Michael Bellesiles writes a book about 1877

Ned Baily
   Most people would not remember 1877 being an important year in their history classes and questionably few history teachers ever talked much of this crucial year in their classes. The year saw the great strikes and worker rebellions against the upper classes that were quit literally trying to starve their workers and return slavery for the masses in the new industrial age.

Author Michael Bellesies has written a book called" 1877 America's Year Of Living Violently" and this piece covers pretty much all of the violence and political discord that has always existed in this country well before the dawn of the media age. so much happened in this country during this era and year and in this book he covers everything you need to know about 1877. Every year should have a book written about it but the strike of railroad workers and the police state and militias used to crush it is the highlight of this book as this country was exploding. The 1870's were has tumultuous as the sixties were and so many things happened and Bellesiles goes through events through all of the famous Americans alive at the time.  the sudden rise of mass protest to fight back against corporate abuses and cuts in salaries and wages was a new phenomenal in this era and it frighten the fuck out of the upper classes. The social order was coming apart and soon soldiers who were on the plains fighting Indians soon were used to quell a new urban disorder against the same type of overreach and abuse of a class not entirely seen as human by the controllers of capital. This book captures the bringing order to the West to the racial strife and increased oppression in the South. It covers the rise of workers rights in the East and the rise of tramps and vagrants in the North. Bellesiles recounts much of the massive fear of the new mobile tramp class of homeless that crisscrossed the nation seeking generous handouts and work wherever they could find it. The railroads allowed the homeless and the unemployed to travel everywhere and the press highlighted their crimes while ignoring the causes of the depression of 1873 that put so many in a desperate position. Entire mining towns and communities had to be transplanted to seek homes elsewhere as housing shortages and inconsistent economies too its toll on families and society. this has always been a nation of fear and for a decade the poor and transient, victims of a ruthless business society, were printed on and had their human ity degraded through the business press that was getting new power and into everyday ears with their misinformation and bias reporting. 1877 was a brutal year for anyone not white and rich and this book does an amiable job of getting this point across and how much worse we had oppression on people.