How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson

Author:Heather Cox Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The West and the South Join Forces

By the turn of the twentieth century, inequality was written into American law. That inequality did not spell the triumph of oligarchy, though, for the simple reason that the emergence of the western individualist as a national archetype reengaged the paradox that lay at the core of America’s foundation. Denigrating people of color, organized workers, and independent women actually weakened the ability of oligarchs to cement their power: they could not convincingly argue that government activism was designed to redistribute wealth from hardworking white men to the undeserving poor. Indeed, the progressive legislation of the early twentieth century was possible because it privileged upwardly mobile white men. As in the days of the Founders, democracy was attainable only so long as it was exclusive.

With this boundary back in place, westerners and southerners joined together to expand opportunity for white men and, eventually, for those women who defined themselves as wives and mothers, rather than as independent actors with rights equal to those of men. Even as progressives relied on the government to regulate business and level the economic playing field, they retained their idea that “the American, this new man,” wanted nothing from the government. In that, they drew on the myths of self-reliance embodied in both the cowboy and the Confederate soldier.

Theodore Roosevelt was crucial in translating western individualism into national politics. In 1898, he parlayed his stint as a Rough Rider into the governorship of New York, where he promised to defend the rights of hardworking men by cleaning up corruption and taking government out of the hands of corporations. Party operatives set out to neutralize him by convincing him to take the vice presidential slot on the 1900 Republican Party ticket behind William McKinley. The vice presidency was the place political careers went to die, a backwater from which they thought Roosevelt would never reemerge.

Then, in September 1901, an unemployed young steel worker who believed the Republican Party was replacing democracy with oligarchy shot McKinley in the stomach. McKinley, who had survived the Battle of Antietam, died eight days later. Members of the Republican Old Guard were appalled. “I told McKinley it was a mistake to nominate that wild man at Philadelphia,” Mark Hanna moaned. “I told him what would happen if he should die. Now look. That damned cowboy is president of the United States.”1

Roosevelt brought his western brand of democracy to the White House. He embraced the idea that the United States was the greatest nation on earth and must export its system around the world. If America was really that extraordinary, he thought, it must also make sure that all of its people had the opportunity to reach their full potential. The nation must support democracy overseas and at home by creating healthy, educated, and prosperous citizens. Roosevelt worried that the oligarchs of industry had taken the place of oligarchs of slavery, but that didn’t mean his vision included people of color and union organizers. With them

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