John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, one year before James Madison, and the boys were neighbors; but Taylor afterwards moved to Caroline County, where he lived…
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A review of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2014) by William C. Harris. William C. Harris has set before him the admirable task…
First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to any major political party in the antebellum period calling…
Nearly two weeks ago, five counties in Oregon voted to approve a measure to secede from the state and join its neighbor Idaho. The counties of Malheur, Sherman, Baker, Grant,…
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crimeAre pronest to it, and impute themselves…Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1) The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled…
Seventy-six years ago, on May 8, 1945, at 2301 hours, Central European Time, World War II in Europe officially ended. Although the war would continue in the Pacific Theatre for…
It is a testimony to the prevalence of anti-Southern sentiment that The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the most prominent evangelical parachurch entities, has provided a platform for such sentiments…
A review of Secession, State & Liberty, (Transaction, 1998) edited with an introduction by David Gordon. If there is a single book you should read on the subject of secession,…
On the Ingraham Angle recently, guest, Craig Shirley offered an opinion that should cheer the people who have read (best seller) The South Was Right. Even those who haven’t read…
A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. A review of Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy (W.W. Norton, 1993) by…
A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard;…
Early in the civil war President Lincoln had Federal Troops occupy the State of Maryland. Though the power vested only with the US Congress, Mr. Lincoln also took it upon…
The red and the blue—states that is– are as different as the colorless black and white landscapes absent from the color spectrum. The concept of separate states for separate cultures…
Secession: The point of the spear aimed at the heart of the American Leviathan – or so I once thought. Certainly secession has been a live idea in Europe for…
As of Friday, November 6, the votes are still being counted in at least six states. The large pro-Trump margins that seemed to prevail late election night have now disappeared…
The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California,…
A review of American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup (Encounter Books, 2020) by F.H. Buckley When asked whether a state can constitutionally secede from the United States, Supreme…
Far too many pundits and commentators live and die by polls. It seems that each day some on-air talking head or online spinmeister reveals breathlessly increasingly bad results for President…
What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the…
Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to…
Antebellum California secession is a little known topic, but the Southern portion of the State nearly broke free from Northern California in the years just before the outbreak of war…
Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is…
A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons. First, the Confederate states had no…
Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural…
Northern secession was openly in the political brew again. Eleven (11) years before, Jefferson had cautioned New England’s desire to secede while accepting their sovereignty to choose as they wished….
Increasingly, I try to avoid news-binging, watching assiduously all the compiled, feculent bilge that passes for news reporting these days, those authorized “stories” fed to us like tasteless, industrial-strength pablum…
“Where you gonna be when half of California riots? Where you gonna run to when the lights go out? I won’t be hangin’ out in California, I won’t try it….
Estimates of the number of South Vietnamese civilian casualties during the U.S. war in Vietnam vary. A U.S. Dept. of Defense estimate put the numbers at 1.2 million, including 195,000…
Hillary Clinton infamously said: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist,…
I started my political journey on what I thought to be the Left. Books like Klein’s The Shock Doctrine resonated with me, as did films like American Beauty and Revolutionary…
The American story is a story of secession, or better still secessions. The first permanent settlements of Europeans in North America were the result of a series of secessions from…
A review of Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (ISI Books, 2006) by Joseph Pearce. There’s not too much that’s actually wrong about this book, other than…
American political theater has become the most entertaining show in town. Trump refuses to shake hands and Pelosi rips up his script. This is red meat for the duly indoctrinated…
Progressive California lawmakers have decided to create their own Green New Deal in order to combat both climate change and statewide problems like poverty. The best way to accomplish this,…
Not that long ago, it seems, Congressional Democrats were calling the Constitution an outdated impediment to “smart,” progressive government, but lately they are professing their high regard for the founding…
A photograph of the University of Mississippi Majorettes graced the cover of the September 24, 1962, issue of the popular national magazine, Sports Illustrated. This national magazine thought nothing of…
The beginning of the American political order goes much further back than the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Political scientists and political theorists are understandably fixated on the Constitution and the…
Confederate statue critics increasingly argue that the monuments should be torn down because they honor traitors. Among such advocates is Christy Coleman, CEO of the Richmond’s American Civil War Museum. While the…
