There is no such thing as free labor right . That doesnt make sense. Could you help us understand, what do you mean, what do scholars mean by free labor . Mr. Luskey thanks for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this book. It is a question my students, even after having me teach the concept to them, they still have trouble understanding. Free labor ideology came together as a set of ideas, most clearly in the 1850s, around a new political party, the republican party, and what the ideas at the heart of this ideology proposed was that wage labor, as it existed in northern states, was a superior economic and social system to southern slavery. It was a system, in its ideal form, that allowed workers the opportunity to make a contract with the employer of their choice, and to save their earnings to become independent. And this was something that was not available to enslaved people in the southern states. It is art of an attempt to rehabilitate wage labor, which many white northern workers in earlier decades, in the rolling out of industrialization, a process that changed labor and the ability of workers to advance in northern society, some of those workers refer to wage labor as wage slavery, in an effort to combat the detrimental effects of industrialization that brought them into competition with a wider variety of other workers, immigrant workers, women, even children. This is an argument white workers in the north used to try to highlight their predicament, the fact that wage labor from their perspective meant that they were dependent. Dependence and independence are important political keywords of the civil war era, if not throughout american industry. They are at the very heart of understanding citizenship and in many cases, what it meant to be men. By the 1850s though, with the encroachment of the political power, the slave power republicans coalesced in opposition to, this was an effort to try to privilege the rights of northern white men to be able to move west on free territory in order to become independent landholders, and employers of labor there, and in competition with a system of slavery, which would tend to make white northerners dependent if they had to compete with it. Very quickly, tell us how abe lincoln epitomizes the concept of free labor. Mr. Luskey we might think of it in reference to Horatio Alger and the rags to riches story, or at least rags to independence. He talked about his time as a rail splitter, doing difficult manual labor and his rise, through saving end through education and through perseverance and through hard work, he became a respectable, gentleman lawyer. So he and many of his followers pointed to lincoln as a quintessential example of the promise of free labor. Lincoln proposed that this was a threestep process. He believed that wage workers were never in the north, within the free labor system, fixed to their position, and that was an argument he made against southern politicians, who argued that every society and every economy had a mudsill class, lower to the floor, and that is why southern slavery was superior to wage labor, because according to them, when wage labor became surplus to requirements, they simply fired them and left them to fend for themselves. I would hasten to say that proponents of both of these economic systems were making a very strong case for themselves, because they were in a political struggle with the other. So they glossed over the injustices, the coercions of their competing economic systems. John, before your question, brian, i think a book we all lean heavily on is free soil, free labor, free men. It is his second book. Mr. Luskey i believe it is his first. I think the book you are holding was published in 1970. His biograpy tom payne and revolutionary america was 1976. Host eric foner is a distinguished writer, to say the least. Most people know him for his reconstruction book, but this more than anything else helped me understand the idea of political economy. As brian alluded to, they are words that are difficult for our students to grapple with, probably difficult for even general audiences. But as a way of understanding the relationship between ideology, politics and economy, the concept of political economy and looking at how free labor functioned in the north and shaped attitudes in the south and played an integral part in the creation of the republican party. It is a book that i cant say enough good things about. Brian and pete, i have a degree in accounting. I went to business school. One of my favorite classes was Macro Economic theory, believe it or not. When i read your book, i went, this is microeconomic theory, the class i got a d in. But the way you presented period microeconomic there was very well done and readable and i theory was very well done and readable and i appreciate it, because as i said, i got a d in that class. But the one thing i really enjoyed, i like your touch on how art was utilized. People come into a tattoo store, we should talk about art, and you put it into the book where you talk about posters for markets and marketing, but then it is used later for the early civil war days recruiting. Would you like to touch on that for me a little bit . Mr. Luskey to start, i want to step back and say, one of the arguments in my book, in some ways building from foner, foner identifies two contradictory aspects of free labor ideology. On one hand, it focuses on ideology on the opportunities available for wage workers to advance to independence. But it also talks about, and lincoln is one of these people, there is no opposition to capital within free labor ideology, because one of the free labor ideology freedoms is for employers to be able to hire workers of their choice. At the time, people who believed in this ideology believed there was a harmony of interests between laborers and people with capital. They had the same interests, that workers were just capitalists in the making. It seems to me that the story of the war is a story that highlights the ways in which, from the perspective of northern employers, the war seemed an opportunity for them to become more independent by virtue of employing people of their choice. And the war gave them wider options of who to employ. We can come back to that, to your point, john, i want readers to understand that free labor ideology emerged in a culture in the north