How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

by Heather Cox Richardson

Overview

Named one of The Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction

While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion.

To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern "yeoman farmer" who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. "Movement Conservatives," led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy.

Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190900908
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	120,124
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College. Her previous works include West from Appomattox and To Make Men Free.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: The Triumph of Equality
Chapter Two: The Significance of the West in American History
Chapter Three: Reconstructing America
Chapter Four: The Search for Electoral Votes
Chapter Five: The West and the South Join Forces
Chapter Six: The Post World War II West 1951-1980
Chapter Seven: The Rise of Movement Conservatism

Conclusion: The Nature of America

Editorial Reviews

02/17/2020

In this incisive, politically minded history, Boston College professor Richardson (West from Appomattox) argues that Barry Goldwater’s “movement conservatism”—which she claims has overtaken the Republican Party during the past 50 years—“embrace the same ideas” that undergirded slavery and sparked the Civil War. Tracing the origins of those beliefs to the “great paradox” of America’s founding documents (”the concept that ‘all men are created equal’ depended on the idea that the ringing phrase ‘all men’ did not actually include everyone”), Richardson contends that throughout U.S. history, wealthy white men have enhanced and enshrined their power by stoking the fears of poor and working-class white men that women and minorities are poised to become their equals. She documents how post-Reconstruction settlement shaped the West, building an economy based on resource extraction (just like the antebellum South); tracks the formation of political alliances between Western and Southern conservatives; and concludes that Donald Trump’s cultivation of white supremacist support has “stripped off whatever genteel veneer remained on Republican ideology.” Though Richardson underemphasizes the prevalence of racism, sexism, and inequality in other parts of the country during and following the Civil War, she marshals a wealth of evidence to support the book’s provocative title. Conservatives will cry foul, but liberal readers will be persuaded by this lucid jeremiad. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 04/01/2020

The United States was founded on a paradox in which equality depended on the inequality of race, class, and gender. Conversely, wealthy white men, in order to reassert oligarchic rule, have used the language of freedom to convince themselves that if people of different races or classes enjoyed the same rights, or if women developed more political authority, it would undermine the very freedoms upon which America is built. In clearly written prose, Richardson (history, Boston Coll.; To Make Men Free) argues that the appeals to freedom and rights used today are the same as those used by Southerners prior to the Civil War. The main difference is that women and people of color are now full members of society. Employing an array of sources, the author traces the history of inequality from the U.S founding through the election of President Trump, paying special attention to westward expansion and the ongoing influence Southerners had on national politics and government. VERDICT Those interested in American history, politics, and its historical development will find much to enjoy in this well-written, argued work.—Chad E. Statler, Westlake Porter P.L., Westlake, OH

Library Journal

2020-01-12
A thought-provoking study of the centuries-spanning battle between oligarchy and equality in America.

In 1860, writes Richardson (History/Boston Coll.; To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, 2014, etc.), the Republican Party took pains in its platform to remind audiences of the Declaration of Independence and its assertion that "all men are created equal." All men were not equal, of course, to say nothing of women, who would not gain the right to vote for another three generations. Still, the Republicans opposed a slave system that they regarded as despotic while Southern true believers held that a small elite formed a proper polity all their own, slave owners who "would resolve the American paradox by shearing off the portion of it that endorsed equality." It was this radical rejection of a founding premise, however imperfectly applied, that distinguished Republicans and Southern Democrats. By Richardson's account, it is this radical rejection that, the party roles having reversed polarity a century later, distinguishes Republicans from Democrats, the former of whom now possess "the language they need to undermine our democracy, and to replace it with an oligarchy." Furthermore, they believed that "their new system made their nation different from the Old World, which was split between a corrupt aristocracy and the lazy poor." In their view, a corrupt aristocracy was fine as long as it did not have to share spoils or power; of course, the common trope among Republicans these days is that if you're poor, it's because you choose to be. Nixon's "Southern strategy" did much to propel neo-Confederate values into the modern Republican Party. Later, Newt Gingrich enshrined them, fortifying class inequality by placing "tax cuts at the center of Republican policy" and reducing political interference by changing lawmaking so that lobbyists—not representatives—wrote regulations and laws that "were designed to put the American government at the service of democracy."

A powerful case for viewing the unfinished Civil War as a Confederate victory after all.

Kirkus Reviews

"Richardson's clear prose makes this book incredibly lively and accessible." — Joseph Angelillo, ALPATA: A Journal of History

"Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, explains Goldwater's crusade and the trajectory of modern conservatism in her masterful How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. A timely book, it sheds light on what was perhaps the most important political coalition of the 20th century." — The Washington Post

"Good revisionist history jars you, forces you to look at the past in a new way, and thereby transforms your view of the present. Heather Cox Richardson is a master of the genre, to the benefit of us all. Even those who take issue with her will be forced by this powerful book to come to terms with aspects of our past that we often just sweep under the rug of memory." — E.J. Dionne, Jr., author of Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country

"In a tour de force, Richardson exposes the philosophical connective tissue that runs from John C. Calhoun, to Barry Goldwater, to Donald Trump. It's not party, it's a complex ideology that has swaddled white supremacy and its political, legal, economic, and physical violence in the language of freedom and rugged individualism, and, in doing so, repeatedly slashed a series of self-inflicted wounds on American democracy." — Carol Anderson, Emory University, author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy

"The themes are broad and the implications mighty, but this isn't history from on high. Richardson uses a human lens to tell her tale, revealing the passions and power-plays that have sustained this battle for dominance. The end result is something rare and invaluable: a skilled work of history, deeply grounded in the past, that speaks loudly, clearly, and crucially to the present." — Joanne Freeman, Yale University, author of The Field Of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War

"What the great books do is retell history in a way that creates a deepened and clarified connection between what was an what is. I love this book. For anyone seeking to understand how we got here, and where we're likely bound, this is a must-read." — Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Price of Loyalty and A Hope in the Unseen

"If you want to understand this moment in American politics, here's a suggestion for you: It's the must-read book of the year." — Bill Moyers, Moyers on Democracy

"Heather Cox Richardson's skill with connecting events into a cohesive narrative is on full display in this brilliant study...This book speaks to the heart of life in the United States and should be in every private, public, and school library." — Deborah M. Liles, Southwestern Historical Quarterly

"... Richardson suggested that her most recent book, How the South Won the Civil War, was her "smartest". There is no doubt that it is, at the very least, her most ambitious." — Catherine McNicol Stock, Connecticut College, The Annals of Iowa

"Those interested in American history, politcis, and its historical development will find much to enjoy in this well-written, argued work." — Library Journal, *starred review

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