At the 1795 treaty council that sealed Anthony Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers in northwest Ohio, the Wyandot leader Tarhe spoke for the assembled Native leaders when he admonished the American emissaries: "Take care of your little ones; an impartial father equally regards all his children." Spoken two decades after the minutemen's shots had echoed across Lexington Green, Tarhe's words compel historians to reconsider the rosy truisms that customarily encircle the age of the Early Republic. The essays in this volume begin to perform this important reexamination of the Native American experience in the post-Revolutionary period. Tarhe's eloquent words and similar evidence quoted by the volume's contributors show that American Indians were not defeated refugees who dutifully stood aside in the wake of the British defeat, nor were they passive victims of American expansion. The book's three parts reflect the dynamic nature of the Native Americans' struggle: the first provides broad discussions of the interaction between Native Americans and the United States in the postwar era; the second traces histories of specific tribal communities; and the third explores the powerful repertoire of stories and pictures that Americans used to describe Native Americans to themselves during an era of national expansion. These essays open up for consideration a more complex history of the Early Republic. Contributors Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College * R. David Edmunds, University of Texas at Dallas * Vivien Green Fryd, Vanderbilt University * Reginald Horsman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee * Elise Marienstras, University of Paris * Joel W. Martin, Franklin and Marshall College * James H. Merrell, Vassar College * Theda Perdue, University of North Carolina * Daniel K. Richter, Dickinson College * Daniel H. Usner Jr., Cornell University * Richard White, Stanford University

Still working hard in his seventies, Samuel Gompers gave no thought to retiring. But he faced a world of challenges in his final years as president of the American Federation of Labor. Ascendant Republicans were hostile. Conflicts over tactics and strategies divided the labour movement. And continuing unemployment kept the workforce in check. Despite all this, Gompers kept the faith, helping revitalize the AFL's nonpartisan political efforts, launching a campaign to organize women workers, and strengthening the Pan-American Federation of Labor. At the same time, he challenged government agencies like the Railroad Labor Board and continued his efforts to abolish child labor and fight labour injunctions. Although historians often assess these years as the most conservative and least productive period of Gompers's life, this final volume of the Samuel Gompers Papers demonstrates that even in this tumultuous time he continued his forward-looking leadership of the labor movement and retained his keen sense of judgment.

Volume 10 of the Samuel Gompers Papers focuses on the AFL's struggle to serve the nation and the labor movement during the critical period when American neutrality gave way to war. Beginning with Gompers' last minute effort to persuade German workers to avoid war with the United States, it follows the labor movement's internal debate over the meaning of American participation and the Executive Council's pragmatic--and in some cases reluctant--pledge of support, offered just weeks before war was declared. This volume also charts the evolution of a new relation between organized labor and the federal government: Acknowledging organized labor's vital role in the war effort, government now supported labor-adjustment boards that upheld the eight-hour day, equal pay for equal work, and labor's right to organize and bargain collectively with employers. As organized labor's main spokesman in Washington, Gompers played a central role in the development of wartime labor policies, with an eye to increasing production, reducing industrial conflict, and advancing labor's wage and hour standards.

The essays in this volume explore some of the potentially divisive realities that characterized the Federalist Era. Nine distinguished authors address themes that include the ideological assumptions that fueled the political debate, the interrelated character of social and political history, the role of the courts as an emerging force in arbitrating and containing conflict, and the expansionist impulses that pushed the new nation's borders westward. Gordon S. Wood introduces the collection with an incisive overview of the bold ambitions and unfulfilled aspirations of the critical first decade of the United States.