How the South Won the Civil War

It's taken me a while to cohere my thoughts on this one. So let's start with - I expected this book, honestly, to be more about culture wars than about Republican party maneuvering, and I was specifically expecting to hear about the Daughters of the Confederacy and monuments. While obviously RNC politics would play a large role even if the book had focused on what I anticipated, I expected more about the way history has been memory-holed, the ways certain organizations have deliberately co-opted and rewritten the narrative around the Civil War, Reconstruction, the birth of Jim Crow, and even the Civil Rights movement in the 60s.

I didn't get much of that, though some of it came through. The most interesting aspect of the book was the way modern day Republicans are (sometimes on purpose, sometimes maybe not?) echoing the political speech of their (southern Confederate) Democratic forebears. I found this both insightful and disturbing.

"In the South, whites had made an 'inferior' race into the mudsills, dull but loyal people who were content to have their labor directed by their betters and to have no say in their government. The system operated in perfect harmony. The North had no such happy arrangement. Northerners turned white men into mudsills, and then permitted them to vote. Since they could not comprehend what was best for society and simply wanted short-term gratification, they would vote to confiscate the wealth of their betters. It was only southern leaders who had kept mudsills from creating 'anarchy and poverty' by insisting that the government could do absolutely nothing but protect property, no matter how many voters insisted that it take a more active role in society. Democracy did not mean that voters should actually 'exercise political power in detail.' They could simply elect one set of leaders or another. Hammond concluded his address by warning northerners that--unlike them--slave owners were acting on principle 'involving all our rights and all our interests.'" (summarizing James Henry Hammond, loc 861)

"they got L. Brent Bozell to ghostwrite a manifesto declaring their principles...Conscience of a Conservative....Bozell started from the same point James Henry Hammond had in South Carolina a century earlier, and for much the same reasons. He insisted that the Constitution strictly limited the functions of government, and that any restrictions on property holders were an infringement on liberty. In the name of that constitutional liberty, Bozell called for the dismantling of the activist state the New Deal had created, insisting that the government had no business in 'social welfare programs, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, (or) urban renewal.'" (loc 2871)

Richardson unfortunately doesn't frame this as counter-reactionary politics, or as part of a cycle, really, of change and resistance to that change, which happens pretty regularly in American politics (and probably politics generally). She illustrates how you can see this counter-reactionary movement forming up even before the Civil War, the outrage over the effectiveness of Reconstruction breathing a second wind into that counter-reaction, the lessons they learned by rebuilding infrastructure slowly over decades in both the South and West, and the re-adoption of the Confederate counter-reactionary language and tactics following the civil rights gains of the 1950s and 60s. This is basically the book's thesis, with a lot of detail added in specifics: "The American paradox has once again enabled oligarchs to threaten democracy. They have gained power by deploying the corollary to that paradox: equality for all will end liberty. This was the narrative an elite group of slaveholders used to take over the government in the 1850s. They were defeated on the battlefields, but their vision of America moved West after the Civil War, where it gathered the strength to regain power." (loc 327)

I think there were big gaps in the story she tells, not because her research is incomplete but because she chose a specific narrative thread and repeated herself to hammer home her point. The book skims tons of detail as regards racism and its ongoing legacy in American culture; her thesis includes the idea that racism is a tool of an incredibly wealthy faction embarking on an economic project. I think there's some legitimacy in her argument, that the economics are absolutely central to these politics, but her framing echoes the neoliberal end of history chorus, maybe--if the racism weren't so profitable, these people wouldn't be racist. This viewpoint is dangerous, a false siren song. As a result of this framing, the book really centers a white (cishet male) experience of American history, both on the side of the bad-faith actors pursuing these politics and the significantly less wealthy socially liberal whites opposing them.

Where is the discussion over the debates on public education, shifting religious cultures, the decades long court packing project of the Federalist Society, etc.? Her narrative is very focused on the development of political cultures in Western America, but I still find this discussion somewhat anemic. Some of the biggest political controversies in the West center on land-use rights, indigenous rights, water rights, and resistance to Federalism. Relatively little of that is discussed here, though I thought the bits about Western state economies being largely dependent on war industries following WWII interesting; it probably explains the entitlement-resentment dynamic I've noticed in the West regarding Federal tax dollar allocations.

I can see why this book isn't more popular; the viewpoint is very moderate liberal--if only we could recognize this problem, the sensible adults would come up with a strategy and we could vote our way out! The author frames everything as us vs. them, where the us includes the reader and assumes at least centrist politics. But I don't remember seeing an acknowledgement that the corruption isn't only one-sided in American politics (though it is unarguably concentrated to benefit one particular side). Her discussion of Clinton's presidency stands out to me here; she narrates the hard line Republicans took on taxes and the troubles this caused for Clinton's economic reform plans but skips all mention of the Crime bill.

I wonder about who Richardson was writing for; who did she envision as her audience? For myself, I can't imagine myself recommending this, not that I'd necessarily warn any reader away. What can you get here than you can't get better, more completely, more intersectionally, from other sources?

Don't know much about history, as the song goes. That song written a few years before this book's author (who I'll call HCR) was born. In part, this is because I went to school back when America was great (in the opinion of those who wish to make it great again) and much of the subject matter was taught in a way to emphasize America's greatness. We were also taught that we lived in a democracy, unlike, say, the Soviet Union, but also that we lived in a meritocracy. The obvious differences we saw all around us were attributed to the greater merit of the winners. Hierarchies in school were everywhere, from the academic (I did well) to the social (I did poorly) and were also clearly a part of the world outside of school. I was bullied in school and came to believe that the world outside was also run by the bullies though perhaps bullying with their money more often than with naked force.

If we see democracy as the alternative to authoritarianism, how do we deal with the democratic election of a bully? Do we doubt democracy? Or do we say it must not really be democracy if this happens? HCR would choose the latter. For her, the Trump presidency is an aspect of the South winning the Civil War. She historically traces present day voter suppression and movement conservatism to the confederacy. What we now find alarming is only the latest manifestation of many similar power grabs and attempted power grabs by oligarchs, starting with the minority of slave owning Southerners (they were even a minority in the South!) who saw themselves as better (as demonstrated by their success) and thus deserving to rule.

Yes, they lost the shooting war but won the peace because after Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat succeeded him. Johnson tried to restore the nation to how it had been before the war, minus slavery which was replaced by laws passed in the South to keep the formerly enslaved people subservient.

The Democracy vs. Oligarchy lens through which to view American history is a powerful one and this is a powerful book but it has the drawback of too much good guys (pro Democracy) vs. bad guys (anti-D). There are arguments to be made that as governmental philosophies go, Democracy is bad (though Churchill may be right that all the others are worse). HCR's oligarchs are either greedy or grandiose--that is they are just out for themselves, or else think they're better than the others. Or a combination of the two. Many Trump voters saw themselves as rejecting the elite--the professional class who saw themselves as meritocrats. For them Trump represented true democracy. We can argue that they got the facts wrong or that they are low information voters, but then you might wonder if, perhaps those with low information shouldn't have the vote.

HCR would argue that the undemocratic (historically established to preserve slavery) electoral college put Trump into office and that Democracy as seen in the popular vote would have kept him (and Dubya) out.

At any rate--if we are to "heal" the polarization of this country--not seeing the other side as evil will be necessary.