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H-NET BOOK REVIEW 
Published by [log in to unmask] (February, 1999) 
 
Heather Cox Richardson.  _The Greatest Nation of the Earth: 
Republican Economic Policy During the Civil War_.  Harvard 
Historical Studies, 126.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 
1997.  viii + 342 pp.  Bibliographic references and index.  $35.00 
(cloth), ISBN 0-674-36213-6. 
 
Reviewed for H-USA by Adam Smith <[log in to unmask]>, Sidney 
Sussex College, UK 
 
The dramatic emergence of the Republican party and then its 
dominance throughout the Civil War era has always fascinated those 
who wish to understand the coming of the war and the rise of 
industrial capitalism in the United States.  The relationship 
between these two developments, which between them created the 
modern American nation-state, has always been a matter of dispute. 
Most explanations, however, begin with an attempt to understand the 
role of the Republicans. 
 
Eric Foner's path-breaking study of the ideology of the party before 
the Civil War (_Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men_, 1970)  established 
the terms of debate for the modern discussion of these themes.  He 
suggested that abstract anti-slavery sentiment was blended with 
Unionism and with a faith in the individual opportunities presented 
by the free labor system (explicitly contrasted on both moral and 
material grounds with slave labor). An egalitarian society in which 
each man had an equal chance in the "race of life," as Lincoln put 
it, should have been among the fruits of war. 
 
Heather Cox Richardson explains that her study was stimulated by an 
attempt "to understand the ideology of the late nineteenth-century 
Americans who built industrial America" (p.  vii).  In pursuit of 
this end, Richardson has been drawn to write about the formation of 
economic policy by the Republicans who dominated the wartime 
congresses.  In the pages of the Congressional Globe she sees the 
"construction of both a world view and of a newly active national 
government designed to promote that view"  (p. vii).  Her study is 
both an analysis of the structure and mechanics of policy-formation 
and also (although she eschews use of the word) a study of the 
ideology of the Republicans who are her principal actors.  Whereas 
Foner studied speeches and private letters in order to interpret the 
meaning behind political behavior in the 1850s, Richardson studies 
public action and legislative outcomes in order to compare theory 
with practice.  She is far too good a historian to get drawn into 
unnecessary debates which would detract from the story she is 
telling, but one of the most compelling reasons for reading this 
book is precisely the light that it sheds on what abstract ideas 
like "party ideology" might actually mean when they are forced 
through the processing plant of congressional policy-making. 
 
Each chapter is concerned with an aspect of economic policy-war 
bonds, monetary policy, tariffs, agricultural legislation, the 
transcontinental railroad, and slavery.  In each, the aspirations of 
leading Republican policy-makers are set in the rapidly shifting 
context of the war and the interplay among different sections of the 
party.  Richardson limits the study very clearly to the intentions 
and dynamics of congressional policy-makers.  She does not attempt 
to discuss outcomes, only intentions. There is no detailed 
discussion here of, for instance, the failures of the Homestead Act, 
or the implications of banking legislation. 
 
The story she tells is shot through with irony.  "Republicans' 
beliefs about political economy," she writes, "came from a rural 
antebellum world of farming, small enterprise, and strong religious 
belief in economic justice--a world that the war, and in large part, 
the Republicans' own economic legislation undermined" (p. 255).  An 
optimistic faith in a harmony of economic interest between capital 
and labor made them insensitive to the declining bargaining power of 
workers.  As wage-labor expanded and (despite the Homestead Act) 
opportunities for individuals to own productive property were 
restricted, the emerging reality belied the faith in individual 
responsibility and integrity in which Republicans believed. 
According to Richardson, Republicans were genuinely amazed when 
employers did not accord labor its full share of the profits or when 
investors were not effective policemen of the nation's new 
large-scale corporations.  The "flawed theory" on which wartime 
economic policy was based led to the excesses and disappointments of 
the "Gilded Age."  This is not an entirely novel view, but to 
describe the process with the detail and clarity she does is a 
tremendous achievement.  In any case it is a sober corrective to the 
explanatory framework used by Richard Bensel and others who see the 
wartime Republican party as the agent of a "Leviathan" government, 
deliberately constructed for the benefit of northern capitalists. 
 
One of the most interesting aspects of her analysis is the emphasis 
she places on the regional divisions within the party.  She 
convincingly explains that one of the most important divisions 
within the party during debates on currency, banking and 
agricultural legislation was that between East and West. The final 
chapter on slavery is notable for the sensible and convincing 
characterisation of the relationship between anti-slavery ideas and 
notions of a free labor society, backed up by the experience of 
black troops which made the freedmen appear to Northern Republicans 
as the archetype of the American worker--for the moment. 
 
The cleverness and clarity of this book are a product of its 
relatively tight focus.  By avoiding the claim that she is writing 
about "ideology,"  she insulates herself from certain kinds of 
criticism.  She lucidly sets out her evidence, elegantly explaining 
the procedural manoeuvres and the personal influences which shaped 
legislation.  As a sophisticated study of the making of public 
policy, this is a book which would irritate political scientists by 
its dignified refusal to make her analysis more abstract.  Context 
is everything. 
 
The Harvard Ph.D. on which this book was based, supervised by David 
Donald, is a model to which all graduate students should (and do) 
cast envious eyes; and this book makes a substantial contribution to 
our understanding of the Republican party during the war.  But 
inevitably there are some limitations.  The neatness which makes 
this book so engaging can also create a frustration with her 
explanatory framework.  How far were Republicans in congress 
scrambling to respond to events, rather than masters of their own 
economic plan?  Her chapters on bonds and on monetary policy 
highlight the difficulties that arise when trying to describe war 
measures as the considered result of a pre-existing economic 
philosophy.  Furthermore, the Republicans' small-town American Dream 
in which everyone could aspire to own capital was buffeted not only 
by "events" but also by the interests of the financiers and 
large-scale industrialists who bank-rolled the party and the country 
through the crisis. 
 
Most seriously, there is no examination of the function of the 
political party or of public opinion more generally.  She uses 
"party members" as a synonym for congressmen (and occasionally other 
influential party leaders) without attempting to assess the values 
and influences of party activists in the country, still less of the 
"party in the electorate"--those who had voted for Republican 
candidates at election time.  And even within congress, it is also 
harder to judge the distinctiveness of the protagonists aims and 
projects than it might have been if the Democratic opposition had 
featured more strongly in the analysis.  Although she avoids the 
word "ideology," she writes about the aims and ideals of 
"Republicans" on almost every page. The reader is left wondering 
about the origins of the ideas and aspirations on which these 
policies were based, about how they were communicated to the 
electorate, and in what ways they defined the supporters of the 
Lincoln administration at the polls.  But none of this detracts from 
the illumination and readability of what is an admirable book about 
congressional policy-making, filling a long-overdue gap in the vast 
literature on the Civil War. 
 
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