One of the most enduring myths of American history centers on the “compact theory” of the Constitution. According to the standard interpretation, Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Republicans invented the…
A review of The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973) by William C. Wright (WCW) “Historical writing during the Civil War and immediately after…
In his recent book, Call Sign Chaos : Learning To Lead, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis cited what he termed the current “tribalism” in America as the greatest threat…
Leaders of every nation do what they think is in their countries’ immediate best interest and explain their actions with words that seem relevant at that moment. If future actions…
On May 17, 2019, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 5: Equality Act—better known as the Trans-Gender Equality Act. The “peoples” House thus spoke on behalf of the…
In a recent column, “Nationalism vs. Secession: Should America Break Up? (July 27), I included references to an essay I had published at THE UNZ REVIEW (July 26), and then…
There is a question that increasingly arises, uncomfortably, in our conversations…from brief exchanges at work at the water cooler, at home with family, after church on Sunday, with our email…
Secession, nullification, and interposition, like the poor, we shall always have with us. These are as American, indeed more American, than apple pie and baseball. Our new federal union, outlined…
I want to tell you a story that you won’t read in the mainstream news. It is a positive story, about people from different backgrounds, who have different cultures, coming…
We hear a lot about “fake news” these days. Until I was its victim, I was skeptical about the extent of its existence. Now I understand why trust in the…
We have seen how Mississippi, with its campus free speech bill, totally ignored its own State constitution in favor of federal 1st Amendment arguments. Now Texas is doing likewise in…
Watching NBC’s TODAY program on Tuesday, January 23, 2019, there was anchor Savannah Guthrie demanding to know if Covington, Kentucky, Catholic High School student, Nick Sandman, wished to “apologize” for…
The Southern political tradition, in practice and theory, is one of its most valuable contributions to America and the world. The one constant theme of that tradition from 1776–through Jefferson,…
William Plumer Jacobs (1842-1917), a native of Yorkville, South Carolina, was a Presbyterian minister and scholar whose entire life has been called “a singular consecration to work and service in…
The Abbeville Institute conducted three conferences this year on the fracturing of American national identity and what means for the Southern tradition and the Southern people. The general public knows…
On November 10, 2018, the Abbeville Institute hosted an event called The Revival of Nullification and Secession in Dallas, TX. The purpose was to educate people on the means by…
Secession? Nullification? A second Civil War in the presently not-so United States of America? According to a historic and highly fascinating Abbeville Institute event that took place November 9 and 10, 2018…
Nationalist Jeff Sessions gets canned and a nullifier takes his job. This is actually an odd twist of fate. A friend of mine knows Sessions personally, and he continually expressed…
A review of From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Rutledge Roesch. Mr. James Rutledge…
“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” The 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump produced the wedding of Bible Belt social conservatives and a flamboyant New York Billionaire with a legitimately questionable…
On June 20, 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Crawford: “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in union, I have…
Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk…
This essay is Chapter 13 in Mr. Taylor’s Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation (2016). “I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only…
“Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for … So, I say, stand by the ‘Constitution and the Union’, and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according…
Were Robert E. Lee and the Confederates “traitors” who violated their oaths to the Constitution and attempted to destroy the American nation? Or, were they defenders of that Constitution and…
It was Wednesday, April 19, 1865. The Confederate States of America lay prostrate under the twin plagues of starvation and despair. Richmond had fallen and Lee’s surrendered Army of Northern…
A review of With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era by William A. Blair (University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and Secession on Trial: The…
“When you are up to your hindquarters in alligators—it is hard to remember that your intentions were to drain the swamp.” This old country-boy saying seems most appropriate for President…
Is there a genuine analogy between the secession of South Carolina from the USA and the secession of Lithuania from the USSR? Or between the actions of Lincoln and Gorbachev?…
It was the purchase of Louisiana, therefore, which gave impetus to a plan which had been creeping upon New England, aided and stimulated by the Essex Junto. They agreed that…
A review of Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War by David C. Keehn (LSU, 2013). “Maybe,” “Likely,” “It seems that.” Those are hardly the words…
A review of Nullification and Secession in Modern Constitutional Thought. Sanford Levinson, ed. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2016. The undead walk among us still, or so asserts Sanford…
More than 150 years after the Civil War, the nation is engulfed in controversy over statues of people who fought for the Confederacy. Many people want the statues taken down….
