An in-depth study of American social movements after the Civil War
and their lessons for today by a prizewinning historian
The Civil War unleashed a torrent of claims for equality—in the
chaotic years following the war, former slaves, women’s rights
activists, farmhands, and factory workers all engaged in the pursuit
of the meaning of equality in America. This contest resulted in
experiments in collective action, as millions joined leagues and
unions. In Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1886, Charles
Postel demonstrates how taking stock of these movements forces us to
rethink some of the central myths of American history.
Despite a nationwide
push for equality, egalitarian impulses oftentimes clashed with one
another. These dynamics get to the heart of the great paradox of the
fifty years following the Civil War and of American history at large:
Waves of agricultural, labor, and women’s rights movements were
accompanied by the deepening of racial discrimination and oppression.
Herculean efforts to overcome the economic inequality of the first
Gilded Age and the sexual inequality of the late-Victorian social
order emerged alongside Native American dispossession, Chinese
exclusion, Jim Crow segregation, and lynch law.
Now, as Postel
argues, the twenty-first century has ushered in a second Gilded Age
of savage socioeconomic inequalities. Convincing and learned,
Equality explores the roots of these social fissures and speaks
urgently to the need for expansive strides toward equality to meet
our contemporary crisis.
