Summary
An in-depth study of American social movements after the Civil War and their lessons for today by a prizewinning historian
The Civil War unleashed a torrent of claims for equality--in the chaotic years following the war, former slaves, women's rights activists, farmhands, and factory workers all engaged in the pursuit of the meaning of equality in America. This contest resulted in experiments in collective action, as millions joined leagues and unions. In Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866-1886 , Charles Postel demonstrates how taking stock of these movements forces us to rethink some of the central myths of American history.
Despite a nationwide push for equality, egalitarian impulses oftentimes clashed with one another. These dynamics get to the heart of the great paradox of the fifty years following the Civil War and of American history at large: Waves of agricultural, labor, and women's rights movements were accompanied by the deepening of racial discrimination and oppression. Herculean efforts to overcome the economic inequality of the first Gilded Age and the sexual inequality of the late-Victorian social order emerged alongside Native American dispossession, Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow segregation, and lynch law.
Now, as Postel argues, the twenty-first century has ushered in a second Gilded Age of savage socioeconomic inequalities. Convincing and learned, Equality explores the roots of these social fissures and speaks urgently to the need for expansive strides toward equality to meet our contemporary crisis.
Author Notes
Charles Postel is the author of The Populist Vision , which received the 2008 Bancroft Prize and the 2008 Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians. He is a professor of history at San Francisco State University and was elected to the Society of American Historians in 2018.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In an acute analysis, historian Postel (The Populist Vision) persuasively argues that three advocacy organizations which worked to achieve a more level socioeconomic level playing field in the decades following the Civil War advanced their causes at the expense of racial equality. Postel looks at the Grange (focused on the needs of farmers), the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU, focused on women), and the Knights of Labor (KOL, advocated for industrial workers) and notes that, for example, even though African-Americans comprised a majority of members in the KOL, Thomas Powderly, its longtime leader, declared in 1886 that, while black and white workers deserved "an equal share of protection," his organization had "no wish to interfere with the social relations which exist between the races of the South." His successor, James Sovereign, favored the deportation of African-Americans to Liberia or the Congo. The two other organizations took many progressive stances, with the Grange fighting railroad monopolies and the WCTU advocating for women's suffrage and the eight-hour workday. But they, too, were willing to acquiesce to Jim Crow laws and customs. (The WCTU's leader, Frances Willard, even defended lynch mobs as taking, in Postel's words, "defensive actions against black sexual predators.") With deep research and clear prose, Postel ably demonstrates that African-Americans were consistently excluded from these reformers' visions of a more equal America. Postel's broad and valuable study ably illuminates the era. (Aug.)
Kirkus Review
A closely argued account of how various constituencieswomen, farmers, African Americans, workersvied for a place at the table in the reunited republic.As Bancroft Prize-winning historian Postel (San Francisco State Univ.; The Populist Vision, 2007) recounts, the Civil War brought newfound demands for equality in unexpected ways. At the beginning of the narrative, the author chronicles how logisticians responsible for burying the Union dead at Gettysburg struggled to devise a way to represent each contributing state equally, "a challenge given that more bodies came from some states than from others and given the sloping and uneven terrain of the grounds." Other interest groups would find the terrain even rougher. The Grange movement, for instance, sought to represent the interests of small farmers in a time of federal consolidation and the growth of great railroad and manufacturing corporations. The press of the agrarians for a Cabinet-level secretary of agriculture led to some uncomfortable accommodations, including making common cause with Southern farmers opposed to Reconstruction. As a result, African Americans were often excluded, though sometimes not, in influential visions of the postwar nation. The Grangers and radical labor movement alike saw their enemy as the "monopolists," a category that "included bankers, lawyers, grain elevator and cotton gin operators, insurance agents, grain and cotton purchasers, farm machinery dealers, and local merchants." The women's temperance movement took similar views: The enemy was not just alcohol, but also inequality, which yielded a movement to outlaw booze and, as well, grant women the right to vote, to say nothing of demanding equal pay for equal work. Postel has a keen eye for unlikely juxtapositions. For instance, as he writes, the leader of the hard-charging Knights of Labor became not just a close ally and protector of the radical activist Mother Jones, but also, and simultaneously, "an official in the federal bureaucracy enforcing the Chinese exclusion laws and other restrictive policies."Of much use in understanding the course of late-19th-century American history, a time of turmoil that resembles our own in many respects. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Historian Postel provides an excellent example of how broad topics can be researched and discussed with a balanced, rational perspective while also subtly drawing important, often new parallels between past and current situations. Most analyses of the post-Civil War era focus primarily on race and/or politics. Postel moves beyond the usual in a holistic approach that includes all persons disenfranchised due to class, race, location, or other socioeconomic factors during a time in which equality was finally a matter of law, though the laws governing its practice were often manipulated to suit those in power. To ensure that the reader fully understands the issues that shaped this period, Postel tells the stories of three social movements which emerged during the period to fight for the rights of farmers, women, and workers. Equality tracks a repeating cycle: when racial violence escalades, so, too, does erosion of civil rights while the gap between the haves and have-nots increases, all of which serve as catalysts for social movements in which people voice their concerns and fight for equality and justice. Informative and timely.--Jennifer Johnson Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
What did equality look like in the US after the Civil War? Historian Postel (San Francisco State Univ.) provides the answer in this well-researched book. He critiques equality through the prisms of race, gender, and class by investigating agricultural organizations, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and the Knights of Labor. Postel's discussion is particularly unique for its dissection of labor. He inspects workers in northern factories, farmers, coal miners, and domestic laborers as well as workers in the Midwest, South, and West. He finds that some organizations occasionally paid lip service to egalitarian values, but in reality, the concept was reserved for the world of white male supremacy, and, as a result, these organizations contradicted themselves in practice over the issue of equality. Just as radical Republicans had done in the 1870s, by the 1890s, these organizations had abandoned African Americans, although they still fought economic divisions. Socialism, to a degree, is present throughout the text, but its analysis could be better developed. However, this does not diminish the main crux of Postel's thesis, which exposes another root of inequality in the US, one that is still visible today. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Raymond Douglas Screws, Arkansas National Guard Museum
Library Journal Review
Postel (history, San Francisco State Univ.; The Populist Vision) offers a lucid and deeply researched investigation of three of the post-Civil War era's most powerful social reform movements and their charismatic leaders. The Grange, led by Oliver Kelley, fought for the rights of small farmers; the Women's Christian Temperance Union, presided over by Francis Willard, advocated for women's rights and child labor laws; and the Knights of Labor, directed by Terrence Powderly, held strikes to improve lives of workers. Postel is at his best when describing how all three movements struck devil's bargains with the white South that in return for its membership marginalized African Americans who were denied the social equality these movements promised. African Americans formed their own protective organizations, but they were overrun by Jim Crow laws, while the above reform groups fell victim to economic and political elites. Postel warns that the early 21st century echoes the inequality of the Reconstruction and Gilded Age years, and that mass collective activism is essential to fulfilling the American promise. VERDICT This scholarly account will appeal to informed readers, especially Reconstruction era historians.--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA