Civil War by Other Means
America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight for equality never did
In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before.
In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point.
What emerges is a vivid and at times unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself, but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Texas historian Suri (The Impossible Presidency) reveals in this eloquent and persuasive account how the failure to uproot the South's racist ideology after the Civil War has contributed to America's present-day dysfunctions. Focusing on the 20 years following Robert E. Lee's surrender, Suri details how the nation failed to heal its wounds, noting, for instance, that many Southerners revered Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth as a selfless hero who gave his life to protect the South from oppression. It was in this spirit that "Southern whites affirmed their control over their destinies" by resisting the federal government's attempts to impose a new racial order upon them, Suri contends, documenting an influx of ex-Confederate soldiers and their families into Mexico to try to rebuild "the power of the Confederacy" there, and organized efforts in the Southern states to resist Republican rule and prevent formerly enslaved people from deploying their new constitutional rights. Suri also explains how the contested presidential election of 1876 gave Southern politicians the power to ignore federal civil rights policies and draws a convincing through line from these historic events to the January 6 Capitol riot. Brimming with insight and outrage, this is an illuminating look at the roots of today's political polarization.
