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"Confidence man and canny operative, charlatan and manipulator--William A. A. Carsey emerged from the shadow of Tammany Hall to build a career undermining working-class political organizations on behalf of the Democratic Party. Mark A. Lause's biography of Carsey takes readers inside the bare-knuckle era of Gilded Age politics. An astroturfing trailblazer and master of dirty tricks, Carsey fit perfectly into a Democratic Party that based much of its post-Civil War revival on shattering third parties and gathering up the pieces. Lause provides an in-depth look at Carsey's tactics and successes against the backdrop of enormous changes in political life. As Carsey used a carefully crafted public persona to burrow into unsuspecting organizations, the forces he represented worked to create a political system that turned voters into disengaged civic consumers and cemented America's ever-fractious two-party system"--
List of contents
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Prologue Carsey’s Paternities: The Son of the Streets and the Odysseys of Father Columbia
- Paper Party Power Broker: The Entrepreneurial Roots of Labor Reform Insurgency
- Independents and Partisan Pantomimes: The Dilemma of Third Parties under a Two-Party System
- Counterfeiting Class: The Secret Society Tradition and the Deep Origins of the American Federation of Labor
- Monopolizing Antimonopolism: Ben Butler and the Preemption of Insurgency
- The Path through Populism: From Henry George to William Jennings Bryan
Epilogue Carsey’s Progeny: The Forgotten Grandfather of American Progressivism and the Political Unmaking of an American Working Class
Notes
Index
About the author
Mark A. Lause
