How the South Won the Civil War

Heather Cox Richardson

2020 • 273 pages

Ratings5

Average rating3.4

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.

Genre

History

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Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Mike Taylor

Like all of her writing, this book is super insightful and provides amazing context from history for what is happening today.

September 5, 2020

Susan Scribner

As a fan of Richardson's daily posts on the Trump presidency and the 2020 election, I started this book with great anticipation, but I was somewhat disappointed. Although she has a strong thesis about the ongoing struggle between oligarchy and fully participatory democracy that has plagued our country since its founding, Richardson's writing is dry and repetitive. Despite the catchy title, the book actually covers all of American history, from the arrival of the first Europeans on North American shore to the election of Donald Trump, and at times it feels like Richardson picks and chooses the events that support her ideas without providing sufficient historical context. The link between the post-Civil War South and the emerging West is one I hadn't considered before, and I appreciated learning about the discrepancies between the idealized, independent cowboy of American legend and the reality of a region controlled by a few rich men who benefited from governmental policies. I just wish Richardson had limited her scope, providing more in-depth profiles of some of the major players in the Western expansion for example, instead of flooding the reader with dozens of names and dates.

As always with history books, I find that points are made that support the thesis but quite match everyday reality. For example at one point Richardson is talking about blue jeans, and claims that their increasing popularity was related to the the rise of the “conservative narrative - a vision of heroic individuals standing against collectivism....Seventy five million pairs of Levis were sold in 1975, and they were worn to symbolize dislike of the government both by those who opposed civil rights legislation and b those who opposed the Vietnam War.” I was 13 years old in 1975, and I can tell you that I wore blue jeans because they were comfortable and trendy, and because I wanted to fit in with all of my friends who wore them. They were not a political statement for me, and I suspect most of the 75 million people who bought them would agree.

I will continue to enjoy Richardson's daily updates but I can't recommend this book to non-academic readers.

December 20, 2020