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Jeb Smith

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The Paradox of Freedom

A Review of Paradox of Freedom: A History of Black Slaveholders in America (Scuppernong Press, 2025) by Larry McCluney I recently completed Larry Allen McCluney, Jr.’s book, The Paradox of Freedom: A History of Black Slaveholders in America. This rarely discussed subject deserves more attention, and I am glad McCluney is giving it the attention it needs. An Instructor of…
Jeb Smith
November 25, 2025
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The Expansion of Slavery or States’ Rights?

In my various interactions with promoters of the winners’ version of the Civil War, I often hear that the South and the Confederacy desired to expand slavery into the western territories, to reignite the slave trade, and generally to create a republic built upon slave labor; and that they left the Union to protect slavery and its extension into the…
Jeb Smith
November 3, 2025
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Lincoln’s Confusion Over Slavery and States’ Rights

“There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done.” -Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address There is…
Jeb Smith
September 25, 2025
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Would States’ Rights Solve our Issues?

I have been a big advocate for decentralized power, which in our American context has been connected to “states' rights;” the most prominent period and example being the American Civil War, where the Southern states resisted centralized federal control and both fought for and applied to their Constitution a strong decentralized states' rights policy. A decentralized Union where sovereignty lay…
Jeb Smith
August 22, 2025