A review of Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution by Harry Jafffa, (Regnery, 1994). When Professor Harry Jaffa, in his new book Original Intent and the Framers of…
There is an old saying in the theater that when one is acting the part of a butler in a play, the actor tends to regard it as a play…
The recent apoplexy over White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly’s comments about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War have revealed on ongoing problem in the thinking of many Americans when…
If you listen to the modern historical profession, Southern secession in 1861 represented “treason.” David Blight, Professor History at Yale University, has made this belief the part of the core…
What was amazing about watching two dozen states and several hundred cities defy Donald Trump’s decision to take the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement was that so little…
This isn’t 1990. The Winds of Change have stopped blowing. When the Soviets present a more docile response to self determination than a “western democracy,” the situation is bad. How painful…
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has given the green light for CalExit proponents to begin collecting signatures for a California secession ballot initiative in the 2018 general election. This is…
This piece was originally printed at Fred On Everything. “The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the…
“…You said he’s a Confederate general. They’re the bad guys. And he’s probably racist… We’re going to raise our kids here. I don’t want some Confederate General ghost teaching them…
In a recent column for the Associated Press, entitled “Old South monument backers embrace Confederate Catechism”, writer Jay Reeves opines that that those of us who seek to remember the…
Although the nation recently recognized the 150th anniversary of the end of the War of Northern Aggression, we are still plagued with questions about the legality of secession, issues and…
A large portion of California wants to secede. That’s a good thing. American conservatives should not only applaud the move, they should be doing everything possible to help them find…
From the 2016 Abbeville Institute Conference on Nullification, August 13, 2016, Atlanta, GA
A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from…
“I think every heritage has things that are good about it, every heritage has things that are harmful about it,” replied Representative Tom Price recently to a question from Senator…
It seems that out in California an impressively large number of people are petitioning for a referendum on secession. While I don’t think much of their motive, I say more…
Several years ago, leftist blowhard Richard Cohen at the Washington Post wrote that Robert E. Lee “deserves no honor — no college, no highway, no high school. In the awful…
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, which began with the epic demand, “ That these…
A fellow by the name of Marcus Ruiz Evans was on Fox’s Tucker Carlson program recently. He offered his stance on secession vis-à-vis California’s consideration. His position stood apropos for…
Dr. Jeffrey Addicott on “Waving the Secede Flag–How to Regain State’s Rights” at the August 2016 Abbeville Institute Conference on Nullification, Atlanta, GA.
According to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, secession is now being advocated by “rational people, not the fringe.” This is an insult to all rational people. Rational people for…
“Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway in 1775.[1] Wise words from the wisest of America’s Founders, yet ninety years later the very government…
Discussing immigration and sanctuary cities, Bill O’Reilly began speaking of the coming clash of two “sovereignties”, the States individually and the national government, but never got to finish his sentence….
