Ain't you glad you joined the Republicans?

the long version

John Calvin Batchelor's "Ain't You Glad You Joined the Republicans?" (Abraham Lincoln's 1860 campaign slogan) is the truth, and nothing but the unbelievable truth, of the Grand Old Party of the Republic. Born in the cataclysm of the antislavery movement, the Republican Party was from the first - and remains today - the most successful revolutionary party in the history of democracy. And the Party's story - from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich - is the pageant of American politics. Using primary sources long overlooked by traditional historians and employing a novelist's eye and ear for the telling detail, Batchelor, in his sweeping narrative, encompasses one and a half centuries of Republican battle and paradox.