1877: Year of Violence

This is not simply the story of a year from our past but a dramatic account of a social and political uprising that became a crisis in the course of American development. By 1877 the United States had ground through four years of depression with no end in sight. The mood of the nation was explosive. As labor sought to unite against the great corporations, violence and lawlessness spread through the cities, accented by race riots, lynchings, government corruption, scandal in high places, and t…