Another Civil War

Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840-1868

Grace Palladino

Publication Year: 2006

Winner of the Avery O. Craven Prize of the Organization of American HistoriansAnother Civil War explores a tumultuous era of social change in the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania. Because the Union Army depended on anthracite to fuel steam-powered factories, locomotives, and battle ships, coal miners in Schuylkill, Luzerne, and Carbon Counties played a vital role in the Northern war effort. However, that role was complicated by a history of ethnic, political, and class conflicts: after years of struggle in an unsafe and unstable industry, miners expected to use their wartime economic power to win victories for themselves and their families. Yet they were denounced as traitors and draft resisters, and their strikes were broken by Federal troops. Focusing on the social and economic impact of the Civil War on a group of workers central to that war, this dramatic narrative raises important questions about industrialization and work-place conflicts in the mid-1860s, about the rise of a powerful, centralized government, and about the ties between government and industry that shaped class relations. It traces the deep, local roots of wartime strikes in the coal regions and demonstrates important links between national politics, military power, and labor organization in the years before, during, and immediately after the Civil War.

Published by: Fordham University Press

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Title

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Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-x

Like most products of "individual enterprise," this book could not have been published without the assistance of family, friends, colleagues, and institutions, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge . . .

Preface to the Fordham Edition

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pp. xi-xviii

How do we measure the meaning of the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history? Was it a war to emancipate the slaves? A courageous test of minority versus majority rights? A . . .

1. Introduction

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pp. 3-15

By the time that Charles Sharpe and James McDonnell ascended the gallows outside the Carbon County Courthouse in January 1879, eight other "Molly Maguire" convicts had preceded them . . .

2. The Industry:Speculation, Competition,and Control 1820-60

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pp. 16-42

"If ever a nation had occasion for thanksgiving," the Philadelphia Public Ledger proclaimed in November 1863, "we are that people." Despite the devastation of "a gigantic war," the paper . . .

3. The Miners:Economic Centralization and Class Formation 1840-60

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pp. 43-69

When Philip Hone visited the coal regions in 1831, he described, with obvious pleasure, a typical Sunday in Carbondale. "The rattling of the cars, the explosion of gun powder and the clanking . . .

4. The Region:Class, Ethnicity,and Political Allegiance1840-60

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pp. 70 -94

"What is our duty as patriotic men-as sons descended from Revolutionary ancestors?" Charles Albright asked delegates to Carbon County's Peoples Convention in July 1862. For Albright . . .

5. Opposition to Conscription in the Coal Regions 1862-63

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pp. 95-120

During the summer of 1862 Abraham Lincoln endorsed the theory that only total war-war waged to destroy the structure of southern society-would resurrect the Union. His decision . . .

6. Labor Organization in the Wartime Economy1862-65

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pp. 121-139

"Unless we are egregiously mistaken," Jonathan Fincher, a machinist and editor of Fincher's Trades' Review, pointed out in 1863, labor and capital "are one and inseparable." It was the capitalists . . .

7. The Return to Order:The Provost Marshal and Organized Labor1862-65

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pp. 140-165

"I am confident," James B. Fry reported to Edwin Stanton in 1866, "that there is no class of public servants to whom the country is so indebted ... than to the District Provost Marshals." . . .

8. Conclusion

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pp. 166-175

"I have always said ... that the great majority of laboring men in Schuylkill County, nay in all the mining districts," Charles Heckscher remarked in his farewell address as president of the . . .

Bibliography

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pp. 177-189

Index

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pp. 191-198

E-ISBN-13: 9780823246427
Print-ISBN-13: 9780823225910
Print-ISBN-10: 0823225917

Page Count: 216
Publication Year: 2006