Offers a comprehensive history of pre-Civil War American radicalism, mapping the journeys of the land reformers, Jacksonian radicals, and militant abolitionists who paved the way to the failed slave revolt at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Lause provides new insights into the cast of characters who created a homegrown socialist movement in America--from Thomas Paine's revolution to Robert Owen's utopianism, and from Thomas Skidmore's agrarianism to George Henry Evans's industrial workers' reforms. He also discusses the persistent ...
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Offers a comprehensive history of pre-Civil War American radicalism, mapping the journeys of the land reformers, Jacksonian radicals, and militant abolitionists who paved the way to the failed slave revolt at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Lause provides new insights into the cast of characters who created a homegrown socialist movement in America--from Thomas Paine's revolution to Robert Owen's utopianism, and from Thomas Skidmore's agrarianism to George Henry Evans's industrial workers' reforms. He also discusses the persistent resistance of Native Americans to the expansion of capitalism. Showing how class solidarity and consciousness became more important to a generation of workers than notions of American citizenship, Lause presents an historical background to help us understand the rise of radicalism in the United States today. --Adapted from publisher description.
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