The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 [Hardcover]

[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