Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie

Abstract

Reviewed by: Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie Greta De Jong (bio) Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. By Jefferson Cowie. (New York: Basic Books, 2022. Pp. x, 497. $35.00 cloth; $19.99 ebook) Jefferson Cowie provides a comprehensive and timely analysis of white racists’ longstanding antipathy toward the federal government in this book. In recent decades, scholars such as Joseph Crespino, Kevin Kruse, and Matthew Lassiter have examined connections between antigovernment beliefs and opposition to racial equality that were evident in the mid-twentieth century as white southerners mobilized to fight the enforcement of civil rights legislation. Similarly, Kathleen Belew has shown how white supremacist ideologies motivated antigovernment groups and domestic terrorism after the 1960s. Cowie extends the story back in time, arguing that for most of the history of the United States—from settler colonialism to Trumpism—attacks on federal “tyranny” and resistance to government power aimed to preserve white Americans’ freedom to oppress other people. Cowie uses developments in the town of Eufaula in Barbour County, Alabama, to trace the evolution of what he calls “racialized anti-statism” through four key periods in the nation’s history: the dispossession and removal of Indigenous people from their lands; the violent destruction of interracial democracy during Reconstruction; [End Page 201] the license to murder provided to white southerners during the Jim Crow era; and the nationalized opposition to government action on behalf of racial and economic justice in the late twentieth century (p. 5). In each case, antigovernment rhetoric and calls to defend “freedom” were used to justify actions that only protected the ability of some Americans to deny freedom and democracy to others. Conflicts over the enforcement of the Treaty of Cusseta in the 1830s provide an early instance where arguments over federal power, states’ rights, and white freedom emerged and were resolved on the side of white dominance. Armed white invaders illegally squatting on Creek land refused to abide by the law and violently resisted the federal agents sent in to remove them. The deaths that resulted and accusations that the government’s actions amounted to “tyranny” weakened the resolve of U.S. forces, and they eventually abandoned their efforts, setting the pattern for later interventions. Creek dispossession allowed the rise of a slaveholding economy where white freedoms were based on extreme exploitation and abuse of African Americans. When this system was destroyed and Black people gained citizenship rights during Reconstruction, white supremacists mobilized to cast the experiment in interracial democracy as an illegitimate form of coerced equality that they were justified in overthrowing through fraud and violence. The federal government’s withdrawal of support for racial equality helped to usher in the Jim Crow era, when adherence to the doctrine of states’ rights meant white southerners could cheat, imprison, beat, maim, and kill Black southerners with impunity. Despite the civil rights movement’s success in ending legalized racial discrimination in the 1960s, angry white resistance and the resurgence of racialized anti-statism once again undermined federal efforts to fully enforce civil rights laws. Cowie’s analysis is persuasive and supported by evidence drawn from government records, the papers of political leaders and activists, presidential speeches, oral histories, and other archival sources. The book’s most important contribution is its powerful demonstration of [End Page 202] the need for the federal government to play a forceful role in expanding the definition of freedom beyond the narrow vision of those who think it means the unrestrained ability to dominate others. Greta De Jong GRETA DE JONG is a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her most recent book is You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement (2016). Copyright © 2022 Kentucky Historical Society