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

Author: Heather Cox Richardson

Narrator: Heather Cox Richardson

Unabridged: 9 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/01/2020


Synopsis

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.

About Heather Cox Richardson

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


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ryan on April 28, 2020

Oligarchic ideology based on racism and sexism runs deep in the intellectual history of the United States. As American historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson demonstrates, the battle between oligarchy and democracy did not end with the Civil War—in terms of the battle of ideas, the oligarchi......more

Goodreads review by Erik on November 25, 2021

Richardson offers a provocative thesis: that today's conservatives were yesterday's Confederates. She doesn't just mean that many conservatives come from the South or that the South votes heavily conservative. She means that the ideas that animated the rebels in 1861 are the same basic ones that anim......more

Goodreads review by Delany on May 25, 2020

Richardson (HCR) is a lifeline for MANY of us in 2020. She’s a brilliant professor/historian who places current events in historical context in her daily essays and weekly talks; this, her most recent book, lays out the political backdrop of the life vs. death struggle we’re now embroiled in. At sta......more

Goodreads review by Randall on July 21, 2020

After the Civil War, westerners interpreted the 14th Amendment to exclude Chinese and Native Americans. After 1880, the Republican Party loses the South to the Democrats for the next hundred years. Southern Democrats tried to get national votes by catering to western racial hierarchies. They found o......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on August 20, 2020

The author draws comparisons between the turbulent politics of the 1850's and the even stormier politics of today. While the book has a clearly anti-Trump theme, I found the text very crisp and the narrative flowed well. The author looks back through political history to the founding generation and......more