Thomas Ray's Reviews > How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

How the South Won The Civil War, Heather Cox Richardson, 2020, 240pp., ISBN 9780190900908, Library-of-Congress JK1717, Dewey 306.20973

This is history as current events: not just what happened but the scheming behind it.

It's not exactly that the South won. It's the everything-for-the-overlord, nothing-for-the-rest-of-us ideology that has triumphed. With help from fanning white American fears of losing to blacks, women, foreigners: divide and conquer. Rich men convinced voters that extending the right of self-determination to people of color, women, and poor Americans would destroy it for white men. p. 203.

Heather Cox Richardson writes a wonderful summary of today's news (she's been posting at about 2am Chicago time every day; about once a week she takes a day off: "Today was an absolutely perfect July day and I'm not going to ruin it by looking at the news."--https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... )
at
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
Except, bizarrely, she doesn't know that (view spoiler)[the Clinton-Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris party /always/ serves the investor class, to our cost. Clinton quietly sent bankers to arrange world trade deals that race to the bottom in environmental and worker protections, to enrich bankers and multinationals. Clinton quietly exploded the prison population. Obama quietly took /no/ action on climate change, quietly rolled out a lobbyist-written medical-insurance plan that authorizes insurers to charge us 25% more than they pay providers: they're on cost-plus, for the first time ever. Obama quietly amplified the Asian wars, and vastly expanded drone warfare. Obama quietly bailed out Wall Street and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. We can have Wall Street's left-hand puppet quietly serving up the world to the rich, saying, "yes we can!" or, "I'm the change agent!" Or we can have Wall Street's right-hand puppet doing the exact same things, loudly railing against "illegals," "socialists," "liberals", "Eurocrats." To read Heather Cox Richardson, that choice is enough. It is not. Democrats have proven they will do nothing to curb climate change, will not tax the rich, will continue to enact lobbyist-written laws they haven't read. Sure, Republicans are even worse. Democrats do not deserve the free pass Richardson gives them, merely for not being Republicans.



Even FDR, who did more than any other president to make the playing field between the rich and the rest of us less vertical, did so largely by using our Pacific fleet to embargo fossil fuels from entering Japan, to force Japan to go to war with us, so U.S. corporations, not Japan, would control the former European Pacific and Southeast Asian colonies. (hide spoiler)]

Here's Heather Cox Richardson's post on the first labor day: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...

On voter intimidation:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...

"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." --billionaire Peter Thiel. Meaning, "My freedom to do as I will, to your cost, is infringed by your governing me." p. xxviii.

"Man is selfish and lawless and must be kept in line by a ruler." --Thomas Hobbes, /Leviathan/, 1651. p. 4

"No! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses!" --John Locke, /Two Treatises on Government/, 1690. p. 5

"No taxation without representation!" --John Adams, 1769. p. 9

Freedom of elites such as Jefferson, required slavery. pp. 13, 20-22. Democracy was attainable only so long as it was exclusive. p. 125.

Men owned their women and children. p. 14.

"All men would be tyrants if they could." --Abigail Adams, 1776. p. 22

1793 cotton gin: suddenly cotton is king. pp. 27, 34

Southern elites insisted that government do nothing except protect property. p. 35

1850: fewer than 1,800 slaveholders owned more than 100 people apiece; U.S. population 23 million, 3 million enslaved. p. 36

1857 Dred Scott decision: Negroes have no rights which the white man is bound to respect. And, Congress cannot prohibit slavery. p. 39

Land-Grant College Act, 1862, "so a poor man's son and a rich man's son had the same access to education." p. 46. [This was much truer in the 1970s, when the state of Illinois paid $12 of University of Illinois expenses for every dollar of student tuition, than in 2022, when the state paid only thirty cents of University expenses per dollar of tuition. Here's Heather Cox Richardson on student debt: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... ]

Lincoln said, "I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." p. 68. Bad idea. The language, "all men are created equal," if we believe it, prods us to make it so. We get what we expect. Give me hypocritical equality rather than hopeless acquiescence to despotism.

The Texas cattle rush lasted from 1866 to 1886. During the Civil War, Texans couldn't get cattle to market: they multiplied and overgrazed. After the war, they sold for $4, or could simply be collected, on the hoof in Texas; they brought $40 in Chicago, or, the Army would pay 8 cents a pound if they were driven to a fort. White southerners moved west. p. 87. Cowboys were peons: the money went to the owners. p. 88.

The federal government gave settlers land, gave railroad owners land and money, provided a market for western cattle and crops, protected settlers from natives. p. 88.

Chinese Exclusion, 1882–1943. p. 98. (See /Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943/, Sucheng Chan, 1991. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... )

Western and southern politicians all wanted to keep nonwhites from power. Not until 1965 would Congress attempt to protect Black voting. p. 101. A few extractive industries dominated the West, and a few tycoons dominated life and politics. p. 103. "It took a gold mine to develop a silver mine." p. 104. Work was low-paid and dangerous. p. 105. Western towns and cities supported a power structure that favored the concentration of wealth--even after Populists put Democrats in power in 1892. p. 108.

