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.
