Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War

This book, along with Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, provides extremely valuable insights into a crucial turning point in American history, which still resonates today. Both are masterpieces of synthesis and interpretation. Both are scholarly and detailed, yet convey a feeling of excitement at the events described. Both enable the reader to relive the tensions, aspirations, thoughts, and struggles of the times they describe. The 1995 reissue of Free Soil begins with an important essay by Foner, which he wrote for it. Foner was a Marxist-Leninist when he wrote both books. But he never allowed his Marxism to vitiate his historical analysis. On the contrary, he constantly emphasized that the motives that propelled the participants were ideas and ideals, not economic interest or social class (e.g., pages 4-5, 104-5, 110, 113, 168-76, 183-4, 304)

The Civil War era is surely one of the most complex, controversial, and tumultuous periods in our nation's history and one of the most difficult to capture. "Free Soil, Free Labor, ..." is a sterling effort to provide insight into the social philosophies of the time that almost inevitably led to the breakup of the Union. While ostensibly concerned with the ideology of the Republican Party leading up to the Civil War, the author clearly shows that the Republicans also both reflected and advanced the belief system that came to permeate much of the North. A key component of Northern thinking emphasized a free labor and producer ethic, which extolled the virtues of free, independent, and propertied working men. Dependency was eschewed as evidence of personal shortcoming. But the institution of slavery violated that ethic in every way. Not only were slaves not free, but also Southern aristocratic society degraded free labor. To be a free laborer in the South was to be a member of a lower class. These diametrically opposed views of labor were the basis of an ongoing controversy dating from the Missouri Compromise over the issue of permitting slavery in newly obtained territories or newly admitted states. The Northern and Republican position was one of "free soil," for free laborers.Though not emphasizing the chronological history of the Republican Party, the author traces the assimilation into the party of members or adherents of the Abolitionists, the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party, anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs, the Know-Nothings, and the so-called radical Republicans. A good sampling of the pronouncements of the leading Northern political figures of the era as well as the positions of key newspaper publishers is quite illuminating. It is a mild criticism of the book that the author, in following the historical trail, at times provides insufficient background on historical events that he refers to such as the Wilmot Proviso, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Lecompton controversy, etc. Certainly much of the rise of the Republican Party was due to a concern of Northern Whigs and Democrats that the political process in Washington was being dominated by a southern Slave Power. That Slave Power was seen as a force intent on expanding the geographical reach of slavery. Every attempt at expansion of slave territory drove more and more people to the ranks of the parties that became the Republican Party. The author is keen to point out that while anti-slavery was a moral crusade on the part of some Republicans, for most the prevention of the Slave Power in expanding its reach and the preservation and expansion of Northern society superceded any moral imperative to emancipate slaves. It is not the author's intent to directly list the causes of the Civil War, yet it would be difficult to deny the relevance of this book in answering those questions. But the author does address some claims of causation. While not denying that protective tariffs were controvers

Ryan Setliff's crude economic analysis of the reasons for the formation of the Republican party (see next review) hardly stand up to Foner's convincing arguments, backed with a suitable array of EVIDENCE, for the tangled web of factors and motives that led individuals into the Republican part in the 1950s. Anyone wishing to understand this crucial period in US history cannot afford to miss this book.

Foner's account of the antebellum formation of the Republican Party and its ideology is a model for what truly great history writing should be. This work is a relatively easy read (as history texts go), but without sacrificing any academic value. Of all of the books I've read about antebellum American politics, this is far and away my favorite.

His basic argument is that what bound the north together against the south is not the hatred of slavery, but the northern conception of what the economic ordering of society should be. The north was for the free laborer to work to the best of his abilities, while the GOP saw the south as arsitrocratic and decadent. A convicning argument and a fast read. You can see how the arguments about morality and economics have carried through surprisingly intact for over years. This was his doctoral thesis expanded into a book. I'm biased though, he's my Professor at Columbia.