Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America by Brian P. Luskey

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
Ariel Ron
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Free Labor

Humanitarianism’s Markets

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Urban
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Immigrant Labor ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Freedmen's Bureau ◽  
The North ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Abandoned Lands

Chapter 2 focuses on the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when formerly enslaved persons, classified as “contrabands” and refugees, were placed as domestic workers in northern households. The involvement of the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau) in the placement of refugees as servants prefigured the federal government’s expanded role as a broker of immigrant labor in the decades that followed, yet proved controversial. Designed to reduce government expenditures on the relief of refugees in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, the Freedmen’s Bureau’s financing of black servants’ migration was viewed with skepticism by detractors who claimed that it revived—under the thin veneer of “free” labor—a version of the slave trade. Due to insufficient federal funding, the reluctance of black refugees to relocate to uncertain job situations in the North, and constant questions about its efficacy, the Freedmen’s Bureau—after contracting thousands of women and children to service positions—was ultimately forced to disband this initiative.

Abolition, Chinese Indentured Labor, and the State: Cuba, Peru, and the United States during the Mid Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Narváez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Us South ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Indentured Labor

Abolition forced planters in the post-Civil War US South to consider new sources and forms of labor. Some looked to Spanish America for answers. Cuba had long played a prominent role in the American imagination because of its proximity, geostrategic location, and potential as a slave state prior to the Civil War. Even as the United States embraced abolition and Cuba maintained slavery, the island presented Southern planters with potential labor solutions. Cuban elites had been using male Chinese indentured workers (“coolies” or colonos asiáticos) to supplement slave labor and delay the rise of free labor since 1847. Planters in coastal Peru similarly embraced Chinese indentured labor in 1849 as abolition neared. Before the Civil War, Southerners generally had noted these developments with anxiety, fearing that coolies were morally corrupt and detrimental to slavery. However, for many, these concerns receded once legal slavery ended. Planters wanted cheap exploitable labor, which coolies appeared to offer. Thus, during Reconstruction, Southern elites, especially in Louisiana, attempted to use Chinese indentured workers to minimize changes in labor relations.

Speculations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
The Future ◽  
Sectional Conflict ◽  
Race Of Life

This chapter explains speculations that a civil war would be sparked by a sectional conflict between rival classes and economies. Radicals in both regions imagined an unavoidable battle between free labor and slavery. It shows how new technology and burgeoning capitalism affected American approaches to the future. The telegraph promoted faith in the reach and permanence of human actions. The railroad encouraged a go-ahead culture of enterprising visionaries who won the race of life by progressing ahead of ordinary men and fashioning the future. These changes increased the tempo of life, heightened fears of economic panics and political conspiracies, and emboldened speculators who hoped to capitalize on a showdown between free and slave labor.

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