The origins of the pro-Bonaparte democratic tradition -- John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis's pro-Bonaparte democratic mentor -- Jefferson Davis as the "Calhoun of Mississippi," 1844-52 -- Jefferson Davis and the "true democrats" in power, 1852-60 -- Jefferson Davis and the rise of Napoleon III's France -- Pro-Bonaparte democrats of the 1850s South and Jefferson Davis's Confederacy -- White supremacy and equality among whites in the Confederate States of America -- Jefferson Davis's Confederacy and democrats in the Union -- Jefferson Davis and Confederate overtures to Napoleon III's France -- Jefferson Davis's anti-British and pro-Bonaparte Confederacy -- The disillusionment of the pro-Davis Confederates, 1864-65 -- The demise of the pro-Bonaparte democratic ideological tradition, 1865-70.
Summary:
"In his highly innovative study of Confederate political theory, Jeffrey Zvengrowski explains the American Civil War in a new way by arguing that Jefferson Davis and the faction of Confederate leaders who supported him saw Bonapartist France as a model for the Confederate States of America. As such, they saw themselves as struggling not so much for slavery directly, but rather for equality among whites and for white supremacy. And they believed that they were fighting a Republican Party coalition that stood for inequality among whites by means of racial equality or racial equality by means of universal equality. This bloc of the Confederate leadership also wanted to build an industrial nation-state capable of waging Napoleonic warfare with large conscripted armies, and they insisted that state's rights did not mean states should inhibit the national government from exercising such delegated powers as building militarily useful infrastructure. They expected to receive support from many northern Democrats and the Bonapartists of Napoleon III's France, each of whom espoused white equality and supremacy even though they both disliked slavery as an institution more than pro-Davis Confederates. Anglophile anti-Davis Confederates, in contrast, advocated inequality among whites, favored radical state's rights inimical to energetic government at any level, and supported theories of slavery that were hostile to white rule without it. Preferring guerilla to Napoleonic warfare, they hoped to receive support from Britain by asserting that southern plantations were akin to romanticized British aristocratic estates; and that the Confederacy would happily become a de facto British agricultural colony"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Conflicting worlds : new dimensions of the American Civil War
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