Williams vigorous economic growth and strong statewide leadership that helped Michigan overcome both the occasional 'Eisenhower recession' (mainly caused by Republicans in Congress) and the state legislature's pursuit of 'payless paydays' for state employees like my father.

For a short time, I was a member of a local Young Republicans Club in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and was elected as vice president. However, when I sat through a meeting of the Kalamazoo County Republicans, I found most of the adults in attendance to be repulsive narrow-minded bigots. I decided then to give up on the Republican party, and I started down the road to becoming a Democrat. I totally gave up on the Republican party when they chose Barry Goldwater over William Scranton in 1964.

I had the good fortune to grow up in Kalamazoo during a progressive era, when a combination of war veterans and college professors took control of the city council. Unfortunately, a local plumber eventually organized a conservative rebellion that successfully stymied the continuation of this progressive era in Kalamazoo.

In the spring of 1966, I started dating my future wife. She helped me become an atheist, and I helped her become a Democrat. Undoubtedly, we would have each found our ways separately, but it was way more fun doing it together.

Ultimately, I ended up becoming both an atheist and a Democrat. So I guess you could say I'm nothing like my grandfather, who was a religious Republican. However, he loved his family, and he made himself into the man he needed to be. In that respect, I hope I did become like him.

Quote from page 342:
Goldwater's depiction of his history tied into American images, but it was, in fact, an invention. ...the Goldwaters had risen through the generosity of the federal government.
End quote.

Quote from page 448:
[The current Republican party has] embraced the very ideology its founders had opposed.
End quote.

Quote from page 474:
If the current-day Republicans do not manage to destroy our democracy, the party might well, at long last, return to its roots.
End quote.

[Conor Ahern · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in physical form while my audiobook was The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin, so I really felt like I was consuming both the past and the future of the Republican party!

Joking (?) aside, this book was really informative. It traces the disconnect between the imperative of equality mandated by the Declaration of Independence and the unequivocal defense of property and class fissures enshrined in the Constitution, and how the parties have tried out various forms of compromise between these two mostly incompatible visions of America.

The Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, was founded (according to Richardson) in support of values of meritocracy, equality, and anti-plutocracy--essentially a party against the symbolism and actual power of the benighted Plantation South. Unfortunately, shortly after prevailing in the Civil War when those ideals were put to the test and prevailed, the GOP lost its way and became bedfellows with big business. Things carried on pell-mell until Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson sparred over which party was heir to the aegis of progressive politics. The concept belonged to no one, but when the revanchist Taft wing had their bid sundered by Teddy Roosevelt and his progressivism, and when their Democratic opponent had progressive tendencies, the GOP began solidifying its image as the party against progress, though I'm sure that even then they had better branding. Although some progressive notes were sounded in the interim, the first half of the 20th Century was claimed by Democrats; ultimately, the hidebound "Taft Wing" of the party wrested control, leading to the Movement Conservatism that has afflicted us and the world over the past few decades.

The true hero of this book seems to be Eisenhower. Eisenhower represented perhaps the last great hope for sanity from a party opposing what experience and peer states have proven to be the superior system, and the rest has been a shambles of manipulation and cynicism. He accepted the New Deal as not only popular but good, and seemed a true statesman, capable of putting country over self and especially over party, a skill of which the modern incarnation of the GOP is wholly bereft. In addition to his baleful warnings about the Military Industrial Complex, Eisenhower realized, we are told, that

. . . economically dispossessed people were natural targets for political and religious extremists. They could easily be manipulated by a strong leader to back a cause--any cause--that promised to resurrect a world in which they had enjoyed prosperity and cultural significance. Such extremism had been dangerous enough in the hands of the Nazis, but 1945 gave quite specific shape to Eisenhower's fears. The atomic bomb . . . changed the meaning of human conflict.

Richardson's coverage of Sen. McCarthy also rings bells for those who lament our modern political dysphoria:

Party that they could advance an agenda by use of fiction, as long as that fiction spoke to Americans' fears and could be kept from pen scrutiny. McCarthy's demagoguery gave Taft's die-hard followers a new style. He yelled; he made crazy accusations; he leaked fragments of truth that misrepresented reality; he hectored and badgered. He got in the faces of people who mattered. His antics got attention. Although a senator--about as inside a job as one can get--he posed as an outsider taking on what he insisted was a corrupt system. Claiming his opponents were bent on destroying America, he promised to defend it.

