How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Heather Cox Richardson, Oxford University Press, April 1, 2020. 240 pages.
This book was published only 60 days ago. Every day since then, its premise has gotten more and more true. In the U.S., we’re now seeing the most serious riots since 1968. One can’t help but wonder whether this ongoing civil war is now moving into the streets.
This book’s message will come as no surprise to those of us who know some history, who have lived through several decades of that history, and who have seen the escalating American slide toward oligarchy. It surprises me a bit, actually, that the Oxford press saw the need for a book that tells us what we already know. Still, it’s nice to — in a virtual sense — sit together around a tribal fire and hear the story told again by a very good storyteller.
It’s exciting how quickly Heather Cox Richardson has risen to prominence as a public intellectual. For some months now, she has been writing, on Facebook, a concise and incisive daily summary of the first draft of history. This is important, because it seems pretty certain that what we are living through right now will become one of the hot spots in history, and maybe one of the turning points, for better or worse. If you’re not already following Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook, just search for her name.
Richardson recounts the many times in American history when battles broke out between oligarchy and democracy. But she believes that the current situation is the most dangerous since the Civil War. And she wrote this book even before a pandemic, a depression, and street riots started. I’m afraid that the next few months of this unfolding history are not going to be easy to live through.
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