Heather Cox Richardson on "How the South Won the Civil War"

While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system, which had sustained the defeated South, moved westward and there established a foothold. 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. Richardson 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.

Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College and the author of numerous books about American history and politics. A graduate of Harvard University’s Program in the History of American Civilization, she is the author of The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War (Harvard University Press, 1997), The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (Harvard University Press, 2001), West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2007), Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (Basic Books, 2010), To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (Basic Books, 2014), and, most recently, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (Oxford University Press, 2020). Richardson writes widely for popular publications and is the author of the daily newsletter about the history behind today’s headlines, Letters from an American (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/)

Видео Heather Cox Richardson on "How the South Won the Civil War" канала National History Center