1877: The Grand Army of Starvation

For two weeks in the summer of 1877 the United States was brought to a standstill. A nationwide rebellion quickly spread along the country's railroad lines. Eighty thousand railroad workers walked out, joined by hundreds of thousands of Americans--- white and black, native- and foreign-born, employed and unemployed-- all outraged by the excesses of the giant railroad companies and the misery of a four-year economic depression. Police, state militia, and federal troops clashed with strikers and sympathizers. The Great Uprising shaped the beliefs of a generation of Americans, marking the end of the nation's first century and inaugurating a new era of conflict over the meaning of America in the industrial age