MATTHEW HILD teaches history at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South (Georgia).
This is the first book-length treatment of a strangely neglected
topic: the southern farmer-labor insurgency of the second half of
the nineteenth century. Hild disagrees with those historians who
suggest that southern farmers and laborers possessed little in
common; instead, he argues that the denizens of the farm and
factory sometimes worked in considerable harmony. He also provides
a convincing explanation for why, in certain parts of the South,
such cooperation was possible and why it failed elsewhere in the
region. All students of southern farmers and laborers will welcome
this fresh look at an important subject.--Barton C. Shaw "Cedar
Crest College"
With his attention sharply focused on farmer-labor political
cooperation at local, state, and national levels--from Greenbackers
through the Populists and Progressives--Hild's book is a prodigious
feat of scholarship. He is a shrewd guide through a complex story,
as well as a perceptive analyst of the impediments of class and
race and of the fraud and violence that bedeviled the popular
insurgencies.--Sheldon Hackney "University of Pennsylvania"
[A] perceptive and well-argued study . . . Hild has written the
best region-wide study of Southern Populism to appear in the last
twenty-five years.--Arkansas Historical Quarterly
A well-researched book that deserves the widest possible
readership.--Journal of Southern History
Excellent . . . There is much to praise in this book. . . . This is
groundbreaking work that will cause historians to reevaluate the
nature of southern Populism, labor organizing in the South, and the
importance of historical contingency and location. It should also
open up areas for further research. This book is essential reading
for all scholars interested in third-party politics, labor history,
Populism, and southern history.--Journal of American History
Hild's research into the newspapers and manuscript sources of the
insurgents lands him right in the mainstream of scholarship. . . .
. Readers wanting to know the specifics of how well, how far, and
how long a nascent coalition of interests endured in the
late-nineteenth-century South could do no better than to plant
their eyes here.--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
Provides some important perspectives that make the book very
worthwhile to students of labor history or the South. . . . Hild's
book is an interesting and easily digestible look at the South
through the perspective of the farmer-labor movement rather than
from the perspective of race. This fresh view gives new
understanding of the late-nineteenth-century South and shows its
history as much more than a black-white struggle interwoven with
North-South sectional conflict. Beyond its insight on the
farmer-labor insurgency, Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and
Populists challenges historians to look at the South in different
dimensions.--West Virginia History
This valuable new addition to the study of the nineteenth-century
South provides readers with a smoothly written, learned, and
insightful account of the various movements throughout the region
to win gains for farmers and laborers. . . . Hild excels at
presenting the nuances of each set of local issues and activists
while also remaining true to the larger questions of labor-farmer
cooperation. . . . This volume is a must read for graduate students
in the field and has much to offer advanced undergraduates . . . a
valuable study of local southern politics between 1870 and 1900,
one that deserves to be widely read and incorporated into scholars'
accounts of the period.--Georgia Historical Quarterly
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