The March of Coxey's Army to Washington is one of those iconic moments in the national narrative that everyone can reference and few can explain. Images of men marching through Ohio on their way to the nation's capital appear in multiple textbooks without much contextual information about the issues that compelled them to take to the roads or the impact their march had on the national course of history. There is a vague sense of Jacob Coxey himself as a crank who named his infant son Legal Tender and who was somehow associated with the general social revolt against the effects of industrialization. For most, the man and his army remain a mystery.

Benjamin F. Alexander has made Coxey's history accessible and integrated the army of men who identified with him and his views into the economic and political history of the 1890s. Writing for the Johns Hopkins University Press series “Witness to History,” Alexander has produced a book for classroom use that is accessible and intelligent. He provides the reader with rich context for exploring the motivations for the march and the solutions that Coxey and his allies proposed to address the unemployment associated with the 1890s economic depression. Although Alexander does not shy away from the contemporary assessment of Coxey's programs as unworkable, he recognizes the legacy of the reformer's demands in later legislation and his importance for future dissenters in challenging the powerful. In Alexander's words, the march represented “the physical manifestation of the long annals of debate over inequities in the American economic order and the proper role of government in response to economic privation” (p. 4). In undertaking the march, the men of Coxey's Army established the right of petition as more than signatures on paper, but also encompassing a physical act—a “petition in boots,” if you will. This march influenced the later Bonus Army, the civil rights March on Washington, and the recent Occupy movement. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and his Economic Bill of Rights speech echoed Coxey's central demand that government must provide employment during periods of economic crisis.

In rich prose that does not digress into side issues, Alexander leads the reader through the labyrinths of Gilded Age economics, labor issues, and a dizzying array of reform organizations. He thus situates Coxey's Army within the context of the demands made by the Greenbackers, the Free Silverites, and the Populists. More than contextual background, Alexander's placement of the army within the economic/political debates of the day provides background for understanding the outpouring of support the marchers received. In addition to men from Ohio, Coxey's Army included supporting groups that marched from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montana, Chicago, and Boston. Assisted by local citizens who provided meals and by state and local officials who secured campgrounds and smoothed over conflicts with railroads, the marchers converged on Washington.

Although conservative politicians and local leaders viewed the advancing armies with dismay, Alexander argues that the designation of the protesters as an “army” may have been a more accurate description than the fading photographs would suggest. Day-to-day leadership was provided by men like Carl Browne, a forty-four-year-old “journalist, political agitator, patent medicine salesman, carnival barker, and sketch artist” (p. 40). Nevertheless, Alexander asserts that the men who followed Coxey remained remarkably disciplined in their behavior even when lack of food and rough sleeping quarters would suggest a breakdown in order. Men who broke ranks and behaved in ways that would bring discredit to the march were summarily dismissed. Even the numerous spies and journalists who accompanied the army and chronicled their advance through the countryside reported that “for the most part, the Commonwealers held themselves to strict rules of conduct and enjoyed massive, though by no means unanimous, support in the communities along the way” (p. 55). Thus, Coxey's Commonweal of Christ “army” appears to have been less of a fringe organization than memory would suggest. While never leaders in the efforts to gain economic justice, the marchers enjoyed the respect of farmers and townspeople along the way and their deportment overcame some of the opposition from would-be detractors.

Coxey did not succeed in his efforts to read his petition on the steps of the nation's Capitol Building, and by the end of July 1894, what was left of the “messianic” army had devolved into “a basic struggle for survival.” The evolution of the march from a “harebrained currency and welfare proposal” to a defense of First Amendment rights for petitioners had “turned into an intense and concentrated version of the ‘tramp problem’” (p. 111). Nevertheless, Alexander argues that the march influenced the economic debate that continued into the twentieth century. Coxey met with the political leaders of the day, including Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Roosevelt. Congress frequently called him to testify before various committees on issues of national significance, including the Federal Reserve Act and aid to Europe following World War II. Coxey's producerist ideas—like those of the Knights of Labor, the Farmers’ Alliance, and the Populists—did not prevail, but Alexander claims that his demands for economic equity resonate in twentieth-century legislation, including the Sheppard-Towner Act, the alphabet agencies of the New Deal, and the Medicare/Medicaid acts of the midcentury. The Capitol Grounds Act that prevented Coxey and his army from expounding from the Capitol steps remained on the books until 1972, when a challenge by Jeannette Rankin led to the overturning of the law by the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.

Coxey's Army is an important book for classroom use. It can serve as an opening to engage students in discussions on the role of government in the economy and the rights of citizens to petition government using various means to make their concerns known. As Alexander concludes, the heart of the Coxeyite demand was “the belief that those who labored, or wished to labor, had a right to earn a living . . . and that producers should band together and demand whatever particular form of government action they believed would restore that right” (p. 128). In this demand, Coxey's Army appears very contemporary.