Freedom Party rule throughout the CSA directly targeted the pre-Featherston political and social structure of the Confederacy. This was in part a reflection of Featherston’s own personal hatreds; under the Freedom Party, the traditional power brokers in different Confederate states, such as the landed aristocracy (one of the pillars in most states of the Whig Party) were systematically removed from local governance. One result of this was the disruption, if not outright ending, of various local forms of political patronage in favor of the Freedom Party’s totalitarian political machine.
The end result of this process of political consolidation was the establishment of a general system of social conformity throughout most of the CSA, backed up by a system of terror directed against any real or imagined enemies of Featherston and the Freedom Party.
From what I recall from the series, while the Freedom Party went after the older Radical Liberal landowners and local power brokers in Chihuahua and Sonora, the party also sent activists to organize support from the general public for Featherston.
Ultimately, the US occupation authorities in the former CSA would find that the former pre-Featherston political system had been destroyed by the Freedom Party.