The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South

In Bruce Levine’s The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South the author explores what he characterizes as “A war launched to preserve slavery [which] succeeded instead in abolishing that institution more rapidly and more radically than would have occurred otherwise.”

In other words, had the south not seceded from the Union, slavery would have probably been preserved in some form or another in America for years to come.  For Levine, the Civil War quickly became a second American Revolution - really a social revolution, as he calls it; the south would not only be defeated, and soundly, but the entire structure of the American Republic would be altered.

In the decades prior to the Civil War, the planter class wielded a great deal of authority in all branches of the government ­­­– far exceeding their size or economic importance.  The war would end that dominance in 1865.  

Of course, this revolution was incomplete.  Levine only handles reconstruction, its failure, and Jim Crow, very briefly.  The promise of the Civil War would not truly be realized into law until the Civil Rights movement a hundred years later.  And we continue to grapple with the issues of the Civil War today.  In a real sense, the revolution is ongoing.