Only days after Donald Trump’s victory there were already calls for secession arising from liberal controlled states of California and Oregon. While such calls may be an over-reaction, it…
Rumblings of open rebellion were in the air . . . a certain group within the state had felt for some time that their state’s wealth and resources were being…
In the Partisan’s last issue, I raised the question of why the United States has not been troubled in this century by regional nationalisms of the sort that are currently…
This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. It occurred to me today that one of the nice things about not having much money is that I don’t have…
On the 21st of this June, Americans celebrated the 228th anniversary of the nation’s Constitution, making it the world’s oldest existing governing body of laws. It was then that our…
(13th Annual Gettysburg Banquet of the J.E.B. Stuart Camp, SCV, Philadelphia) ****How Should 21st Century Americans Think about the War for Southern Independence? **** We human beings are peculiar creatures,…
Of all the phenomena the 2016 election year has demonstrated, none is greater than the proof that this nation is deeply and probably irretrievably split into two political camps with…
The Roman historian Titus Livius once called Rome “the greatest nation in the world.” He wrote those words in a time of moral and political decline, and Livy was hoping…
Since most modern historians agree that the South seceded to protect slavery they often conclude that the Civil War was “all about” slavery. The inference, however, overlooks the possibility that…
This article was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1997. “Being a Southerner is a spiritual condition, like being a Catholic or Jew.” So wrote Richard Weaver in his…
My friends, there is one issue before you, and to all sensible men but one issue, and but two sides to that issue. The slavery question is but one of…
A friend of mine is translating a book on Lincoln written by Karl Marx. Her first installment was a refutation by Marx of the European press’s contention that the assault…
Hollywood has struck again with another “Civil War” movie that, unsurprisingly as it may seem, does not do justice to the real Southland or the Confederacy. The latest episode is…
Recently a commencement speaker exhorted graduating students to “be on the right side of history.” The commencement speaker used the phrase ‘be on the right side of history’ to mean…
In his first Inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln explained his moral justification for invading the Southern States. Plainly, he said, “the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” He…
Lately there has been mention of Dr. Thomas Smyth in two Abbeville Institute blog and review posts, namely, “The Theology of Secession” by M. E. Bradford, and “What Lincoln’s Election…
This essay was originally published at TheImagninativeConservative.org and is republished here by permission. The finest of gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the famous London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell,…
At the very deepest level there is a central truth about the War Between the States which is now, even by the best of Southerners, almost never mentioned, although their…
This piece is published in honor of Davis’s birthday, June 3. With unaffected distrust of my ability to meet the demands of such a great hour as this, I rejoice…
This piece was originally printed at AntoniusAquinas.com. On May 19, the House of Reprehensibles passed a proposal that would essentially ban the display of Confederate flags from national cemeteries. The…
Originally published at Circa1865.com. The presidential messages of Jefferson Davis were filled with assertions of the South’s legal right to secede and form a more perfect union, and determine its…
According to the standard narrative maintained by the North, Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation brought about a new moral aim that justified a particularly bloody conflict. The act is often described…
It may not get anywhere at all, but there are a number of people in Texas trying to get the official state Republican Party to debate the issue of secession…
United States District Judge Carlton Reeves is considering a lawsuit by Mississippi attorney Carlos Moore to rule that the Mississippi State flag is unconstitutional because it is “anti-American,” meaning it…
My recent piece on James Ryder Randall, “At Arlington”, touched a nerve, at least with Christian McWhirter. I spent some time in “At Arlington” discussing his March Time magazine piece,…
Many people know that the state of West Virginia came to be during the Civil War, but very few know that its admission to the union was particularly controversial. Even…
William T. Sherman viewed Southerners as he later viewed American Indians, to be exterminated or banished to reservations as punishment for having resisted government power. They were subjects and merely…
With each visit to Switzerland, my understanding and appreciation of the political economy of the country becomes deeper and more nuanced. The Swiss people have been incredibly successful in evolving…
Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment…
“To live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.”-Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner was a Boston legal scholar and philosopher during the nineteenth century. What…
This essay is taken from The South in the Building of the Nation Series, Vol. 4 The Political History. THE political theory on which the Southern states in 1860 and…
This essay is excerpted from the Preface to Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997) by James I. Robertson, Jr. Thomas Jonathan Jackson’s walnut bookcase at the…
On July fourth 1861, Major J.P. Gillis made a public display of his support of colonial secession from the British Empire as well as Southern secession from the United States…
By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, humble, a man…
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…
This essay was first published in Don Livingston, ed., Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century. Yes, Aristotle declared there to be a limit to the size of states:…
A speech delivered in Richmond, VA, February 22, 1896 at the opening of the Museum of the Confederacy. Ladies of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, Friends, and Fellow-Confederates, Men and…
This article was originally printed in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Confederate Veteran Magazine. In June 2015, after the depraved shootings in a Charleston, South Carolina, black church, a frenzied…
Statement of College and University Professors in Support of the Confederate Battle Flag Atop the South Carolina Statehouse, drafted just before the legislative “compromise.” To the General Assembly and People…
This essay was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine, 1989. As we conclude bicentennial celebration of the drafting and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it may be…
Catalonia has voted to secede from Spain. This is a remarkable development in modern Western civilization, particularly in the age of the modern bureaucratic unitary imperial State. It signals…
“The one great principle, which produced our secession from the United States – was constitutional liberty – liberty protected by law. For this, we have fought; for this, our people…
This interview was originally published at the Fleming Foundation. Prof. Bassani, there was a mass demonstration in Barcelona on Friday. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to proclaim their…
Donald Livingston discusses the nature and meaning of secession at the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School.
