The Birth of the Grand Old PartyThe Republicans' First GenerationEdited by Robert F. Engs and Randall M. Miller. Afterword by James M. McPherson"The essays cogently summarize the latest scholarship and suggest new scholarly directions. The book includes a fine narrative overview by the editors as well as a brief afterword by James McPherson that highlights the major historiographical fautlines underlying this complex--and, in years past, frequently heated--subject. . . . Handsome, thoughtful, and accessible, this book deserves a place on everyone's bookshelf."--American Historical Review"Editors Robert Engs and Randall Miller have assembled six of the profession's finest historians and have given nineteenth-century political history another day. In this well-conceptualized volume, Eric Foner, Michael Holt, Phillip Shaw Paludan, Mark Neely, Jean Baker, and Brooks Simpson provide some interesting essays as well as some points of departure for studying the genesis, growth, and contradictions of the Republican Party."--Florida Historical QuarterlyContributors--Jean H. Baker, Professor of History at Goucher College, Maryland, is author of Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography.Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is author of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, winner of the Bancroft Prize.Michael F. Holt, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia, is author of The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War.James M. McPherson, Professor of History at Princeton University, is author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history.Mark E. Neely, Jr., McCabe-Greer Professor in the American Civil War Era at Pennsylvania State University, is author of The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history.Phillip Shaw Paludan, Naomi Lynn Professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield, is author of The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Lincoln Prize.Brooks D. Simpson, Professor of History at Arizona State University, is author of Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865.Published in cooperation with The Library Company of Philadelphia.Robert F. Engs is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-1890 and Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited: Samuel Chapman Armstrong and Hampton Institute, 1839-1893.Randall M. Miller is Professor of History and the William Dirk Warren '50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including "Dear Master": Letters of a Slave Family, Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, and Catholics in the Old South: Essays on Church and Culture.2002 | 216 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 49 illus.ISBN 978-0-8122-3674-3 | Cloth | $59.95s | £39.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-1820-6 | Paper | $24.95s | £16.50 World Rights | American History, Political ScienceShort copy:This collection of six original essays by some of America's most distinguished historians of the Civil War era examines the origins and evolution of the Republican party over the course of its first generation.