06/10/2019
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.)
"A lucid, thoroughly researched account . . . [Postel] breaks new ground . . . Equality reminds us of a homegrown radical heritage that critics of today's deeply unequal America can be inspired by and must improve upon." —Eric Foner, The Nation
"Lucid, engrossing, and lively." —Fergus M. Bordewich, The Wall Street Journal
"An expansive portrait of the post-Civil War U.S. . . . Postel has written an intelligent plea for 'a just and equal society.'” —Kevin Canfield, San Francisco Chronicle
"A lucid and deeply researched investigation of three of the post-Civil War era's most powerful social reform movements and their charismatic leaders." —Library Journal
"Persuasively argue[d] . . . 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." —Publishers Weekly
"A closely argued account of how various constituencies . . . vied for a place at the table in the reunited republic . . . Postel has a keen eye for unlikely juxtapositions . . . [Equality is] of much use in understanding the course of late-19th-Century American history, a time of turmoil that resembles our own." —Kirkus
"Americans today are torn by the fierce politics of inequality, but not for the first time in our history. Charles Postel's urgent yet subtle account of the first American Gilded Age ought to be required reading for understanding the nation's long egalitarian tradition, with lessons for confronting our second Gilded Age." —Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy and the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University
"We live in a new Gilded Age, Americans often hear, a time of soaring wealth for a few and growing inequality for many. Charles Postel helps us understand the first Gilded Age, when those problems were met with unprecedented organizing and mobilizing by Americans who felt themselves dispossessed and disfranchised. In his sweeping, engaged, and humane account, Postel shows the accomplishments and failures of the efforts by working people, farmers, and women to reorient the United States toward greater justice and equality." —Edward Ayers, author of America on the Eve of the Civil War and the Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond
"With impeccable scholarship and brilliant narration, Charles Postel has rewritten the history of post-Civil War social movements. Racial exclusion, he shows, was the Achilles' heel of many them despite their commitment to economic democracy. This book is both timely and required reading for anyone interested in the problem of equality today." —Manisha Sinha, author of The Slaver's Cause and the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut
“Perfectly timed to help us understand the historical roots of inequalities that plague our society today, Charles Postel’s Equality is also a compelling and elegant interpretation of how those inequalities emerged during the watershed of American history—when struggles for equality shaped modern America after the Civil War. An enduring achievement.” —Kathryn Kish Sklar, author of Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work and Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York, Binghamton
“This brilliant and beautifully researched story about white supremacy in American politics reveals the depth of its entanglement with our egalitarian traditions. Postel’s new book is innovative, persuasive, and crushingly timely.” —Robin L. Einhorn, author of American Taxation, American Slavery and the Preston Hotchkis Professor in the History of the United States at UC Berkeley
“Charles Postel's Equality is a brilliant reinterpretation of the egalitarian social movements that swept the United States during the decades following the Civil War. No other historian has more skillfully explored the economic, racial, and sexual tensions that pervaded these struggles for equality and that persist to the present. After Postel's scrutiny, the first Gilded Age will never look the same. Neither will the second—the one we now inhabit.” —Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation, The Making of Modern America and the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University
“Equality is a deeply researched, beautifully written, and brilliantly argued history of the epic struggle to define the meaning of equality in post-Civil War America. This magnificent portrait of the farmer’s Grange, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Knights of Labor is filled with fresh insights into the social movements that took root during Reconstruction and blossomed in the Gilded Age. Confronting some of the most difficult questions in American history, Postel adds new dimensions to our understanding of the racial, gender, and class inequalities that continue to shape our social and political landscape.” —Crystal N. Feimster, author of Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching and Associate Professor of African American Studies at Yale University
2019-04-28
A closely argued account of how various constituencies—women, farmers, African Americans, workers—vied 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.
