A People Without Honor
Back in my days as a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, I and some fellow graduate students were involved tangentially, very tangentially, in the great Confederate flag debate in Columbia, SC. During… »
Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition
In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay in the archipelago of enlightenment. … »
Yankee Finance Capitalism Part III: The Creature from Jekyll Island
The endurance of the system of Jeffersonian finance based upon the Independent Treasury system was remarkable given the post war transformation of the United States from an agrarian country to an industrial one. Tariff rates… »
Yankee Finance Capitalism Part II: The Jeffersonian Triumph
“The revenue of the state is the state.” Edmund Burke The rise of the modern nation state in the 1600s was founded upon monarchies securing independent sources of revenue to pay for the royal armies… »
Yankee Finance Capitalism Made Simple
Part One: Definitions and Origins Money is a great mystery. In my years of teaching economics courses and economic history nothing so confuses students, and their elders, as the subject of money. Or rather I… »
Jefferson the Man
Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America. Kevin R. C. Gutzman (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2017). The challenge a historian faces when writing about Thomas Jefferson is which Jefferson does one choose? … »
Tidewater Wit and Wisdom
An honest man can never be outdone in courtesy. A sensual life is a miserable life. The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us. -Taken from Seneca’s Dialogues, a primer… »
Musings of a Southern Antifederalist on the Presidential Election
The one consolation of the Antifederalist persuasion is telling everyone you meet “I told you so.” Granted, this does not go down well in most circles, be they progressive, socialist, conservative, neo-conservative, constitutionalist, et al. … »
The South: Land of Heavyweight Boxing Champions
The South in the twentieth century has embraced any number of northern athletic imports and made them her own. Arguably, the South has produced the premier basketball player in Michael Jordan, the top baseball player… »
Secession of the Heart
A dear friend of mine, a Harp like myself but born and raised in the Deep North, repeated to me for the umpteenth time one of the most persistent of all Southern stereotypes, the duplicitous… »