If you showed the average American pictures of famous figures from Confederate States of America, there is a good chance many would recognize Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Pressed…
The following is an abridged version of a chapter which will appear in the forthcoming, From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old…
Two weeks ago, authorities combing through disgraced former IRS executive Lois Lerner’s e-mails released a message she sent to a subordinate who had complained about a Texas Tea Party group. “Look…
A new video entitled “Was the Civil War About Slavery?” from Prager University is currently making the rounds on the Internet. A caption claims that the video “settles the debate…
Persons interviewed on those amusing and disturbing videos by satirist Mark Dice, were unaware of even basic facts of American history. They had to be told why the 4th of…
Originally published at www.circa1865.com In 1887 North Carolina’s Lieutenant-General Daniel H. Hill spoke of the American Republic and the men who founded, led and sustained it until a revolutionary movement…
Recently Mr. Donald Fraser wrote a column in my hometown newspaper, the Northeast Georgian, titled “Battle Flag Promotes Hate, Not Heritage.” He opened his article expressing a twinge of fear…
Back in mid-June, after the Charleston shootings, the frenzied hue and cry went up and any number of accusations and charges were made against historic Confederate symbols, in particular, the…
The guns of the War Between the States fell silent a century and a half ago, but the verbal and written battles related to that great conflict have continued. In…
The “conservative” Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby, thinks that the Confederate flag is “anti-American,” “an ugly symbol of oppression,” “the most poisonous ideologies in our national history,” “racial bigotry and…
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 essay is published in honor of Abel P. Upshur’s birthday, June 17, 1790. Today, States’ rights are remembered as a legalistic excuse for the preservation of slavery – a…
“The Father of Waters now flows unvexed to the sea,” Lincoln famously announced in July 1863. He was, according to a reporter, uncharacteristically “wearing a smile of supreme satisfaction” as…
Delivered as the commencement address for South Carolina College, 1887. What theme is most fitting for me present to the young men of the South, at this celebration of the…
Jefferson Davis delivered this message to the Confederate Congress on 18 February 1861. GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: Called to the difficult…
After my last trip to Gettysburg with Kent Masterson Brown, I could hardly wait for Sharpsburg. The experience did not disappoint. Kent was as congenial as ever, warm with his…
A so-called “writer” for al.com, Charles J. Dean, in an article entitled Today Alabama officially observes Confederate Memorial Day: Shame on us seems to be making a living these days…
“We the people” of Dixie are in a unique position in today’s America. We are, though most Southerners do not realize it, a conquered and occupied people. A people of…
INTRODUCTION It is dangerous to attempt an article on a topic so relevant and current. As I drafted this article, President Obama has recently ordered air strikes on ISIS, and…
Recently, a friend sent me a link on the Smithsonian web site to a 1930 video clip with good sonics of some aged Confederate veterans demonstrating how the famous “Rebel Yell”…
The time is ripe for a rediscovery of Leopold Kohr. Or perhaps better: the time is ripe for the discovery of Leopold Kohr, since few have any idea who he…
John Cussons had enough. It was 1897, and for thirty-two years he had watched as “Northern friends of ours have been diligent in a systematic distortion of the leading facts…
A Sympathy for Disunion “This, Mr. President, is not a government founded upon compact; it is founded upon the power of the people. They express in their name and their…
Abbeville Institute Scholar Brion McClanahan argues that secession is the American tradition at the Houston Mises Circle on January 24, 2015.
