How the South Won the Civil War

Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

Bibliographic Data

ID4154735
AuthorsNicole Etcheson (Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume108
Issue3
Pages604-605
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jaab275
OpenAlexW4210974766
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Heather Cox Richardson is an innovative scholar who has pioneered the burgeoning fields of the Civil War in the West and the “long Civil War.” She also writes copiously for a public audience. This book is an extended opinion piece intended for nonspecialists. How the South Won the Civil War is a survey-level synthesis spanning the vast period between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the election of Donald J. Trump. Richardson's thesis is that modern Republicans are the ideological, antidemocratic, racist heirs of the Confederate slave owners, and the West was the corridor through which these toxic values were transmitted to the modern Republican party. Trump, with his Queens accent, is, somehow, the West's fault. Richardson ignores subtlety, historiographical debates, and the contingent nature of history. Democrats in 1860 were the party of “oligarchy” and the Republicans the party of the Declaration of Independence (p. 68). But the Democrats

Democracy · Economic history · Historiography · Ideology · Independence (probability theory · Oligarchy · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law

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