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Young America : land, labor, and the Republican community / Mark A. Lause.

By: Lause, Mark AMaterial type: TextTextPublisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2005Description: viii, 240 p., [4] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cmISBN: 0252029801 (acid-free paper); 9780252029806 (acid-free paper); 0252072308 (pbk. : acid-free paper); 9780252072307 (pbk. : acid-free paper)Subject(s): United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861 | Land reform -- United States -- History -- 19th century | Working class -- Political activity -- United States -- History -- 19th century | Labor movement -- United States -- History -- 19th century | Social movements -- United States -- History -- 19th century | Radicalism -- United States -- History -- 19th century | National Reform Association (U.S.) -- History -- 19th century | Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) -- History -- 19th century | United States -- Social conditions -- To 1865DDC classification: 303.48/4/097309034 LOC classification: E415.7 | .L37 2005
Contents:
A Workers' Movement -- National Reform: Agrarianism and the Origins of the American Workers' Movement -- Working-Class Antimonopoly and Land Monopoly: Building a National Reform Association -- A John-the-Baptist Work: The Agrarian Politicalization of American Socialism -- The Agrarian Persuasion -- The Social Critique: Individual Liberty in a Class Society -- Means and Ends: Pure Democracy, Self-Organization, and the Revolution -- Race and Solidarity: The Test of Rhetoric and Ideology -- The Impact of National Reform -- Free Labor: The Coalition with the Abolitionists -- Free Soil and Cheap Land: National Reform and the Struggle for Radical Agrarianism -- The Republican Revolution: Victory beyond and by the Ballot.
Scope and content: "[Lause] argues that the interest of of working people in equitable access to the country's most obvious asset -- land -- led them to advocate a federal homestead act granting land to the landless, state legislation to prohibit the foreclosure of family farms, and antimonopolistic limitations on land ownership . . .Summary: The alliance of the [National Reform Association's] land reformers and radical abolitionists led unprecedented numbers to petition Congress and established the foundations of what became the new Republican Party, promising "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men." -- BOOK JACKET.
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Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-227) and index.

A Workers' Movement -- National Reform: Agrarianism and the Origins of the American Workers' Movement -- Working-Class Antimonopoly and Land Monopoly: Building a National Reform Association -- A John-the-Baptist Work: The Agrarian Politicalization of American Socialism -- The Agrarian Persuasion -- The Social Critique: Individual Liberty in a Class Society -- Means and Ends: Pure Democracy, Self-Organization, and the Revolution -- Race and Solidarity: The Test of Rhetoric and Ideology -- The Impact of National Reform -- Free Labor: The Coalition with the Abolitionists -- Free Soil and Cheap Land: National Reform and the Struggle for Radical Agrarianism -- The Republican Revolution: Victory beyond and by the Ballot.

"[Lause] argues that the interest of of working people in equitable access to the country's most obvious asset -- land -- led them to advocate a federal homestead act granting land to the landless, state legislation to prohibit the foreclosure of family farms, and antimonopolistic limitations on land ownership . . .

The alliance of the [National Reform Association's] land reformers and radical abolitionists led unprecedented numbers to petition Congress and established the foundations of what became the new Republican Party, promising "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men." -- BOOK JACKET.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The mid-19th-century US was rife with reform initiatives, including those directed against slavery, diet, working conditions, and the status of women. Land reform, one of the more persistent initiatives, was an egalitarian notion designed to bring land ownership to the many and limit the acreage controlled by any individual. Motivated by a radical communitarian vision, the land reformers argued their case and joined with other reformers as they affiliated variously with the Locofocos, the Whigs, the Free-Soilers, and, ultimately in 1854, the nascent Republican Party. The triumph was the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. This short monograph chronicles the efforts of the National Reform Association (NRA) and its hard-core supporters who organized eastern urban support before expanding their efforts to the more rural upper Midwest. Land reform was central, but the group also dabbled in other issues, including working-class notions such as a shorter workday and abolition of child labor. Thoroughly documented, the book gives biographical notice to a number of NRA spokespersons, but the argument centers on ideological and political transformations that dominated the short existence of the organization. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. T. F. Armstrong Louisiana State University at Alexandria

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Mark A. Lause is a professor of American history at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of A Secret Society History of the Civil War, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army Some Degree of Power: From Hired Hand to Union Craftsman in the Preindustrial American Printing Trades, 1778-1815 and other books.

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