Title: Free to work
First published: 1998
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.
Subjects: History, Labor contract, Employment, Labor market, African Americans, Free choice of employment, Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877), Arbeitsrecht, Nordstaaten, Südstaaten, Geschichte 1815-1880, African americans, employment, Labor laws and legislation, united states, Southern states, history, Reconstruction
Places: Southern States
LC classification: KF3457 .S36 1998