that valued speculation and ambition. And we can see that very clearly in the advertisements of the era. Business owners, competing with each other in difficult economic times, particularly at the beginning of the war when southern debtors refused to pay off northern creditors. So northern firms who were owed that money were, in the lingo of the time, in panic. The financial panics of the era, certainly the secession crisis should join the panics of 1819, 1837, 1857, when we talk about economic downturns where credit grandiose promises about cheap access to goods, trying to encourage customers to buy. At the time the war began, many of the firms that printed these advertisements would use what were called check ends, the images in the advertisements. These included depictions of american flag, and these businesses would say, you can get access to cheap goods at war prices, or secession cheapens the price of goods, so this can work for you even if it is not working for the nation. But those same images printed by the same printing firms in cities philadelphia found their way into recruitment posters. And from my way of looking at it, these recruiting ads emerge out of a culture of advertising which tried to get readers attention. These were broadsheet advertisements that were sometimes one and a half to two feet by three feet in size, so they were plastered to the side of buildings. They wanted to get peoples attention. And from 1861, the federal government was offering a 100 bounty. We often think of early war recruitment being totally about volunteerism, civic virtue, citizens rallying to the cause of their nation. And of course that is true, but i would argue that it is something of a fools errand to try to pick apart the political ideology or reasons why, the motivating factors for recruitment are nearly all ideological. Pulling those apart from economic concerns, enlisting men, worrying about whether their families are going to be able to survive while they are gone. And many of these men are taking a pay cut to become a soldier. So that economic concern was there the hold time. And i dont mean to devalue the ideological reasons to fight, it is just that these economic reasons were also there. To speak to your point, these recruiting posters look like they do in part because they were part of a culture of business, of commerce. Host i am holding up one from your book right now, a good example of what you are speaking of. Mr. Luskey indeed. I have forgotten which town in pennsylvania ramages store was in. This is a small town in western pa. He is the one who touts war prices. And the flag and he mixes it altogether. Mr. Luskey i have to acknowledge my ignorance of whether these advertisements work. What ramage as a businessman is hoping for is that soldiers will enlist, may be in his store. A lot of stores served as recruiting offices. They would buy goods on their way out, maybe with some of the money they received from enlisting. Host i want to make a general assessment about your book and feel free to push back. That would be great. I hoped that would lead to some of the really powerful stories that you have in this book. What you have done so skillfully is that you have been able to take what i would call micro histories, you drill down into the stories of individuals and they are stories that are compelling, they have action and ramah, but they are stories that even though you say, reader, i dont want you to think that i believe that the Union Soldier in 1861 wasnt ideological you are saying, the soldier was ideological. But i catch up at times when i read your book to think, this is a dark side of the war, a sordid side of the war. This is a war for patriotism, for ambition, not for the nation, but ambition for the south. What you revealed to me and i think the readers is that this northern war effort which we have no suddenly put on a pedestal because in the current day, we have to smash all things that are confederate and demonize all things confederate. And i say god almighty, where can i find a civil war story which is truly uplifting . I am hoping maybe 1 of you can maybe one person you can speak about is charles brewster. My big question, and one of your stars in the book, how you might be able to respond to my reaction to your book. Mr. Luskey how do you define the dark turn which is a phrase that has been bandied about by most of our colleagues . Host john, why dont you go first . How do i define the dark turn. Mr. Luskey that is what pete is getting at. Pete americans in general like bedtime stories when it comes to the civil war, something reaffirming about the men who went off to fight for duty, cause and comrade. You have said it very well and i am not trying to be difficult, because in your book you acknowledge that idealism and high ideals did matter. The label dark turn impedes our understanding more than anything else. Instead, i would say what i think you have done and what others have done is, you have been able to get beyond the grand narrative of a war in which there are highs and lows and ultimately we see the cause of liberty being advanced, because the men in the Northern Army as well as the people back on the homefront know there is dissent and disagreement, but by and large they are committed to the union and committed to suppressing the rebellion. That grand narrative, and i think others are punching holes in it. That is a good thing. The phrase dark turn, im not sure where they get it, but i would like you to tell us how brewster is maybe one way of understanding that the war wasnt this grand, heroic narrative. Mr. Luskey i guess i would say that earlier works, recent scholars who followed or chart a historical change over time and see a different outlook on the war these days than in previous days point to mcphersons battle cry of freedom, and talk about a struggle that involved suffering, injustice, with an ennobling consequence, emancipation. Certainly those older works talked about the injustices and great deal of suffering that was caused. My contribution to a rethinking of the war is to look at the economy from a perspective of the middlemen, these labor agents who shaped that economy and some of the outcomes of the war. Very often in economic terms, if you look at a Macro Economic level, we are talking about huge business firms coming into greater pervasiveness and prominence