When It Was Grand

[A] well-researched, densely detailed account . . . A deep scholarly look into a time when radicals in the Republican Party planted the roots for the civil rights movement. --Kirkus Reviews Keith writes at length and with eloquence about the role of black abolitionists in pressing for emancipation before and during the war . . . [A] gripping accounts of partisanship, political ambition, civil disobedience, and the creative ways that radicals used print and speech to persuade Americans to understand and accept the necessity of emancipation and the importance of equal rights. --Randall M. Miller, Library Journal Lincoln's combination of cautiousness and radicalism is aptly described by LeeAnna Keith, who writes of 'Lincoln's outwardly conservative campaign to build a consensus around military emancipation' . . . Yet very similar impulses, she shows, had been previously acted on by brave antislavery reformers, without whom the crucial moment would never have been brought about . . . [When It Was Grand] covers militants who have never been juxtaposed before. --David S. Reynolds, The Wall Street Journal the Radical Republicans have always been the most colorful of the party's factions to chronicle. They have enjoyed both outstanding group histories and individual biographies. And with LeeAnna Keith's new When It Was Grand, we are presented with a bridge built from the Radical Republicans of the Civil War era to modern progressives in the 21st century. --Allen C. Guelzo, The Civil War Monitor This timely and highly readable book gives us a concise history of the Republican party when it was the party of Lincoln and antislavery. LeeAnna Keith shows that abolitionists and the Radical Republicans, far from being extremists, were seers of an interracial democracy in the United States who would be dismayed at the state of the party they founded today. --Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition