John Swinton’s Paper, a labor newspaper published between 1883 and 1887, subscribed neither to the reconciliationist nor to the emancipationist memory of the Civil War. John Swinton and his circle of reformers emphasized the issue of slavery, but they imbued it with new meaning related to labor’s circumstances in the Gilded Age. Referencing the Civil War helped labor reformers represent themselves as the true champions of the republic.
