LSU Press
Lawyering for the Railroad: Business, Law, and Power in the New South
Key Metrics
- William G Thomas
- LSU Press
- Paperback
- 9780807125045
- 8.96 X 5.97 X 1.01 inches
- 1.17 pounds
- History > United States - 19th Century
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Lawyering for the Railroad provides the first full account of railroad monopoly power, tracing its sources and effects in the southern political economy. Issues touching on railroad development were major components of politics in the days of both Populism and Progressivism, and railroad attorneys -- often in their role as lobbyists -- were always in the middle of the action. They distributed free passes to legislators, retained the best counsel for their clients, laid out the legal agreements to form monopolies, and instituted practices to ensure quick and favorable settlements for the railroads. In this intriguing work, William G. Thomas introduces the southern attorneys who represented railroads between 1880 and 1916, closely examining their role in the political economy of the South during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, a period in which the region experienced sharp change, explosive growth, and heated political contests. Thomas tells his fascinating story with legal department records from some of the largest interstate railroad companies in the South. With the help of these records, he demonstrates how the railroads tried to use the law and the legal process to mold the southern political economy to their ends and what kind of opposition they faced. Standing at the crossroads of business, law, and politics, Lawyering for the Railroad gives context, depth, and specificity to what have been cursory glimpses into the shady world of corporate power in the Gilded Age. From small-town lawyers to big-city firms, the story of the railroad attorneys brings into focus the many ways the interstate railroad transformed the South.
Author Bio
William G. Thomas III is the Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Nebraska. He served as Chair of the Department of History from 2010 to 2016. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Lincoln Prize Finalist.
He is the author of A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War (November 2020, Yale University Press), about enslaved families in Maryland who sued for their freedom in the decades after the American Revolution. A Question of Freedom received the 2021 Mark Lynton History Prize.
With partners Michael Burton and Kwakiutl Dreher, he is co-producing a series of live action animated documentary films. The first of these films, Anna, was released in 2018 and won Best Animation at the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles. The second, The Bell Affair, is in production with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
He served as the co-founder and Director of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia, where he was an Assistant and Associate Professor of History in the Corcoran Department of History. He was a co-editor the award-winning digital project, Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War. With Edward L. Ayers, he co-authored “The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities,” one of the first pieces of digital scholarship published in the American Historical Review.
A dedicated teacher and mentor, Thomas was Chair of the Department of History and guided the department to the University-wide Departmental Teaching Award in 2017. He received the Hazel R. McClymont Distinguished Teaching Fellow Award in 2012 from the College of Arts and Sciences at Nebraska, the highest award for teaching in the College. He was named a Mead Honored Faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia in 2004-05 in recognition for his dedication to undergraduate teaching.
Thomas has published essays in Civil War History, The Journal of Historical Geography, The New York Times, The Washington Post, EDUCAUSE Review, and Inside Higher Education. He is a graduate of Trinity College (Connecticut) and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Trinity College and on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Research Interests
Digital Humanities, Digital History, Nineteenth-century U.S. History, Civil War, Slavery, Legal History
Education
Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1995
M.A., University of Virginia, 1991
B.A., Trinity College, 1986 (with honors in history)
Source: University of Nebraska - Lincoln
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