Free labor : the Civil War and the making of an American working class / Mark A. Lause.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lause, Mark A., author.

Series:

Working class in American history.

Working Class in American History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Working class--United States--History--19th century.

Working class.

Working class--United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Labor movement--United States--History--19th century.

Labor movement.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Social aspects.

United States.

United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana, Illinois ; Chicago, Illinois ; Springfield, Illinois : University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Monumental and revelatory, Free Labor explores labor activism throughout the country during a period of incredible diversity and fluidity: the American Civil War. Mark A. Lause describes how the working class radicalized during the war as a response to economic crisis, the political opportunity created by the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the ideology of free labor and abolition. His account moves from battlefield and picket line to the negotiating table, as he discusses how leaders and the rank-and-file alike adapted tactics and modes of operation to specific circumstances. His close attention to women and African Americans, meanwhile, dismantles notions of the working class as synonymous with whiteness and maleness. In addition, Lause offers a nuanced consideration of race's role in the politics of national labor organizations, in segregated industries in the border North and South, and in black resistance in the secessionist South, creatively reading self-emancipation as the largest general strike in U.S. history.

Contents:

Prologue: The antebellum labor crisis: organized workers as a force in mid-nineteenth-century American history

Part I. Labor, liberty, and union

Workers and the crisis of nationhood: the social republic, peace, and the union

Continuities of class: the persistence of labor struggles

Organized labor goes to war: the fate of the old workers' movement

Part II. Remaking the work force

The great slave strike: emancipation and race

The alienation of militancy: immigrants and the new white workingmen

The survival of moral suasion: gender, sisterhood, and paternalism

Part II. War, revolution, and labor

New militancy across the union: the strike waves and labor movements of 1863

Richmond, New Orleans, Nashville: the diverse experience of urban labor in the south

The state power: workers and the new authorities, north and south

Part IV. Shaping the postwar order

The emergence of labor reform: class, citizenship, and politics

Toward a national labor presence: exploring the class limits of respectability

A peace of sorts: labor, liberty, and respectability

Epilogue: 1877: reconstructions of class.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780252080869

0252080866

OCLC:

910662761