And more presaging of Trump:

Conservatives' anti-intellectualism became a strength. That their rhetoric did not address reality mattered less than that it seemed to offer a comforting route to bring back the prosperity and security voters associated with an idyllic American past.

There were some periods where I would have been proud to have called myself a Republican, but the influence of business interests seems to have been too strong on the whole. Principled past leaders aside, the current incarnation of the GOP is exactly where the past fifty years has intended for it to be.

The grand experiment begun by Lincoln has failed spectacularly. May it die a quick and decisive death.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Republican Party, was originally the party of Lincoln, so how did it become the party of white supremacy? The Democratic Party in Lincoln’s time was the party of white supremacy - so how and when did both parties switch their hat color and do the full 180? And why do Americans never discuss this obvious 180 degree turns of both parties? Let’s see what this book teaches us to explain this: Republican Lincoln believed the government had to do the stuff that was “too big for individuals”. Meanwhile, the Democrats “abhorred the idea of a stronger federal government” and hated the idea of the government paying a nickel for economic development, like the railroads. But the Southern Democrats were out of commission during the Civil War, so Republicans could and did develop, and they also started the Department of Agriculture and public universities. Gettysburg wiped out “one third of Lee’s fighting force” while Vicksburg bisects the Confederacy. The Civil War was costing the Treasury two million dollars a day. The 13th Amendment increased the power of the Government. But the war made SOME Republicans very rich and that split the party between haves and nots. In 1864, Democratic McClellan loses the election on a “stop the Civil War now and sellout to the South” platform. The Republicans wanted a strong national government and objected to state’s rights, seeing it as code for continuing slavery.

After Lincoln is killed, his VP, racist Andrew Johnson, assumes Presidency, the result of which will “warp American politics for decades to come”. Johnson pretended an active government meant racist because it was taking away from whites and giving to everyone else. Northern Democrats thought Lincoln sent whites to be slaughtered in his war for the benefit of the black man. In 1872, the Republican Party was split into human beings versus the James Henry Hammond Fan Club which believed that overt racists pretending to be cowboys was the future of getting elected. The theory was ex-slaves and urban workers (i.e. blacks) were lazy, while cowboys were anything but because they were white and stayed seated while their horses and barbed wire did most of the work. By President Grant’s second term, the Sumner/Grant fight within the party ended the Republican “dedication to equality of opportunity, their party’s fundamental principle”. Communism had hit the Republican radar in the 1870’s with concerns the effects of the Paris Commune on the freed slaves and white workers in the US. By 1872, Republicans saw Lincoln’s active government as socialism, and recent labor organizing as “an un-American plot to redistribute wealth”. The white cowboy motif had made it easy for liberal New York City Republicans not only brand blacks as lazy, but also go after immigrants, workers and labor as the part of the problem. Lincoln’s policy of equality of opportunity lasted only 12 years in the Republican Party. After that the motto of the Republican Party becomes “Business Uber Alles”, and any restriction on business means “redistribution of wealth.” Democrats before the war defended slavery as the right of business and now Republicans one generation later were defending wage slavery as the right of business.

In 1884, younger Republicans mobilized to counter the power of Big Business, yet they were strangely also imperialist as well. One of Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s lies was saying, “We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba in spite of the timidity of commercial interests.” And that adorable Teddy bear sure gave Cuba its freedom, didn’t he? The code phrase for invading other countries, and taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you at the time was “spreading morality overseas”. They say Teddy “charged” up San Juan Hill, but there wasn’t much charging of course because Teddy’s horses were drowned during the landing due to his poor planning. So, let’s picture instead a bunch of out of breath white guys with weapons climbing while looking for Joe Rosenthal. So, TR was an imperialist, but wanted to regulate big business (while also standing against socialism). Just as Lincoln had sided with the people against slavery, so TR would side with the people now against Big Business. Meanwhile, by 1898, in the fabulous world of Christianity, Heather says Ministers were actually preaching the “virtues” of lynching. Jesus would have been so proud.