Cattle barons hired gunmen to murder their small competitors. The Wyoming governor and President Harrison sided with the cattle barons, who got away with murder. 1892. pp. 108–109. The Idaho governor and President Harrison also sided with mine owners over strikers; the army removed the local sheriff, who was on the strikers' side. p. 109. Tycoons believed democracy a perversion of government, as had plantation owners: Civilization depends on "the sacredness of property." The alternative is "Communism," which kills initiative and destroys prosperity. "The best interests of the race are promoted" by the system of individualism, "which inevitably gives wealth to the few."--Andrew Carnegie, /The Gospel of Wealth/, 1889. pp. 109–110. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field wrote more opinions than almost any justice in history, insisting that the primary law in America was protection of property. p. 110.

1897, Assistant Secretary to the Navy Teddy Roosevelt wanted to go to war with Spain, which was trying to put down a rebellion in its colony of Cuba. U.S. Business interests did not want to go to war for starving Cubans. They wanted Spain to retake control and keep the sugar and tobacco coming. p. 117–118.

The U.S. quickly beat the Spanish in Cuba--and in the Philippines, which Spain also owned. Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million. Filipinos were excluded from the peace negotiations. The Sugar Trust, which had 95% of the U.S. sugar market, loved it. The Philippines produced 200,000 tons of sugar in 1897. The Trust had staged a coup against the queen of Hawaii. Bringing sugar-growing areas into the U.S. meant the Trust would pay no tariffs. pp. 120–121. The U.S. also got Puerto Rico and Guam. The islands became quasi-American: no tariffs for the Trust, no citizenship for the natives. pp. 122–123.

Teddy Roosevelt became governor of New York in 1898, promising to take government out of the hands of corporations. Republican party operatives convinced him to take the vice presidency under William McKinley instead. p. 125. An unemployed steelworker who believed the Republican Party was instituting oligarchy assassinated McKinley in 1901 and, "that damned cowboy is president." p. 125. Roosevelt wanted everyone--EXCEPT people of color, union organizers, independent women, or the poor--treated equally. p. 126. /Those/ people are "special interests" wanting handouts. The underclass. Without an underclass, there can be no equality for deserving people like us. p. 128.

Roosevelt broke up industrial trusts. p. 126. His Progressives wanted worker safety, reasonable hours, fair pay, childhood education, food safety, and NO UNIONS. They wanted to prevent monopolies and tax corporations, but leave them alone. p. 127.

Richardson would have us believe the "gold bugs" who put McKinley in the presidency in 1896 wanted to "advance democracy," while the "free silver" proponents of the South and West were the antidemocratic force. In fact, the gold men were the bankers, who knew that control of currency kept them in interest income and power. p. 134. See /Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913/, James Livingston, 1986. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

To people of color, the New Deal looked pretty much like the old deal. p. 138. Social Security deliberately excluded farm work and domestic work--where black workers predominated. See /There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America/, Philip Dray, 2010. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

In 1943, Congress finally ended Chinese Exclusion, in effect since 1882. p. 149.

William F. Buckley, in his plutocrat-funded /National Review/ magazine, insisted that government do nothing but protect life, liberty, and property--just as slaveholders had insisted a century earlier. p. 155.

Americans' incomes, across the economic spectrum, doubled between 1945 and 1970, thanks to wage laws and tax laws. p. 156.

In the 1950s, 62% of the federal budget went for war industries, many of them in California. p. 157. By 1961 the military-industrial complex employed more than 3.5 million Americans directly, and many more indirectly. Its beneficiaries beat the war drum, claiming the "liberal elite" had gone soft on communism. And that the government--the source of their prosperity--should not tax nor regulate them. p. 160. Westerners and southerners agreed that desegregation, which gave black Americans benefits paid for by tax dollars, offered prime evidence of a communist conspiracy. In Arizona, the Hoover Dam and fifty other federal agencies brought $342 million into the state, while the federal government took less than $16 million in taxes. That money was the source of the Goldwater family fortune. He claimed instead that it was solely due to his family's hard work. p. 162. He resented labor law and taxes, and insisted that the government had no business in "social welfare programs, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, or urban renewal." p. 163. Never mind that he would never have been rich without it. Nor that without public education the age would be dark.

Reagan, too, ignored the utter dependence of the West on government contracts. p. 167. He won the California governorship in 1966, promising to "send the welfare bums back to work," and "clean up the mess in Berkeley," where students were protesting the Vietnam War. p. 169.

Milton Friedman claimed tax cuts for the rich would pay for themselves. p. 177. Didn't work out that way.

