The Nation's founders - the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality - owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior. America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other. This is the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and white male domination that were woven into the nation’s fabric from the beginning. United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found, and expanded upon, deep racial hierarchies. Those traditions—a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color—have found a home in modern conservative politics.
We will supplement our core book, How the South Won the Civil War with writings from Jubal Early, a southern war general and key figure in the creation of the Lost Cause myth; with the highly influential Conscience of a Conservative, ghost-written by L. Brent Bozell; with an oft-cited 2016 essay from a prominent conservative intellectual arguing the critical importance of a Trump win over Hillary Clinton; and finally with selected readings from recent Richardson publications.
Our core book author Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College. She publishes Letters from an American, a nightly online newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history, with over one million subscribers.
Week 1: The Roots of Paradox*; and The Triumph of Equality*
Week 2: The Heritage of the South, Chapter VII, "Effects of Misinformation"; and The West*
Week 3: Cowboy Reconstruction*; and Western Politics*
Week 4: The West and the South Join Forces*; and The Rise of the New West*
Week 5: Conscience of a Conservative
Week 6: The Flight 93 Election; and Oligarchy Rides Again* & What Then is this American?*
Week 7: Discussion and conclusions: The Oligarch's Revenge, and selected readings from other recent Richardson publications
*Heather Cox Richardson; How the South Won the Civil War - Oligarchy, Democracy and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America; Oxford University Press, 2020
Jubal Early, The Heritage of the South, written 1867, published 1915, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/63254/pg63254-images.html
Michael Anton, The Flight 93 Election; Claremont Review of Books, September 5, 2016 Digital Edition, https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/
Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, Wilder Publications 2014
The Oligarch's revenge: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/heather-cox-richardson-how-south-won-civil-war-review/