This essay is part of the chapter “Southerners” in Brion McClanahan’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes. The Northern essayist and Republican partisan E.L. Godkin wrote following the…
Delivered at the Blount County Courthouse, January 19, 2015. Robert E. Lee said “Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope…
Maryland is steeped in the history of the American Union. She fiercely defended her position amongst the thirteen original states as a free, independent, and sovereign state. She was the…
Robert Barnwell Rhett, born on December 21, 1800, is remembered as one of the foremost “fire-eaters” of the South in the years leading to the War in 1861. He championed…
Citizenship in these United States has consistently been in a transformative mode. From early American settlers, through the colonial period to Statehood and nationhood, and through transition from territorial to…
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…
Self government and the secession required for it in oversized States are as much a province of the Left as of political conservatives. It was the left that raised the…
“Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war!” Occasionally a scene or event will cross one’s path that will set the machinery of memory running at full speed. Recently…
This article originally appeared on LewRockwell.com. For years those who advocated even a scholarly examination of secession were labeled “crackpots” and “fringe radicals” by the establishment. Secession had gone out…
I never claimed a victory, though I stated that Lee was defeated in his efforts to destroy my army. –Gen. George G. Meade, Union commander at Gettysburg The army did…
Protecting Our People in the Era of Islamic Terror & Ebola Within a few days after the Federal Empire’s current glorious leader, Barack Obama, calmly assured Americans that there was…
As the first American bombs begin to rain down on mud and adobe structures in some far distant land, “patriotic” Americans rush to support “our men in uniform” which actually…
Many current Americans, indeed perhaps most, regard the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 as a premeditated act of violence by South Carolina against the United States Government. They…
Ron Paul recently opined about Scotland’s recent flirtation with seceding from the United Kingdom. He wrote that the: possibility that people will break away from an oppressive government is one…
The Scottish secession vote has led to a great number of pieces about the future of secession and its viability in the United States: 1. Ryan McMaken wrote about it…
Scotland has certainly lit the fire under a lot of folks who are warming to the concept of secession. Of course, many of us here in Dixie have been pretty…
Ladies and Gentlemen, Scotland voted “No” to independence. The media will have you believe this was a crushing victory. After all, only 45 percent of the Scottish people voted for…
Scotland votes on independence from the United Kingdom today. I’ll be rooting very hard for a yes vote. The primary reason I strongly support Scottish independence is because it will…
When the Scottish Parliament voted to join the English Parliament in 1707, it seemed the end of Scottish national identity. It was thought that a small country like Scotland could…
The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to whom was referred so much of the President’s Message as relates the affairs of the Confederate States with the United States, respectfully report :…
In March, 2014, the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart had Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News “debate” three “distinguished” Lincoln “scholars” in a game show format called, “The Weakest…
“The Civil War was fought over slavery.” If you want verification of this “known” fact, this politically correct “given” all you have to do is ask a typical Southern politician,…
California AB 2444 has cleared all legislative hurdles by overwhelming majorities (71 to 1 in the Assembly and 33 to 2 in the Senate) and is now on Governor Jerry…
From April to July of 1863 British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur J. L. Fremantle visited all but two Confederate states. He entered at Brownsville, Texas and finished by observing the battle…
Abbeville President Don Livingston talks to Tom Woods about the Southern tradition, secession, and the principles of American government.
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 confederation has been formed by the free will of the states. […] If today one of these very states wanted to withdraw its name from the contract, it would…
Writing in 1913, historian Nathaniel Wright Stephenson explained the political situation in America thus: “It is almost impossible to-day to realize the state of the country in the year 1860….
The introduction to Mike Church’s edited volume of Albert Taylor Bledsoe’s masterful work, Is Davis A Traitor? or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861? The…
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…
The Republic of Alabama existed for a little less than a month in 1861. When the popularly elected Alabama Secession Convention of 1861 voted to secede from the Union, the…
The Pledge of Allegiance is neither a sacred American tradition nor a patriotic duty, but a relatively recent piece of propaganda penned specifically to eradicate the memory of America’s revolutionary…
When the fascist regime ruling Ukraine banned the use of the Russian language, arrested Ukrainians with dual Russian citizenship, and tore down Russian war memorials to the liberation of Ukraine…
This piece originally appeared in the North American Review, February 1890. To DO justice to the motives which actuated the soldiers of the Confederacy, it is needful that the cause…
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…
In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It…
In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It…
This lecture was delivered at the 1995 Ludvig von Mises seminar “Secession, State, and Economy” in Charleston, SC.
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