A new book, brilliantly reviewed by Florence King for The American Spectator, explains not only why the South lost the Civil War, but why it was doomed to fail from its very inception. It was not the “overwhelming numbers and resources” of the Union, as General Lee claimed. It was the simple truth that the Confederate States of America was a terribly stupid idea:

Having seceded from a strong, centralized government, the South had to construct a strong, centralized government of its own if it wanted to be powerful enough to guarantee the sacred principle of States Rights. To free itself from one Union, it had to submit to another.

And that was just the beginning. The Confederacy was an ungovernable mess, and would surely have collapsed even without the war.