Democrat Wilson becomes President and immediately “segregates the federal offices that had been desegregated since Reconstruction”. Woodrow then throws the first movie night inside the White House showing the Birth of a Nation. Who doesn’t get all teary-eyed imagining a President and his friends enjoying the first blatantly racist film in a building built by slaves? In response to Wilson having all the fun, Republican Herbert Hoover commits “one racial slur after another.” Republicans lose their progressive flame and turn against immigrants. “I know we once proudly said this was a nation of immigrants but that was before those damn labor protests of the 1870’s!” The Great Migration’s first effect is that it made racism a national thing instead of a southern thing. For racists, the Great Migration had become the Great Migraine.

Did you know the Republicans shaped and brought us the GI Bill which “mirrored the ideology of Lincoln” – it put 51% of veterans back in school? When FDR died, the dismantling of the New Deal immediately began, led by the Taft Republicans and the Southern Democrats. This leads to the Taft/Hartley Bill which kills the Wagner Act and Labor. The worry was that Labor would use its money to influence politics. Allowing all people to have a voice in a democracy? How jejune! The Dixiecrats led by racist Strom Thurmond (who fathered a biracial child in his 20’s) splinter off from the Democrats in ‘48. Next you get the Eisenhower/Taft rift which echoes for 20 years. Taft’s right wing posse thought that they were the only good Americans. Everyone else had to be purged from government, and all DC parties with good canapes. The TV generation had just begun – political messages had to suddenly be simplified to “prompt emotional, rather than intellectual responses”. Eisenhower is the last voice of sanity for Republicans: the government must perform indispensable social services - It must cover people suffering, needs for housing, promote education. No wonder the Taft crew had to take him out; you can’t follow an act like that and be liked unless you do some twisted sleight of hand by exploiting emotion and language. On cue, in comes the McCarthy witch hunt, and the Taft crew gets a boner when they see, “Wow, you can say any fiction and it will get traction if you shamelessly speak to America’s fears”. Taft Republicans adopted the McCarthy style. Taft Republicans saw their future clearly: “wild accusations designed to defend free-market capitalism, heterosexuality, and Christianity” from those godless leftists. Accusations …and Golf. Then in comes William F. Buckley to revamp the Republican party by reducing government and telling universities what to do. Buckley strategically emphasizes religion, the free market, and a strong military, and conflates the New Deal with “Soviet-style communism”. But first, he patents a way of lock jaw talking that sounded like Paul Lynde on Quaaludes.

Eisenhower had thought if he didn’t do something about racism, the Soviet Union could keep rightfully pointing at the US South. The John Birch Society neatly tied together anti-communism and racism – they even sued Paul McCartney saying their song Ivory and Ivory had been lifted for his Ebony and Ivory. The inside joke was the JBS had got it’s “no dissent tolerated” platform straight from the communists. That was about as funny as the JBS got. Then comes all those TV westerns. You know, those shows where only “strong white men worked hard and made it on their own”? “In 1959, there were twenty-six westerns on TV.” Barry Goldwater quits college after one year because he didn’t “like it.” Goldwater then taps into the Cowboy myth – on their own, needed no assistance (once the land was stolen from natives), needed no government handout (after free grazing and water rights). It didn’t matter if the American people clearly wanted an active government, you had to protect against the tyranny of the masses. The Republican Party saw it would have to now go back in time before the Civil War – before the end of slavery. Goldwater cut the Deep South away from the Democrats. Then Reagan becomes the spokesman for Movement Conservatism. The new thrill was anti-intellectualism, and refusing to budge on anything in order to make Democrats move only rightward. Reagan then raises taxes eleven times and appoints more judges than any other president in history.

After Reagan, Republicans begin stressing the New Deal is Socialism, and we got to replace it with an even bigger government through handouts to Business, Religion and the Military. They run the Willie Horton ad that kills Dukakis, conjuring the image of democrats as socialists working FOR “dangerous black Americans”. Then in 1996, Fox News begins based on a simple narrative (devoid of all nuance) to be read by good looking people in front of colorful backgrounds. Movement Conservatism was based on ideology, not reality – and as a Republican you were either all in or all out and so the purging of RINOs begins. Big government came back under Bush Jr. but it was now under the control of Movement Conservatives - a triumph for Buckley’s vision. Having gone full circle, the Republican Party was now proudly everything it had been formed to destroy. And the book ends.

