The Door of Hope: Republican Presidents and the First Southern Strategy, 1877‐1933. By Edward O.Frantz. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011. 295 pp.

Abstract

The Door of Hope: Republican Presidents and First Strategy, 1877-1933. By Edward O. Frantz. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011. 295 pp. Edward O. Frantz's Door of Hope examines a forgotten element of post-Reconstruction presidential politics, tours undertaken by Republican sitting presidents from Rutherford B. Hayes to William H. Taft. Frantz argues that tours were attempts by Republican presidents both to create a truly national party and to resolve their ... longstanding commitment to African American (p. 3). If, as Frantz points out, these two goals were necessarily contradictory, he maintains that examining Republican presidents' attempts to harmonize them shows that Southern strategy of post-World War II Republican presidents has a long history. Hayes and Harrison made appeals to equal rights, which subsumed conflict over African American civil rights into vague generalities. Hayes took to rostrum again and again during his 1877 tour to promote the cause of (p. 36), claiming that Union and Republican Party's only desire was that former Confederates should obey Constitution, pronouncing himself satisfied by hearty applause following such lines. Harrison made similar appeals, stating in Knoxville in 1891 that no community can safely divide on question of implicit obedience to law (p. 70). Frantz shows how divergent audiences placed great emphasis on divining meaning behind these seemingly anodyne statements. He notes that while previous historians have at times treated these comments as sentimental bosh (p. 36), these tours attracted a great deal of attention, documented both in newspaper accounts and correspondence. Frantz shows that they attracted attention because contemporaries rightly saw them as attempts to broaden political reach of Republican Party, which would shape direction of party's policies in South. But however warmly Southerners received Hayes and Harrison in public appearances, presidents' emphasis on conciliation won them few white votes. It also greatly alarmed African Americans, who saw presidents demonstrate in these tours that one could not simultaneously appeal to white voters and protect equal rights for blacks anywhere beyond podium. If Hayes and Harrison pointed way to a Republican strategy, Frantz argues that William McKinley implemented it. In 1898, McKinley's words, actions, and omissions demonstrated his commitment to reconciliation with white Southerners at expense of African Americans. …