In this Book
- Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: University of Illinois Press
- Series: The Working Class in American History
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.
Table of Contents
- Title page, Copyright page
- pp. i-iv
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- Introduction
- pp. ix-xvi
- Part I. Labor, Liberty, and Union
- Part II. Remaking the Work Force
- Part III. War, Revolution, and Labor
- Part IV. Shaping the Postwar Order
- Epilogue. 1877: Reconstructions of Class
- pp. 183-196
Additional Information
Copyright
2015