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Conceiving a New Republic: The Republican Party and the Southern Question, 1869-1900. By Charles W. Calhoun. American Political Thought. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, c. 2006. Pp. x, 347. $39.95, ISBN 0-7006-1462-1.)
Reconstruction did not end in 1876 or 1877, or at least northern Republican attention to southern politics and African American rights did not end with Rutherford B. Hayes's election. This is one of many key points made in Charles W. Calhoun's well-written and intriguing study. The erosion of northem support for the Reconstruction experiment has been a popular topic among historians of late, and it now has another political narrative. Following in the footsteps of William Gillette, Vincent P. De Santis, and Stanley P. Hirshson, Calhoun examines the ideas of high-ranking northern Republicans from the presidential election of Ulysses S. Grant to the rise of William McKinley. During this pivotal period, northern Republicans slowly but surely altered their approach to remaking the American republic after the Civil War. Initial efforts to include African Americans and protect their political rights fell to appeals to southern whites for social stability and economic cooperation.
Calhoun begins with the election of Grant and the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Both, Calhoun contends, demonstrated Republican commitments to expand the notion of who constituted...