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Subtitle: labor law, emancipation, and reconstruction, 1815-1880
By: James D. Schmidt.
Series: Studies in the legal history of the South
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 331
Subjects: Labor contract -- Southern States -- History.; Free choice of employment -- Southern States -- History.; Labor market -- Southern States -- History.; African Americans -- Employment -- Southern States -- History.; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
Description: James D. Schmidt examines federal efforts to establish "free labor" in the South during and after the Civil War by exploring labor law in the antebellum North and South and its role in the development of a capitalist labor market.

Identifying the emergence of conservative, moderate, and liberal stances on state intervention in the labor market, Schmidt develops three important case studies - wartime Reconstruction in Louisiana, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Freedmen's Bureau - to conclude that the reconstruction of free labor in the South failed in large part because of the underdeveloped and contradictory state of labor law.

The same legal principles, Schmidt argues, triumphed in the postwar North to produce a capitalist market in labor.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [301]-321) and index.