What a great book. Heather shows how when you get a President from either party going out on a limb, taking a risk, daring to think of all the people, you get a huge backlash. Lincoln leads to the End of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Trayvon Martin. And FDR’s New Deal to save Capitalism leads to the Powell Report, William F. Buckley, the Crisis of Democracy (Trilateral Commission book) and Clinton’s killing of welfare. And Eisenhower’s Republican successors were forced to recant his policies. Heather notes that when Republicans let Big Business get the upper hand you got financial shocks like: 1893, 1929, and 2008. But when Republicans Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower actively moved the furthest to make a more level economic playing field, their actions all led to a Republican backlash. Great book.

[Stuart Woolf · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Not completely repulsive, but still a major disappointment.

I found this book at a Barnes & Noble and gave it to a liberal friend as a joke birthday present. He read it and subsequently re-gifted it to me, recommending it as an "easy read". I don't disagree with his assessment, but I do think the book fails to deliver on an interesting subject: I am guessing Richardson was commissioned by Basic Books to churn out a cash cow for the publisher.

A list of things I did not like:

(A) Richardson's thesis, that the Republican Party is traditionally comprised of an egalitarian wing supportive of a strong central government / infrastructure investment and an "oligarchic" wing that aims to limit these intrusions, does make use of some fairly loaded language, and there is never any question as to where the author's sympathies lie. This strikes me as curious because a substantial portion of the readers who will pick up this book will inevitably be modern Republicans.

(B) I felt the author's take on the Republican Party was a little simplistic - and, at times, historically inaccurate. According to Richardson, the central tenet of the original Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, was to lessen income inequality by defeating the Slave Power, but I'm not convinced the income inequality debates of today are successors to the political conflicts of the antebellum era. Richardson is also prone to insinuate that there is no intellectual basis for small-government conservatism, a weakness that limits the book's credibility.

(C) My least favorite part of the book, sorry to say, is simply that Richardson is not a very talented writer. She is prone to repeat certain themes and motifs again and again: income inequality, the differences between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the hierarchical worldview of some obscure congressman from South Carolina. There is also an alarming lack of proper nouns, e.g. "Southerners believed..." or "Eastern bankers wanted...", so the book is something of a light-weight, a series of generalizations unsubstantiated by research.

Not to belabor the point, but if Richardson's blurb was removed from the inside cover, I would have guessed this book was written by an undergraduate, presumably one in rebellion of her family's conservative politics. I would have learned as much just the same.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richardson details the history of the Republican Party from Lincoln to Bush, showing how it became the party that serves the interests of the wealthy and the big corporations. Lincoln, the first Republican president, believed that government must promote economic opportunity for all citizens, not just the rich.
We remember Lincoln for keeping the nation united and for his emancipation of the slaves, but we should not forget the 1862 Homestead Act, which gave poor people a chance to get land if they would work it. Lincoln saw this as an important way to help poor people to rise in society. Lincoln also signed the Land-Grant College Act into law in 1862 in the belief that farmers' gaining increased knowledge would lead to more efficient production. Finally, the Union Pacific Railroad Act was a piece of legislation designed to help develop the nation. The U.P.R.R. Co. was actually set up as a state corporation, which would have Republicans today screaming-"socialism!"
The irony, of course, is that Republicans are now in the position of the slaveholding Southern Democrats of the pre-Civil War period who wanted to maintain an economic oligarchy and opposed any federal government activism to promote economic development, especially for the poor and working-class. How this happened is the main point of the story.
By the 1880s, business had become so powerful that it had gained a strong control over government by capturing the Republican Party. Interestingly, when the Democrats won in 1892 (with Grover Cleveland), the outgoing administration of Benjamin Harrison did its best to destroy the economy and ruin Cleveland. Europeans were discouraged from investing and the stock market was paralyzed, a crash occurring just before Cleveland took office in 1893. A severe depression happened which led to great unrest, such as the Pullman strike in Chicago. Republicans were able to blame Cleveland for the economic meltdown and increasing "anarchy." It would be no surprise that McKinley would sweep into office in 1896, as the candidate of Big Business.
In a great irony, Theodore Roosevelt would become Vice-President under McKinley after McKinley's reelection in 1900,and following the president's assassination, "Teddy" became the president who would return to the vision of Lincoln, by supporting the citizens against "the trusts" (the big monopolies), with his trust-busting campaign-and, moreover, with his protection of natural resources to stop the plundering of those resources by the wealthy 1%.
It was not to last. The Republicans would go back to being the party of the economic oligarchy following Teddy's presidency. The excesses of the wealthy in the 20s would lead to the Crash of 1929 and the Democrats of another Roosevelt needing to step in to restore the economy.
Richardson continues the story to the present. As Bush allowed an unregulated "free market" to run amok again- and cause another meltdown, it seemed that people had not learned anything from history. As Republicans continue to undermine the efforts to follow Lincoln's vision by Democrat Barack Obama, we can see that the struggle on behalf of working people against economic oligarchy goes on..