In 1978, California passed Proposition 13, limiting property tax to 1% of the value of the property, and required a two-thirds majority of the legislature to raise taxes. p. 178. Reagan said, "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem."

Reagan, as president, slashed taxes of the rich and cut protections for the rest of us. Unfettered rule-by-the-rich. p. 180. He nearly tripled the national debt, from $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion. p. 183.

From Thomas Piketty's Wealth and Incomes Database: http://wid.world
In the U.S., for only forty years, from 1942 through 1981, was the average income of the top .01% less than 165 times the average family income. These were the years when the federal government effectively wielded political power – through labor law, antitrust law, and progressive taxation – to lessen the slope of the playing field. The top .01% take many hundreds of times the average income now. By 2015, the top 1% of families had as much wealth as the bottom 90%. p. 186.

Newt Gingrich, as speaker of the House in 1995, eliminated House of Representatives committees and staff. Bewildered representatives turned to lobbyists to explain issues and write bills. pp. 184-185.

2011 median income & wealth by race, p. 186:
White $50,400 income, $111,000 wealth
Latino $36,840 income, $8,300 wealth
Black $32,000 income, $7,000 wealth
Pine Ridge Lakota (40,000 people) $3,000 income.

Reagan's Federal Communications Commission in 1987 ended the Fairness Doctrine requiring fact-based reporting and equal time for candidates. p. 188.

Rupert Murdoch started Fox News in 1996, Roger Ailes, CEO. p. 192. Other channels began spewing Fox's opinions, after Fox called them, "biased." p. 193. Fringe ideas became mainstream through incessant repetition: government is socialism. Minorities and women attack American freedom.

Bill Clinton accepted many of the Republican austerity and deregulatory policies. p. 194.

Florida purged up to 100,000 legitimate voters, presumed Democrats, from the rolls before 2000. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and with it the presidency. p. 195.

Republican redistricting after the 2010 census guaranteed Republican majorities in House delegations of states with a minority of Republican votes. p. 197. Especially Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan. In 2012, Democrats won the presidency and the senate; Democrats had 1.4 million more votes for their House candidates than Republicans had, but Republicans won a 33-seat majority in the House. p. 197. [Of course, Democrats, when /they/ had majorities in state legislatures, /could have/ instituted nonpartisan redistricting laws. They didn't. They wanted to draw maps to their advantage when they were in power.]

Reagan appointed more judges than any other president ever. p. 197.

By 2016, Republicans sounded like slaveholders defending oligarchy. p. 198. They claimed poor whites, too, had only themselves to blame. A speech from 1860 sounds like it was said in 2016. p. 201.

Trump virtually eliminated the estate tax. p. 199.

Other books on similar lines:

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E. Baptist, 2013. The Industrial Revolution was a revolution in textile manufacture, made from cotton grown, cultivated and picked by enslaved people. Slavery was brutal. Slavery was far more profitable than free labor. Slaveholders would /never/ voluntarily have freed slaves.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer, 2016. How extractive-industry billionaires captured control of American thought and politics.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...









Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, 2002. Real power is not in the political system. It’s in the private economy: that’s where the decisions are made about what’s produced, how much is produced, what’s consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, 2013 in French, 2014 in English. Wealth inequality is self-amplifying. Only a global tax on wealth itself, not just an income tax, can prevent a re-descent into a lords-and-serfs world.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution, Peter Irons, 1999. Pre-Civil-War decisions such as Dred Scott helped make the Civil War necessary, by refusing to impose judicial limits, nor even honor political limits, to slavery. Post-Civil-War decisions consistently helped make the Civil War meaningless by refusing to enforce blacks' rights to life and citizenship. The first chief justice, John Jay, felt that, "Those who own the country ought to govern it." Judges furthered the interests of the social and financial elite. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 adopted the Constitution largely because it would increase their own personal wealth in public securities, land speculation, mercantile, manufacturing and shipping businesses, and ownership of slaves. The Constitution was a victory for slavery, aristocracy, and elitism. The Massachusetts Bay Colony /Body of Liberties/, 1641, said, "Every person shall enjoy the same justice and law." That is, every person except not religious dissenters, women, African slaves, and Indians. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, Philip Dray, 2010.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today, Kevin Bales, 2009. The U.S. government is complicit in the abuse of workers, bringing them into the country on A-3, G-5, B-1, and J-1 visas, that tie workers to individual employers, and give the workers few rights and fewer protections. Agriculture, domestic work, any low wage occupation traps thousands of people in slavery. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent Prisoners, Jennifer Turner, ACLU, 2013. Blacks are sentenced to life without parole in U.S. federal prison for nonviolent offenses at 20 times the rate of whites. The U.S. has less than 5% of world population, but 25% of world prison population. One out of every four Americans has a criminal record. The U.S. orgy of life-without-parole sentences began after the supreme court temporarily stopped the death penalty.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


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