How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

by Heather Cox Richardson

The Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and Eisenhower’s enforcement of racial equality at Little Rock Central High three years later enabled Movement Conservatives to enlist racism in their cause. Just as slaveholders had done in the 1850s, they took the stance that no matter how popular an activist government was, it would eventually destroy America by destroying liberty. In an echo of Reconstruction, they warned that expanded voting enabled black people to elect leaders who promised “special interest” legislation. All appearances to the contrary, they said, this was not equality. It was tyranny. Making wealthier men pay for policies that would benefit poorer people undercut democracy because it was an attack on the nation’s core principle: liberty.