Union and liberty are not two terms most people associate with John C. Calhoun, a figure often linked exclusively with secession and slavery. But a reading of Liberty Fund’s 1992…
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Once again, it is politicking time in the good ol’ US of A. The Democrats, the party of youth, vision, and vigor, present to the country a senile old socialist…
A Review of A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Robert W. Whitaker. New York: Robert B. Luce, 1976, 208 pages. Hardly anyone has commented upon the seeming disappearance from…
“There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians.” — Barnard Elliott Bee A Review of Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies…
This article was originally published at lewrockwell.com. In all the recent fuss over symbols of the Confederacy, whether to honor them or get rid of the lot, not much attention…
The American President began as Cincinnatus, a patriot called to the temporary service of his country (a republican confederation). The President ends as Caesar, a despot of almost unlimited power,…
This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I’ll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981. When…
Several generations after his lifetime Jefferson became best known, as he still is, of course, for these words “All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator…
There was a popular ragtime song in the 1940s and ‘50s, derived from an old minstrel tune, that went like this: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Does…
Your other lecturers have pleasant and upbeat subjects to consider. I am stuck with economics, which is a notoriously dreary subject. It is even more of a downer when we…
Sometimes opponents of nullification base their opposition on the claim that Jefferson and Madison’s blueprint against federal overreach could only have applied to a unique situation present in 1798. The…
This may be done by enlarging and extending the powers conferred by a liberal construction, based upon the supposed reason and spirit of its provisions, so as to meet emergencies…
In one of Henry James’s less unreadable novels, The Bostonians, the hero is Basil Ransom, an impoverished ex-Confederate from Mississippi who is trying to make his way professionally in the…
Who looks at Lee must think of Washington; In pain must think, and hide the thought, So deep with grievous meaning it is fraught. Herman Melville, “Lee in the Capitol,”…
This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1986. Some miles beyond Charlotte Court House, in Southside Virginia, one may find his way to Roanoke Plantation, which seems…
There is no more singular statesman or person in the history of American politics than John Randolph of Roanoke. Eccentric in the extreme, volatile, and often ill-tempered, this Saint Michael…
An address delivered on August 10, 1950, before the annual reunion of the Weaver family. Everybody admits, I believe, that the most difficult people of all for a man to…
Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the greatest enigma of the American age. He wrote and spoke on so many topics that he has become the symbol of virtually every strain of…
There is no group I would rather receive recognition from than the John Randolph Club. I want to thank my valued comrade-in-arms Tom Fleming for this occasion. Tom is the…
What exactly makes the South, the South? Hosts of scholars have puzzled mightily over this one. Historians might point to the old Confederacy, human geographers might look for the proliferation…
As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and as an eminent lawyer and statesman, Martin defended state sovereignty and the diffusion of political authority. He is usually identified as an…
“. . . a republican government, which many great writers assert to be incapable of subsisting long, except by the preservation of virtuous principles.” — John Taylor of Caroline The…
In honor of John Taylor’s birthday, December 19. From Tyranny Unmasked: “The rival remedy for our troubles, so insignificant in the eyes of the Committee as to be wholly suppressed, although…
States’ rights may have been the defining force in Antebellum America, but modern, mainstream historians would have you believe that they were nothing more than a wicked creed cooked up…
This essay was first published at Unz Review on November 23, 2014. Back in 1975 the Warren County [N.C.] Historical Association initiated a comprehensive project to study the life and…
Part V of a Five Part Series. Part I, II, III, and IV. 1. Taylor as a Liberal “Individualist” Taylor writes that society not made up of individuals is a…
The fiercely contested, yet inconclusive election of 1824 set the stage for one of the great debates of American political history. According to Irving Bartlett, “the key to understanding Calhoun’s…
Focusing on the cultural, political and economic long-term consequences of President Obama’s amnesty executive action obscures placing attention on a more fundamental problem lurking in the shadows of American culture…
It is the very genius of a consolidated Government to elevate one portion of the Community, while it corrupts the other. –Calhoun Generally, however, the secession movement was a remarkable…
Part IV of a Five Part Series. Part I, Part II, Part III 1. War Finance Disillusioned by the policies of his Republican allies, who had leapt unprepared into the…
Part III of a Five Part Series. Part I, Part II. 1. Republicanism and Liberalism Revisited As noted previously, 18th-century Anglo-American opposition writers employed several political languages. One of these,…
Part II of a Five Part Series. Part I 1. Liberalism Taylor stood on liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of good and evil. Self-interest was the…
This essay is in honor of George Mason’s death, October 7, 1792. He wrote the foundational words for America. If we listen, he taught us the dream that the import…
When I first heard of the topic “Small is Beautiful,” I thought of the wonderful motto of Chilton Williamson’s friend Edward Abbey: “Growth is the Enemy of Progress.” Abbey went…
“Sic Semper Tyrannis.” — from the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia “I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I’m going to be the president of everybody”…
This essay appears in Clyde Wilson and Brion McClanahan, Forgotten Conservatives in American History and is reprinted here in honor of Jackson’s birthday, Sept 21. James Jackson did not sign…
Part IV of a four part series. Part I, Part II, Part III. I come now to urge my objection to the jurisdiction of the court. It goes on the…
Part 1 of a Five Part Series 1. The Relevance of John Taylor John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824) has a secure, if minor, place in the history of American political…
This is Part I of four letters that originally appeared in the Richmond Enquirer in 1819 under the nom de plume Hampden. They could have been written yesterday. To the…
While cleaning my study the other day I ran across my copy of a $10.00 “Dix” note. This paper money was issued by the Bank of New Orleans up to…
The real U.S. Constitution, which was scrapped long ago, does not permit judges to be its final interpreters, executive orders, coercion of the people of a State by the federal…
Aristotle taught that “To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements, for none of these things retain their natural power…
Dislocation brings with it a multiplicity of dissonance. Moving disrupts the consonance of time and place, of family, friends, parish, and all the landmarks and milestones that speak to us…
Dr. Donald Livingston discusses the proper size and scale of government at the Lindenwood University Hammond Institute Liberty and Ethics Center Spring Conference, March 22, 2014.
Probably no man in America in 1800 knew more about, or cared more passionately for, republicanism than Thomas Jefferson. It was the common belief that a true republic had to…
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