[Joris Friedman-Wils · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books follows the "far left" to "far right" swings of the Republican Party since its inception in the late 1850s until Obama's election which is fascinating. It shows that at the core the problem is a conflict between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence implies equal opportunity for all. The Constitution protects property rights. The conflict occurs when property owners become so powerful that they control government and seriously infringe on others' equal opportunity. The party in its history has swung left and right, between these two principles.

In Lincoln's time, the party was created to block the spread of the large southern plantation owners into the west. These owners drove small farmers out of business and thus endangering the equality and the "pursuit of happiness" written into the Declaration of Independence.

During Lincoln's time the party was considered highly progressive acts: created a national currency, sponsored a railway to the west, created the department of agriculture and banned slavery. The latter was a progressive act, because it destroyed the slave owner's wealth.

After the war, the party became beholden to Northeastern factory owners and by 1900 was the party of Big Business. It blocked labor unions and other attacks on Business property and finance. It was republican Theodore Roosevelt that Big Business threatened the democracy of the nation after which he broke the trusts.

After Roosevelt the party moved to right again and elected Hoover at the outset of the depression president. Hoover applied "austerity" i.e. cut taxes and spending policy to combat the depression with disastrous results for the country and the party. FDR took over and the democrats took power until Eisenhower.

Eisenhower was a moderate who believed that inequality globally and nationally was the source of strife. He supported the GI Bill and much government investment abroad and all over the country (mostly military), which gave rise to the most prosperous time in modern US history. He, however, was despised by the republican right, of which Buckley was an early figure because he was giving money to the poor and other social investments.

Since Eisenhower the party has steadily moved right at first due to the social turmoil of the 60s, which frightened many Americans. It got its first major conservative elected president with Reagan. George W, not George HW was his philosophical successor. Reagan claimed to be applying supply side (i.e. Hoover) economics to the economy, but he drove up the deficit instead. In other words, he applied New Deal economics, but claimed the opposite. George W. ultimately did the same.

In short, the book is very critical of the Republicans -in fact a bit too much IMHO for what I assume to be a neutral historical record-. Its greatest leaders were progressives, Its greatest failure, Hoover, was a regressive. It however does not acknowledge its legacy and seems to not have learned from its past.

[Philip Girvan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, brief account of the 160 year history of the US Republican Party and its struggle to reconcile constitutional property rights with the principle of equality promoted in the Declaration of Independence.

The best part of the book, for me, are the chapters dealing with the first and greatest Republican president Abraham Lincoln who rightly recognized that slavery was a moral abomination and indefensible in light of the country's founding documents. Lincoln also recognized the dangers of economic stratification and saw government as having a role to play towards promoting upward mobility. Indeed, early Republicans are completely unrecognizable from modern Republicans. One can't imagine any present-day Republican signing into law bills such as The Homestead Act or The Land-Grant College Act as President Lincoln did in 1862.

The following chapters detail the pendulum shift of the GOP toward entrenching property rights and deprioritizing principles of equality. In order to secure New York's electoral votes, the party felt it necessary to court Wall Street; the Income Tax Acts of 1861 and 1862 are repealed in 1872; high tariffs are maintained to encourage and protect domestic industry. This shift toward big business continues until Teddy Roosevelt assumes the presidency, and then shifts back once Republicans regain the Presidency after Woodrow Wilson.

The struggle between Eisenhower and the isolationist Taft Republicans is well told as is the rise of Movement Conservatism, Nixon's flirtations with it, as well as Reagan and Bush 43's full-on French Kiss with it.

The book, written in 2014, does not foresee the rise of Trump. In fact, it anticipates the pendulum moving the opposite direction toward moderation and an emphasis on greater equality. It would be interesting to read what Richardson makes of Trump and the insurgency that propelled him to the White House.