after the war, like railroads. And they are given some of the credit and blame for changing the economy afterwards. In looking at it from this individual microlevel, i want readers to understand that it is not just economic forces that are changing it, it is the actions of ambitious men who try to make the wars transformations work for them, because they believe in free labor ideology, and because they believe, they are still dependent. They are not as independent as they want to be. I am more describing this than taking a side. I think what they do is pretty lousy. But let me just say that they are acting on events like emancipation and thinking of it in ways like, how can i become more independent . And it is going to be employing people who have just been emancipated. And it speaks to points made by historians like amy taylor in their books, manning, amy taylor, about the fact that emancipation did not mean freedom, or he did not mean or it did not mean freedom as we would understand it. And that creates opportunities and closes off opportunities to emancipated people, because they have to deal with the ambitious sorts, who i talk about in my book, like Charlie Brewster. Pete what did brewster do . How does he become an agent of emancipation, but he sees the war as a way to be an agent for himself. Mr. Luskey Charlie Brewster is from northampton, massachusetts, a store clerk before the war. You are holding david whites edited collection of his letters that i used at length in this book. Brewster is one of four or five characters that i take through the war to show how they participated in these changes. Brewster joins the 10th massachusetts, becomes a junior officer, Second Lieutenant in one of the forts outside d. C. In the first winter of the war. And becoming a junior officer gives him a perk enlisted men dont have. He can now hire a servant. And brewster and other Junior Officers in this area have their pick of fugitive people, running away from slavery in maryland primarily. When brewster hires a young man named david to work with him, he talks about defending david from recapture by his master, who is constantly coming into camp wrightwood looking for him. But at the same time, david is doing labor that brewster no longer has to do. And brewster says, i cant tell any difference now when i am an officer from when i was noncommissioned. He came in as a sergeant, i guess. He said he cant tell the difference, but in fact, he tells his mother, i used to have no money and a lot of work and now, i have lots of money and no work. So i think you can see there that the way he understands emancipation, and it is a process that is contested within his regiment, other officers saying weve got to drive these fugitives back to their masters and get rid of them, and people like brewster sticking up for these men and trying to explain away their selfinterest in the case. Later in the war, brewster becomes a recruiter of africanamerican men living around norfolk, virginia to fulfill the draft quotas for the state of massachusetts. By summer 1864, rules of recruitment had changed such that formerly enslaved people in the south could be recruited by agents in the field for northern states to serve for those states quotas. It is that kind of rapacious activity, trying to offer good bounties to secure the services of men while you are competing with other states to do so that brewster is importantly involved with, and that rapacious, ambitious activity by northern entrepreneurs and a great many northern families back home, who want formerly enslaved people to work as domestic servants in their homes, this reflects the interests of the northern middleclass coming into and trying to make out as best they can during the war by virtue of seizing some of this available labor. That helps explain what happened after the war, with the rise of the Freedmens Bureau that operates an Employment Agency in washington and farms out former slaves to northern households, and in some of the labor conflicts and the retreat from reconstruction we see in the 1870s, when a lot of white northern employers turn away from helping formerly enslaved african americans, in part because they still have a lot of misgivings that laborers arent obedient enough. Pete what you just described in brewsters case, you noted recruitment of former slaves into the union army and that the practices utilized were often coercive or deceptive, and that these other labor agents were able to funnel not just formerly enslaved laborers to the north, and domestics, but they also used former confederate prisoners as well, trying to find them jobs up north. I was struck by this book, also dismayed because i have had over the years, especially when i worked at national parks, visitors coming to me with a lost cause view of the war. And with that lost cause view, they time and again said that regulars were composed of men who are often there against their will. What if i were to say to you that this book unintentionally reaffirms some of that lost cause dogma, how would you respond . Mr. Luskey im pausing. [laughter] i guess my argument is that white northerners, in the main, fought the war to vanquish slavery and the power of slaveholders. They were fighting against the cabal of the most wealthy men in their society who lauded all of the political power over them. In fact, to bring up hammond, a lot of white northerners took on, in an ironic way, took on the label mudsill for themselves. Charlie brewster is one of them. We were the bone and sinew of the north, the white mudsills mowing down these cavaliers. People like brewster wanted access to the souths resources. He talked with his family about, downoiled the soil here in virginia is wonderful. He is not alone in saying that. I want to tell uncle edward he ought to move here and i am thinking of getting a farm down here. This is when we can have independence. That is going to mean utilizing the labor of former slaves. Now, there is never any doubt in brewster and other northerners minds that they are going to pay wages to these former slaves, but understand that wage laborers during the war were somewhat ambiguous. I talked a lot about benjamin butler, the general who, at various moments during the war, commanded the department of virginia and later the department of virginia and North Carolina. 1863, he initiated a plan in whi