How the South Finally Won the Civil War
by Charles Potts
$29.00
Tsunami Inc.
How the South Finally Won the Civil War and Controls the Politcal Future of the United States
This book will give you insight into our political future at the mercy of the sons of John Calhoun, "The Marx of the Master Class." This book will change the way you read American history.
Praise for How the South...
A book no public library's history collection should be without.
Mike Finley, Techno Craze, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Nothing but the truth, rare as that is.
Edward Dorn U of Colorado, Boulder
His contention is that although the Confederates states may have lost the American Civil War, they were its ultimate victors in that they came to gain control over the rest of the Union. Not only have Southerners dominated the US Government since the Civil War...Potts is at his most convincing when he argues that the South won the race to settle the American West. Southerners brought Texas into the Union and it was this state, together with the territory that was later to become New Mexico and Arizona, that became the South's bridge to the Pacific. Brad Johnson, The Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo, Sunday June 9, 1996
"Well, in 1844, Sam Houston, then ending his second term as president of Texas, drew a map. It showed the domain his nation was eventually to occupy, the extent of its manifest destiny, if the movement for the annexation to the United States should fail. Houston's map has its merit as prophecy. If Texas could not be American, then Texas was eventually to include Oregon, New Mexico, and California -- as defined above [54-40 or fight]. It was also to include the Mexican state of Chihuahua and thence westward to the Pacific. And it was to include Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, and Virginia. That is, the republic of Texas was to cover, besides some territory which is Mexican today, precisely the extent of the Far West and the Confederate States of America." from pages 17-8 of the 1943 edition of The Year of Decision: 1846 by Bernard DeVoto
It is a commonplace among historians that regionalism is one of the mainsprings of United States history, and that the political, social and economic history of the nation is basically the history of the South, the Border States and New England writ large. Charles Potts offers an interesting twist on this oft-told story, particularly when compared to the usual North-centric or New England-centric versions. Potts asserts that the Deep South (with its seedbed in South Carolina) is a region that should be considered in its own right, one that has had a major, sometimes decisive, impact on American history and society from colonial times to the present.
With an economy based on plantations and ranching, a large non-white labor force of de jure or de facto slaves. and a culture of racism, gun loving and hyper-masculine aggression, this region that stretches from South Carolina to Southern California, has usually pushed U.S. foreign and domestic policies to the Right. At times, it has even dominated the entire country, and Potts argues that the past 20-30 years has been one of those eras. All in all, a thought-provoking book, no matter what your views on American history.
Michael McHugh, Seoul, Korea
Despite all the glib lies of politicians and the obscure obfuscation of academics, sometimes someone shines a light into the shadows...Potts' contribution is to demonstrate how the current Southern ascendancy is the culmination of a long historical process whose roots reach back to the original European colonization of North America. Even more importantly, Potts shows how the "new Confederacy" is undermining both democracy and the living standards of working Americans. How the South Won fits somewhere between the scholarly work of William Appleman Williams and the political polemics of William Jennings Bryan. At its core is the fundamental insight that democracy and empire are incompatible systems. In the perennial struggle between democracy and empire for the American soul, it has always been the South that tipped the scales in favor of empire. Potts documents with careful detail the crucial role of the southern planters in suppressing democracy, fomenting empire, and creating and maintaining the civil religion of militaristic chauvinism. He makes a powerful case that slavery was not an historical aberration but merely the most complete expression of the pattern of white domination of other peoples,...Potts argues there were basically six issues at stake in the Civil War and... the south has convincingly established its position on [5] issues as permanent features of the American political landscape...a very important book.
Professor Dennis Florig, PhD (Stanford), Chungnam National University, Taejon, Korea
This book is an entertaining and well-written alternative view of this nation's history since the War Between the States...No one should acquire this book thinking the author is a Confederate sympathizer...He suggests that the North American Free Trade Agreement is merely the latest chapter in the saga of the Confederates' search for low-wage labor by which they can more profitably invest their capital derived in turn from previous rounds of exploitation dating back to the beginning of the colonization of this continent four centuries ago. The case he presents is compelling and convincing...