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. I had assumed I would be reading this after a terrible Republican defeat this November, but sadly I read it just before Donald Trump took office. I'm pretty despondent about the election results and it helped to see this election in the context of the history of the Republican party. I'm especially intrigued and persuaded by Cox Richardson's argument that the central conflict we face as a nation is the tension between our belief in equality and our belief in the sacredness of private property. I enjoyed reading about the corruption in the late 1800s because it gives me hope that we can live through this period as well (but it will still take vigilance and work!). I was impressed with Eisenhower and what I learned about his beliefs and policies. The thread of systemic racism throughout our political history was not surprising but it reminded me how hard we will have to work to undo a system that has been in the making for a long time.

[Ed Buckner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a fan of popular history by historians who really know their stuff and can write clearly and engagingly for amateur historian readers. This--To Make Men Free--is a fine example of that. Richardson garners facts and presents them so deftly that at first you don't realize how much detail and how great a sweep of history she has given you. I heartily recommend this for anyone interested in how the Republican Party arose, how and why it seems to have largely swapped places with the Democratic Party. I'm now reading a library copy of her latest--How the South Won... It, too, is quite good, and I plan to buy a copy soon.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am literally begging this goddamn country to learn from its own history.

I am also begging you (yes, you) to read this book.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 1850s, young men created the Republican Party to stand against and create an alternative to a government they believed promoted the interests of only wealthy elites. Over its 160-year history, Republicans have swung from this founding vision of their party to one that has espoused and promulgated the interests of elites and big businesses, why? This is the question that Heather Cox Richardson has set out to answer.

Richardson's masterful narrative charts the Republican Party and its ideology from its inception through the presidency of George W. Bush, when the power of the Movement Conservative faction peaked. Richardson demonstrates how the issue of civil rights, economic theory, and the politics of socialism and communism have affected the ideology of the Republican Party. Richardson attempts to stay neutral as she discusses these ideological shifts and their causes, but anyone who has strong political views may become agitated while reading this book. However, every American should fight through this discomfort and read To Make Men Free. Richardson does an excellent job of showing how the past has impacted and yielded our present day society and political landscape.

[Kasey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a long read and super dense with information. My only major critique is that I could have really used some visual aids (timelines, charts, something) to refer back to because of how demanding the text is of the reader's historical knowledge. Other than that, the writing is clear, direct, and makes the potentially dry subject matter a page-turner. The argument is really compelling, tracking the tension between equality before the law and the protection of personal property in the history of the Republican Party before the ascent of Movement Conservatism takes over the party. It's no small request, but I wish that Heather Cox Richardson would write a similar history of the Democrats. Because this book is specifically focused on the Republican Party, historical moments like the Dixicrats are rushed by and now I'm thirsting for more. I was shocked by how much of the content made me think, "different decade, same shit." This history is so important, though, and I learned a lot. I am glad that I waited for the new edition of this book with Professor Cox Richardson's afterward about January 6th and the Trump Administration.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars, "To Make Men Free" by Heather Cox Richardson is a thorough, well researched history of the Republican Party in the U.S. Although at times it's a text book, Richardson does an excellent job of contextualizing history. The reader will come away understanding the basic tug-of-war that has gone on within this organization: Lincoln's desire for a level playing field for EVERY American versus James Henry Hammond's goal of protecting property rights as supremely important. It is more complicated than that, but Richardson walks us through it well. I also thought her conclusion and afterword (bringing Trump's presidency into focus) were important. Highly recommended!

[Abby]

My favorite part of this book was watching the author incorrectly predict the future not once, but twice.

To Make Men Free is essentially a summary of the history of the Republican Party, starting with Lincoln and ending with several chapters about Movement Conservatism. Heather Cox Richardson takes a critical approach to her exploration of the party's history, so readers who go into it expecting praise are sure to be disappointed.

I found the pacing to be quite slow at times, but that's to be expected in a 450-page book about a historical topic that I do not enjoy. And, because apparently I need to keep saying it, books like this aren't really easy to read for anyone who doesn't have a lot of knowledge about the topic ahead of time. Parts of history that don't fit the author's message tend to be skipped over, leaving gaps in the progression at times. I took APUSH in high school, but it's been five years or so, and I no longer have the presidential timeline memorized, so there were parts of this book where I felt a bit lost.

It's boring, yes, but I didn't think it was that bad of a summary. Of the books I read for my history classes this semester, I enjoyed it the least, but I think it contained a lot of helpful information that helped to contextualize the two other books I read (How Fascism Works and How Democracies Die).

