Since the 1960s, historians of labor and the working class have diligently sought to expand our knowledge and understanding of their subject by employing perspectives that transcend an institutional or “top down” approach long associated with the Wisconsin School and its practitioners. To a remarkable degree, this “new” labor history has been successful and some credit must go to The Working Class in American History series published by the University of Illinois Press. Since the series began under the guidance of luminaries Herbert Gutman, David Montgomery, and David Brody in the 1970s, nearly 150 monographs have been published, many of them noteworthy. To that list we may now add Matthew E. Stanley's book, Grand Army of Labor.Stanley's work surveys the profound impact that the Civil War and its memory held on American workers in the decades from the end of the war until World War II. In this deeply researched and wide-ranging study, he examines and analyzes the use of war memories and notable figures—John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass—in labor and left organizations and their struggles in these many decades. For veterans and their progeny, the war remained a vital intellectual force as they sought to make sense of the new order and recruit allies in their battle against those forces seeking to enslave all workers to industrial capitalism and the ruling class. A host of organizations and their leaders stepped into the fray to curtail “wage slavery,” ensure that all workers in the Grand Army of Labor remained “free labor,” that the agenda of “emancipation” and “liberation” that Lincoln, Brown, and others so loudly proclaimed would continue to move forward, and that “freedom” was not just another word for nothing left to lose!To demonstrate how the war memory was employed, articulated, defined, and redefined by labor groups and leaders after the war, Stanley offers readers overviews of various organizations. He begins in 1866 with the National Labor Union and moves chapter by chapter through the Greenback Labor Party, Farmers’ Alliance, Knights of Labor, Socialist Labor Party, Populism and the People's Party, American Federation of Labor, Industrial Workers of the World, Socialist Party of America, Communist Party, and Popular Front. For each, he presents an historical overview and a survey of the varied renderings that emerged in the fight for a more just workplace for all. Stanley is keenly aware of the shortcomings of most of these groups and their leaders on matters of race and gender and addresses these topics in his surveys. The Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party may have promulgated an anti-segregation and gender-inclusive message, but the Knights of Labor never enforced their integrationist policy, and the American Federation of Labor remained a bastion of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. As Stanley deftly explains, the Civil War memory could be reimagined and manipulated in the name of whiteness and masculinity as nationalism, patriotism, national unity, and the blue-gray reunion moved ahead. Both leadership and rank and file shared in this declension of the war's liberationist, democratic, egalitarian potential.Stanley provides readers a useful and rewarding examination and overview. The book merits a careful reading by any scholar interested in labor, the Gilded Age, radicalism, and social reform. Although some may already be aware of many points covered here, Stanley's survey approach will appeal to those with a broad historical palette who seek a longer and broader view. Perhaps the only major fault one might find with this work, and it is quite ironic, is that so few of the “grand army,” the rank and file, are allowed to speak. Unfortunately, Stanley relies on the leadership and their words and writings as he seeks to articulate how memory was used. Had he probed the work of the thousands of workers who contributed local labor reports, letters to the editors, poems, songs, and other writings to the labor papers throughout the country, the scope of the army and its memory might be considered more “grand.” Notwithstanding this criticism, Stanley's work is significant and valuable, marking another noteworthy contribution to the series in which it appears.
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Open Access
Apr 23, 2022
Grégoire Yerly 
