Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

I. Recap: Work in Flux, 1840II. Labor Republicanism

A. IdeologyB. Economic ExpressionC. Cultural ExpressionD. Political ExpressionE. Paranoid Aspects

III. Workers and the G.O.P.A. PoliticsB. Policies

IV. The Civil War and ReconstructionA. Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s FightB. Reconstructing LaborC. Dividing the Working ClassD. Unfinished Revolution

Recap

• Market revolution

• In the North, wage labor replaces servitude, slavery, craft apprenticeship

• Slavery grows stronger in the South

Free Labor Ideology• Nobility of work

– Protestant work ethic

• Freedom of Contract

• Upward mobility

• Political participation

• Anti-slavery

Economic• Unions

– Between 1834 and 1836, number of members grows from 26K to 300K

– Between 1833 and 1837, 175 strikes

– Form National Trades’ Union

Charter, United Order American Mechanics, 1853

Cultural

Mariners’ temperance pledge, 1840s

• Religion offers:– Alternative

status– Advancement

• Temperance allows men to show their manly discipline and independence.

Political

• Jacksonian values

– Economic expansion creates opportunity

– Eliminate special privileges that bar mobility

– Expand individual rights to white men without property

The Dark Side

• Anti-Masonry– Murder of Wm.

Morgan

• Nativism– Know Nothing Party

• Racism– Blackface minstrelsy

Song sheet with minstrel, 1850s

Political Realignm

ent• Slavery shatters

Democrats and Whigs– Albany-Richmond alliance

• New parties emerge– Free Soil Party (1848-54)– Know Nothings (1854-6)

• Republican Party (1854-) – Absorbs Whigs, Know

Nothings, and Free Soilers

– Becomes prime exponent of free labor ideology

Policies

• Land– Homesteading– Land grant colleges

• Industry– Tariffs – Internal

improvements

• Anti-slavery

Rich Man’s War, Poor

Man’s Fight• Refugee

slaves

• Poor Southern white resistance– Pres. Andrew

Johnson

• New York City Draft Riots

NY Governor Seymour addresses the rioters

Reconstructing Labor

Southern industrial school for freedpeople, 1866

Dividing the Working Class

• Opposition to slavery was not equivalent to racial egalitarianism

• Postwar politicians exploit racial resentment to break Radical power

Unfinished Revolution