If you're interested in the Republican Party and its progression from an anti-oligarchic party to a party that contains many right-wing extremists today, this book is probably something you should look into.

[Zach Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible

There is no part of this book that was uninteresting to me. As Richardson weaved her narrative from era to era, she introduced the pivotal characters and tied together the themes to tell a haunting story. She did a brilliant job connecting the developments to prior events and players so that the narrative stayed cohesive.

The book was originally written in 2014. At first, I figured this would be a huge letdown as I craved her commentary on the development of the GOP since then. However, upon finishing the book, I found that its early release date actually lent credibility to some of the claims she made throughout. Her ability to trace the rise and dominance of “movement conservatism” effectively shows that the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party was the culmination of decades of evolution in the party. It wasn’t a break, but rather the next stage in its development. And luckily, my edition had an afterward written during Biden’s presidency that included some post-Trump commentary.

Richardson undoubtedly has a bias, and it comes through on every page. Yet I don’t think she can be described as partisan. Despite scathing criticisms of the Republican Party at many points, she identifies the bright figures and indeed lionizes them: Lincoln and the early republicans, Roosevelt and the progressives, Eisenhower and the pragmatic moderates of the 50s. He message is clear: the GOP has contributed much good to the United States. It can do so again if it returns to the principles of economic opportunity, social equality, and non-ideological governance.

Lastly, she identifies a tension at the heart of American democracy that is worth thinking through. Freedom of property vs freedom of opportunity. What do we do when one person’s freedom of property seems to threaten another person’s freedom of opportunity?

I don’t say this often, but I think this is essential reading.

[Paul Szydlowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so glad to find this book because it meant I didn't need to research and write my own history of the GOP, something I was feeling compelled to do having grown tired of calling out members of my one-time party who like to hide behind the banner of "the Party of Lincoln" while shielding themselves from criticism today because the Democrats of yesterday were the party of Jim Crow. Author and historian Heather Cox Richardson systematically outlines the transformation of the party of Lincoln from one formed precisely to enshrine the rights and opportunities of the individual against the power and desires of the economic elites (aka, slaveholders, scions of wealthy families and others determined to use the law and the Constitution to maintain their economic position) to one whose sole purpose is to perpetuate the power of what today can accurately be called the oligarchy. But in order to garner enough votes to retain the political power necessary, that same party now appeals to fear among the masses - fear of government, fear of immigrants, fear of liberals, fear of democracy (as evidenced by the common reference to the U.S. as a republic rather than a democracy). In doing so, the party has assimilated many of those who would have once been Jim Crow Democrats, thus becoming exactly what it was formed to defeat - protectors of the economic elite looking to silence the voice of those seen as a threat to that elite.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book, right now. The premise is the tension between two fundamental beliefs of the GOP: protection of property (see Reagan and Trump) vs. equality for all (see Lincoln and TR) and how the pendulum can swing from one extreme to the other.

[Rachel Ruhlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little repetitive at times, but mostly a concise summary of over 100 years of Republican Party history. I’m quite blue myself but I think it’s important to see things from all sides so this was very helpful! s/o Lincoln and Eisenhower for being legendary kings and simultaneously frick you Andrew Johnson.

[Tanner Gadams · Rating 2 out of 5]

gross

[Becca Guillote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting summary of the history of the Republican Party. And surprisingly engaging given its a history of the Republican Party! A little simplistic at times but a nice overview.

[Beverlee Jobrack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be required reading. It is a comprehensive look at the history of the Republican Party starting with Lincoln, and its noble founding--through the progressive and business oriented pressures to the condition of the party today, a party that did not even write a platform in 2020.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating review of the US Republican Party. Now I have a clearer understanding of Movement Conservatism and how it has affected the US citizenry.

[Erik Champenois · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 340-page overview history of the Republican Party from its founding in 1854 to approximately the 2008 election, with the earlier period covered in slightly more depth. Heather Cox Richardson argues that the history of the Republican Party can be encapsulated as the negotiation of the tension between America's belief in equality of opportunity and protection of property. As a result, the GOP has had its progressive periods, especially under Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Esenhower, presidents who implemented policies that resulted in greater equality and broad-based economic growth. On the other hand, the GOP has also had its regressive periods, especially in the 1870s and 1920s and in the post-Nixon and Reagan GOP, periods that made use of paranoid anti-government and racist rhetoric to produce policies favoring the interests of the rich and big business, resulting in greater inequality and in economic distress (the Great Depression and the 2008 crash as the biggest examples).

