Mark Lause, the author of several previous books on labor and the Civil War, fills a significant gap in labor history by narrating the experience of the American working class during the war. Unlike generations of early labor historians, who contended that the war distracted American workers from their own struggles and organizing, he details a rich history of labor activism during and in the aftermath of the Civil War. Lause argues instead, drawing inspiration from E. P. Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class, that “the Civil War proved central to the making of the American working class” (ix).
There were over a million American workers on the eve of the war, some of whom had developed a tradition of organizing through skilled trade unions and short-lived working men’s parties. According to Lause, many workers and union leaders carried their traditions of labor activism into the...
