The Real Significance of June in American History

If you follow any American progressive corporate media account, you know that June is “Pride Month,” a ritual celebration of the “LGBTQ+” community for the secular Puritans.

They selected June because of the “Stonewall Uprising”—no, not that “Stonewall”—a series of protests that popped up following a New York City police gay bar raid in June 1969.

This distracts from the real significance of June in American history.

On June 2, 1776, Richard Henry Lee presented the “Lee Resolutions” which effectively separated Virginia from Great Britian and forced the Continental Congress to begin drafting the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson begrudgingly accepted the task. He wanted to be in Virginia debating a new constitution for his country rather than scribbling an attack on the king with four other men in Philadelphia, particularly when he knew that his work would be thoroughly edited.

John Randolph of Roanoke was born on June 2, 1773, the third son of John Randolph and Francis Bland. His father died in 1775, and his mother married St. George Tucker in 1778, arguably one of the foremost legal minds in the United States. Randolph personified the Virginia conservative gentleman, and he became a leader in the “Quid” Republican faction in Congress throughout his life. Randolph voted “no” so often in Congress because, as Richard Weaver emphasized, he thought active statesmanship served republican government and institutions. As a wealthy man with ties to the oldest families in Virginia, he could have retreated to his plantation, pulled up the drawbridge, and watched Virginia and the federal republic burn. But that would have surrendered the government to his enemies, men like Henry Clay (whom he dueled in 1826), and Randolph believed he had a duty to protect the traditional American order. Randolph was eccentric. He brought his hunting dogs to Congress, verbally stabbed his political opponents, even some of his friends, with a rapier’s wit, made meandering speeches with a soprano voice that lasted hours in the Senate, and did not suffer fools gladly. But as Russell Kirk noted:

No man did more than Randolph to shape the mind of the South, down to recent years; and no man’s career in Congress was more lively and interesting than Randolph’s. Yet John Randolph of Roanoke has been thoughtfully neglected in the textbooks of Ameri­can history, this past half-century, or at best mentioned merely as a startling eccentric. For mass democracy and gross materialism, Ran­dolph expressed a burning contempt. The intellectual apologists of egalitarianism and the industrial discipline therefore have resolved, “Let him be anathema!”

June 3 is Jefferson Davis’s birthday. Next to John C. Calhoun, Davis is arguably the most vilified man in American political history. This is unjust. Davis lived an American life. His father served in the American War for Independence and moved from Philadelphia to Georgia after receiving a land grant for his service in the War. He married a Scotch-Irish woman from South Carolina and moved the family to Kentucky in 1793. They kept moving. Jefferson Davis was born in 1808, the youngest of ten children, and two years later, the family moved again to Louisiana. His father bought some slaves and began farming cotton. Three of Davis’s brothers fought in the War of 1812. Davis attending several private preparatory schools and then West Point where he was graduated in 1828. He served on the frontier under Zachary Taylor, and after his first wife (and Taylor’s daughter) died in 1835, he focused on planting.

Davis was a member of the United States House of Representatives, Secretary of War during the Franklin Pierce administration, Untied States Senator from Mississippi, and most famously, President of the Confederate States of America. Had Mississippi not seceded and Davis followed his State out of the Union, he would have been recognized as one of the great War Department heads in American history. He was responsible for helping modernize the military that ultimately defeated the South. But Davis understood the Constitution to be a compact between States, and as he cogently and consistently emphasized during his time in Congress, States had the authority to secede. If the “Lost Cause” was invented after the War to minimize the importance of slavery, that would have been news to Davis. He maintained the same arguments against what he considered to be an aggressive North both in the antebellum and post bellum periods.

Theodore Gaillard Baker, a former officer in Wade Hampton’s cavalry, eulogized Davis in 1889 by insisting that future Americans would treat Davis with the same respect as George Washington:

Well may we afford, in the presence of this thought, to pass by with contempt the petty malice of those who would malign his memory, and seek to brand with the name of treason that cause to which he gave his life’s best service and for which he encountered martyrdom itself. We know that our cause is forever lost, that no Southern Confederacy will ever again exist, that henceforth we ourselves, and those who live after us in the South, will give our fortunes and our lives, if need be, to the defence of the Government of the United States, and that the flag of the Union will find no truer guardians than the sons of the South will be of its safety and glory; but we also know that the Southern doctrine of the reserved rights of the States, and the independent sovereignty of each, within the Union, properly enforced, will yet be acknowledged by our very revilers themselves as the most important principle of American liberty, and as the only safeguard to this Republic against the opposing principles of consolidation. We may also believe and know that when the calm judgment of history comes to take the place of sectional prejudice and party bitterness, the work of those who fought for the Southern Confederacy will be adjudged to be not in vain, but will be considered, by all true supporters of the United States Constitution as the most timely and valuable protest which has been ever recorded against the encroachment of those who would, by obliterating the States, convert a government of States into a gigantic tyranny. And when that day shall come we can even foretell with confidence that the fidelity of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, to the principles of State rights and State sovereignty will be taught, to the descendants of those who now seek to spit upon his fame, as an example for all to imitate, who understand and appreciate the principles of government which are crystalized in the Constitution of the United States.

Let the petty malice of to-day then pass by us unnoticed and unregarded, and let us cast our prophetic vision into that future when Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, will be held up to the youth of the whole of this great Republic as a man and a statesman worthy of the reverence of mankind by the side of William, Prince of Orange, and of George Washington, President of the United States of America.

Such optimism is laudable, and every American conservative should recognize Davis as a true patriot. Unfortunately, Americans who should know better consistently attach Davis to every political cause they believe to be unjust. Davis deserves better.

“Pride Month” also overshadows the D-Day anniversary, Robert E. Lee success during the Seven Days Campaign, and the birthdays of Abel P. Upshur, Winfield Scott, and Audie Murphy, among other important American events. That’s the point. Obfuscate and deflect so that Americans—more importantly Southerners—forget their own heroes and worship progressive holidays and causes. And Southern heroes don’t make money for modern corporations. Progressive causes apparently do, though that may be changing.

We, at the Abbeville Institute, take our mission to explore what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition seriously. For over twenty years, our website, conferences, publications, lectures, and summer schools have provided a counterweight to the mainstream historical narrative. We have provided honest interpretations of men like Randolph, Davis, Upshur, Lee and other Southerners who defended the American principles of federalism and decentralization. We enjoy “Southern Pride” throughout June and every month of the year.

As always, our efforts are only possible because of your generous contributions. If you support our mission, please consider a tax-deductible donation to the Abbeville Institute. Just click here or mail a check to:

Abbeville Institute
PO BOX 1870
Auburn, AL 36831-1870

We appreciate your generous support.

The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily the views of the Abbeville Institute.

Brion McClanahan

Brion McClanahan is the author or co-author of six books, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery History, 2017), 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her (Regnery History, 2016), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), Forgotten Conservatives in American History (Pelican, 2012), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes, (Regnery, 2012). He received a B.A. in History from Salisbury University in 1997 and an M.A. in History from the University of South Carolina in 1999. He finished his Ph.D. in History at the University of South Carolina in 2006, and had the privilege of being Clyde Wilson’s last doctoral student. He lives in Alabama with his wife and three daughters.

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