This kind of interpretative history has its strength and limitations - its strength being in the explanatory power of the thesis and showing the differences and similarities of broader trends across different periods of time. The limitation being when the story simplifies more complex events, or leaves out more in depth analysis of deeper political and economic complexities. It is also a focused, one-sided history. Focused in its analysis of political and economic ideological trends and policies rather than being a holistic history of the GOP (foreign policy, for example, is only covered occasionally, usually as it intersects with the main argument of the book). And one-sided in that the story does not detail the concurrent ideological and policy changes within the Democrat Party, except as the history of the Democrats intersect with the GOP. Part of me wanted a book with twice the length and twice the detail, including more coverage of changes within the Democratic Party. Finally, the interpretative history is based on a particular view, though admittedly one that I broadly share and agree with, and also one that I think she argues well for.

3.5 stars for providing a helpful birds-eye view of the history of the GOP, which taught me a number of things along the way and gave a more contextualized view of our current Trumpist GOP era. The book is at once critical and celebratory as it surveys the accomplishments of moderate and progressive Republicans alongside the ideological excesses and policies of more conservative Republicans. Eisenhower especially stood out to me as the last great moderate Republican President and someone I'd like to read up on in the future.

[corin · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this a little too soon

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Republican Party was an amazing thing as started out by Lincoln, representing equality and the common person against the wealthy elite. It quickly succumbed to corruption, but did some amazing things and gave us some amazing leaders. I was optimistic that this book would help me change my views on Republicans and teach me that they aren't so bad. And it did, and they weren't...up until Buckley transformed the party and Nixon took power and Movement Conservatism moved in. And then I realized Republicans have nothing to do with Lincoln, and their good points were anomalies. Republicans will never elect a Lincoln or Roosevelt or Eisenhower again. They have become the party of the elite and use the tactic of "if you repeat a lie loud enough and often enough people will believe it." They claim to be the party of morality but in reality they are the party of hypocrisy. The author is more optimistic than I am about a new era starting - I don't see it, and I don't have enough faith that people will stop voting against their best interests - but I hope it is true.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating stuff...Richardson really gets into the ins and outs of party negotiations, which I feel like I never read about. People remember which party wins elections, but they don't remember who the other options were for the nomination and the ways that individual candidates nudge parties a little to the right or a little to the left. This book does sort of make one wish that there was a matching book for the Democrats (it looks like there sort of is, but written by a journalist rather than a historian). I would like to read about the political shifting within that party too.
I found myself more interested in the first and last thirds of this book, and less interested in the middle third, but that might be because I knew a little more about that era already. A particularly good book for understanding the different movements within the GOP of the last thirty years or so, the movements that have led us to this extremely...interesting moment.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read, Richardson wears her biases on her sleeve, and the book doesn't suffer for it. There's a simplistic feel, though, as she tends to paint post-WWII politics with a broad brush. Overall, the book had a freshman/sophomore history class feel to it.

The endnotes aren't particularly helpful: most of the times I turned to the back to check a source, I found a list of contemporary newspaper articles (eg: Chapter 7, note 13), or worse, a citation to Richardson's own work (Chapter 5, note 27). I'm sure that the notes are ultimately substantiated, but as a casual reader checking on random things I find interesting, they weren't edifying.

In the end, I argued with this book and it left me wanting to look more deeply into its topic, so I thought it was worth it.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best review for anything Heather Cox Richardson writes is to just suggest that you subscribe to her daily 'Letters from an American', or follow heron Facebook, particularly on Tuesdays (at 4pm Eastern)and Thursdays (at 1pm Eastern). You can review any of her prior recordings and she has a YouTube channel as well. She is a professor of History in Boston but she is speaking (and writing fro her own POV) She is able to put all of today's mat important news in a historical context and you will ABSOLUTELY read her forever after toured her once!

[Mack Moorman · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a history of the Republican Party it was a fascinating read. Unfortunately it was also highly polemical. While I am sympathetic with her viewpoint, I prefer my histories with more analysis and less demonization.

[Max Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Richardson covers 150 years in 340 pages but this book lacks any nuance or objectivity. It is a well-researched opinion piece, not a well-done history book.