Description
Book SynopsisA history of home-grown American radicalism in the 19th century.
Trade Review'By unearthing hidden history, Mark Lause describes the class struggle and working-class radicalism embedded within the American revolution. These working-class radicals also fought for the abolition of slavery, indigenous rights and women's equality. This is a must read!' -- Sharon Smith, author of 'Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States'
'A welcome antidote to the official myth of a country built by rugged, gun-toting individualists, Long Road to Harpers Ferry tells the story of collective resistance against slavery and exploitation in the early US. People's history at its best, Mark Lause's fine book brings this other America to life on its pages' -- Francis King, editor, 'Socialist History'
'In this immensely original and important book, Mark Lause brilliantly reconceptualizes the road to Harpers Ferry by recovering the anti-capitalist and anti-racist agendas of the black and white abolitionists who organized and launched the raid, establishing the "First American Left' -- John Stauffer, Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard, and winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part I: Working Citizens: From Ideas to Organization
1. Liberty: Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Legacies and Challenges
2. Equality: The Mandates of Community and the Necessity of Expropriation
3. Solidarity: Coalescing a Mass Resistance
Part II: Working Citizens Towards a Working Class: From Organization to a Movement
4. The Movement Party: Beyond the Failures of Civic Ritual
5. Confronting Race and Empire: Slavery and Mexico
6. Free Soil: The Electoral Distillation of Radicalism, 1847-1848
Part III: An Unrelenting Radicalism: From Movement to Cadres
7. Free Soil Radicalized: The Rise and Course of the Free Democrats 1849-1853
8. The Pre-Revolutionary Tinderbox: Universal Democratic Republicans, Free Democrats and Radical Abolitionists 1853-1856
9. The Spark: Small Initiatives and Mass Upheavals 1856-1860
Epilogue: Survival and Persistence: The Lineages and Legacies of the Early American Movement
Notes
Index
