Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community

by Mark A. Lause

The National Reform Association (NRA) was an antebellum land reform movement inspired by the shared dream of a future shaped by egalitarian homesteads. Mark A. Lause's Young America argues that it was these working people's interest in equitable access to the country's most obvious asset--land--that led them to advocate a federal homestead act granting land to the landless, state legislation to prohibit the foreclosure of family farms, and antimonopolistic limitations on land ownership.

Rooting the movement in contemporary economic structures and social ideology, Young America examines this urban and working-class "agrarianism," demonstrating how the political preoccupations of this movement transformed socialism by drawing its adherents from communitarian preoccupations into political action. The alliance of the NRA's land reformers and radical abolitionists led unprecedented numbers to petition Congress and established the foundations of what became the new Republican Party, promising "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men."
 

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[David Damiano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little book about the land reformers of antebellum America. The political dimension is rather dry, tracing the NRA's variegated strategy of endorsements versus running independent candidates. Lause's argument in this respect is that the flexibility of the NRA, its willingness to enter coalitions and avoid the narrow dogmatism that plagued later radical movements such as the SLP or SP, enabled it to achieve a greater degree of influence and success. I'm skeptical about this. The main achievement Lause points to is the founding of the Republican Party and the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, neither of which fulfilled the radical hopes of the land reformers in any substantial way. Besides, I'll always maintain that the SP's aversion to fusion did not necessarily limit its political effectiveness, just its electoral potential.

The strength of the book lies not in the political story, but rather in an exploration of the inherent radicalism of the land reformers' ideology. Much like socialists later, the NRA made convincing appeals to the country's revolutionary heritage and to the Declaration of Independence in particular, convinced that the rise of land monopoly undermined the country's egalitarian pillars. The NRA's extreme antistatism and civic libertarianism clearly follows in the Tom Paine tradition and leads into that of the Knights of Labor and even the AFL, although without any of the accompanying radicalism. Lause also argues that land reform was consistent with abolitionism and racial equality, contrary to the arguments of someone like David Roediger who argue that Northern white workers defined themselves in opposition and superior to Black slaves. He largely points to the national leaders of the NRA, such as Evans, to make this point rather than investigating the views of common workers, so I'm largely unconvinced.

[Collin Bickford · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting book and I am glad to have read it. It was incredibly informative and provides a compelling history of the National Reform Association’s influence in early land and labor reform, as well as its role in the foundation of the Republican Party.
It definitely felt above my weight class, and required me to re-read many sections.