By Bruce Levine
Before the election of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th President
of the United States on November 6, 1860 the South was at its apex; within the
borders of its vast area a small minority of wealthy slave-owners amassed not
only enormous fortunes but also a great power that dominated the United States’
political landscape since the end of the American Revolution. Five years later, in the wake of the Civil
War, the South had lost everything; its great cities lay in ruins, its
landscape ravaged, its wealth gone, its slaves freed, and its political power vanished. Why and how this stunning reversal of the
South’s social, political and economic systems happened is the subject of Bruce
Levine’s book, “The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social
Revolution that Transformed the South.”
Levine, the J. G. Randall Distinguished Professor of History
at the University of Illinois, sets the stage nicely in his first two
chapters. He describes the “House of
Dixie” as it existed in 1860 and then reaches back through history to describe
how it was built from its foundations up.
Having covered this background moves chronologically through the war,
and describes events that slowly and gradually disassembled the Southern social,
political and economic structure, piece by piece until its collapse.
Though “The Fall of the House of Dixie” is not a book of
military history, it does cover it share of battles within the structure of its
narrative, Levine’s focus is more on the social and economic impact of the war
on the South. A major component of the
South’s economic and social systems was built on a shaky foundation of
slavery. The African-American’s
experience, though not primarily dealt with, slavery and the status of slaves
is a major focus of Professor Levine’s book.
Levine demonstrates “The House of Dixie” was not built on a
firm footing on bedrock, but rather on quicksand. As the status of the enslaved
Blacks of the South changed during the war, the trickle of slaves leaving the plantations
before the Emancipation Proclamation and the steady stream after it quickly
eroded the foundation of slavery that the Southern social, economic and political
system was built upon, and the passage of the 13th amendment destroyed it
forever.
“The Fall of the House of Dixie” is very well
researched. Its author has exhumed a
treasure trove of primary sources: letters, diaries, newspaper accounts and
government documents to tell the tale of the multi-faceted drama of the South’s
political, social and economic demise of the 1860s. It is well written and engages its readers
from its first to its last page.
ISBN 978-1400067039, Random House, © 2013, Hardcover, 464
pages, Photographs, Maps Illustrations, End Notes, Bibliography & Index.
$30.00. To purchase a copy of this book click HERE.
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