Civil War by other means America's long and unfinished fight for democracy

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. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

The U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, was yet another indication that the Civil War that erupted in 1861 has never fully ended, argues Suri (history and public affairs, Univ. of Texas, Austin; The Impossible Presidency). Suri explains that long-standing but underappreciated domestic forces of stubborn resistance and fearful revenge feed 21st-century white supremacist heirs of Confederates, who refused to surrender; they rioted for their vision of an exclusive, white male-dominated society and against a rising multicultural America. As their rebel forefathers rejected Amendments 13, 14, and 15, the rioters and their supporters continue to reject and rebel against the idea of a predominantly nonwhite U.S. democracy. He notes that more than Southern whites have been disaffected by opening U.S. society to Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color. Mirroring dispossessed rebels, many whites in the North, particularly Midwestern Protestants, have also feared declining status from competition outside a closed, whites-only vision of American democracy. Masterfully reviewing post-Civil War history to visualize the persistence of violent white supremacy, this exposes numerous whites' fears of loss and indignity in an increasingly multicultural society, plus the governance structures supporting white supremacy and how they must be dismantled. VERDICT Compellingly insightful and essential for all concerned about the United States' present and future.--Thomas J. Davis

A sharp history in which the author argues that the Civil War has been raging for more than a century and a half--and the Confederacy is winning. The Civil War "ended only militarily at Appomattox," writes Suri, the chair of leadership in global affairs at the University of Texas. It has been waged in venues other than the battlefield ever since, often with the aid of those who would have been Unionists in 1861. The battle flag in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, notes the author, came from a latter-day secessionist in Delaware, a 51-year-old White man for whom the Confederate cause "remained alive." Moreover, it remained alive in various nonimaginary ways: voter suppression, Jim Crow segregationism, lynchings, and spasms of insurrection. In the last case, Suri reminds readers that the smoke had barely cleared from the battlefield when Whites in Memphis rebelled against Union martial law, which was enforced by Black soldiers. The Union general in charge "told investigators that the hostility of the white citizens in Memphis was simply too great and that his forces were too small to counter it," and no insurrectionists were punished. Once the war was formally over, Whites on both sides essentially abandoned the Black population to their fate, with Reconstruction jettisoned owing to Andrew Johnson's White supremacism and Ulysses S. Grant's failure to press for universal civil rights. The result was a Lost Cause narrative that enabled Southerners, would-be and actual, then and now, to imagine themselves as the victims of the war. The author clearly shows that with the death of James Garfield in 1881, the victorious Union gave up on trying to "build an inclusive, multiracial democracy." Few of Suri's observations are groundbreaking, but his prescriptions for finishing that job are meaningful all the same, including "a constitutional amendment guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote." A provocative look at a long shadow cast over the nation's past and present. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.