Downfall of the Republic! The 1877 General Strike and the Fictions of Red Scare

Abstract

This paper argues that the strategic fictions of Communist insurrection circulated during the July 1877 general strike helped President Rutherford B. Hayes authorize the US Army intervention against the strikers. It reads apocalyptic telegrams sent to Hayes beside a pulp novella, The Commune in 1880; Downfall of the Republic.

The War on the North American Left-Wing Labor Movement From World War I Through the Post-World War II Period

“…Much of this repression has occurred in response to union militancy during strikes, some of which were connected to political radicals of various stripes, including socialists and anarchists. Examples abound of this repression which included employer and government violence directed against striking workers, such as the 1877 St. Louis Railroad Strike (Cooper 1977;Foner 1977;Rogers-Cooper 2016;Stowell 1999Stowell , 2008, the 1886 Haymarket Square Riot (Avrich 1984;Green 2006;Messer-Kruse 2012), and the 1892 Homestead Strike (Burgoyne 1979;Kahan 2014;Krause 1992;Whitelaw 2006).…”