Tom Watson

2014 Reprint of 1938 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This work is C. Vann Woodward's classic biographical study of the Georgia agitator, born of a slave-owning family reduced to poverty after the Civil war, when his family declined from the plantation owner class to the share-cropper status. Always an enemy of industrialism, Watson took the side of the southern farmer. He was elected to Congress in 1890, later became a Populist leader, and in 1904 and 1908 he ran for president on the Populist ticket. Although Thomas E. Watson championed the rising Populist movement at the turn of the 19th century--an interracial alliance of agricultural interests fighting the forces of industrial capitalism--his eventual frustration with politics transformed him from liberalism to racial bigotry, from popular spokesman to mob leader. Pulitzer Prize winning scholar C. Vann Woodward clearly and objectively traces the history of this enigmatic Populist leader. Contents include: The heritage -- Scholar and poet -- "Ishmael" in the backwoods -- The "new departure" -- Preface to rebellion -- The temper of the 'eighties -- Agrarian law-making -- Henry Grady's vision -- The rebellion of the farmers -- The victory of 1890 -- "I mean business" -- Populism in Congress -- Race, class, and party -- Populism on the march -- Année terrible -- The silver panacea -- The debacle of 1896 -- Of revolution and revolutionists -- From populism to muckraking -- Reform and reaction -- "The world is plunging hellward" -- The shadow of the Pope -- The lecherous Jew -- Peter and the armies of Islam -- The Tertium quid.