Yankee Antinomianism at Work Again in Massachusetts

Yankees have an inverted sense of justice in which the victim is blameworthy and guilty of wrong and the perpetrator is innocent.  The Lindsay Clancy murder trial in Massachusetts, which has captured the attention of so many people, is an excellent example of this.

Most media outlets have tried to generalize this trial as a part of ‘American culture’, just as they style Dolly Parton an American entertainer or Wendell Berry an American writer.  None of this is accurate.  Lindsay Clancy’s trial is a product of Yankee New England culture; Miss Dolly and Mr Wendell are likewise products of Southern culture.  Jonathan Harris has written well about the latter two at the Abbeville Institute (link below).  We will try to do the same with the Clancy case.

Lindsay Clancy is accused of murdering her three children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan (5 years, 3 years, and 8 months old, respectively), strangling them with exercise bands while her husband was running errands (which she asked him to do), and then attempting to commit suicide by jumping out of a second-story window.  Mrs Clancy’s supporters and attorneys have tried to blame everyone but Lindsay – from uncaring doctors to the husband and father, Patrick Clancy

One individual in particular has received a heap of abuse from Mrs Clancy’s supporters – the holdout juror who kept Lindsay from being acquitted and forced the judge to declare a mistrial:

‘It seems one holdout refused to acquit Clancy. Reddington identified this individual as one of the three men on the jury. During a press conference outside the courthouse, Reddington said his client was “robbed by this man,” who “stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors that were so attentive, so beautiful, so wonderful.” Reddington wondered what the juror’s “agenda” may have been and fumed that he hoped he could “sleep at night” after his actions’ (Crouere).

Thus we have a woman whose guilt is quite apparent, but a concerted effort to exonerate her and place the blame on someone or something else.  There are many angles from which this trial has been analyzed, but one that is not being mentioned is the continuity with New England’s cultural inheritance.

The Clancy trial is an eerie echo of the case of the murder of Dr George Parkman, a well-to-do fellow from Boston, which occurred in 1849.  Another Boston Brahmin, Dr John Webster, was accused of murdering him after body parts of Dr Parkman were found in his laboratory at Harvard.  Like the Clancy case, it drew enormous attention, with tens of thousands of people attending the trial according to one source.  And although Dr Webster was a very likely suspect, owing Dr Parkman more than $2,000 which the former did not have, still the elite of Boston wanted to blame someone else for the crime.  The wife of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Fanny, stated:

‘”Boston is at this moment in sad suspense about the fate of poor Dr. Parkman… You will see by the papers what dark horror overshadows us like an eclipse. Of course we cannot believe Dr. Webster guilty, bad as the evidence looks…. Many suspect the janitor, who is known to be a bad man and to have wished for the reward offered for Dr. Parkman’s body. He could make things appear against the doctor, having bodies under his control’ (PBS).

The Clancy trial is something of a repetition of the Webster trial, with the same attempted shifting of blame from the guilty to the non-guilty, because the former has found favor with the Yankee elite for various reasons.

What is the source of this distorted sense of justice?  Yankee antinomianism – that man is no longer bound by law but is a free being, able to define morality for himself without reference to an outside authority.  The conflict this caused with Southern belief in the authority of God-given law led to fierce cultural clashes in the 19^th century in the years leading up to the War.  For instance:

‘Theological quarrels over Word and Spirit brought to the surface the social and political implications of radically different understandings of “benevolence.”  . . .  as liberalism became more influential, God emerged primarily as Pure Love – a forgiving father who eschewed eternal punishment.  . . .  Professedly orthodox northern churches slowly absorbed many of the assumptions and much of the rhetoric of their liberal adversaries.  God became much less wrathful and much more forgiving – except for His wrath against slaveholders.

‘ . . . The New England theologians, in [Robert Lewis] Dabney’s view, made benevolence God’s central quality at the expense of His self-proclamation as a “consuming fire,” transforming benevolence into a doctrine of utilitarian selfishness and marketplace ethics.

‘ . . . For the southern divines, Christian ethics divorced from a Christian love inherent in the Atonement descended into a self-righteousness that identifies sin with sinner and finds the locus of sin in social relations and institutions . . .’ (Fox-Genovese and Genovese, pgs. 543, 545).

So we see the fruits of Yankee antinomianism – the overemphasis on benevolence/forgiveness, utilitarian selfishness, the locus of sin in social institutions, etc.  This penchant of New England’s people to reject authority and tradition has manifested in significant ways over their lifetime as an ethnos:  from their Pilgrim fathers’ Gnostic declaration of themselves to be a new chosen people, to their redefinition of sin and salvation to fit a paradigm of universal salvation, to their proclaiming a murderous outlaw like John Brown to be a holy martyr, to the rebelliousness of the suffragettes, to the latest Massachusetts law on abortion allowing the murder of unborn babies up to the moment of birth.

Here at the South, it is the opposite.  Even in our weakened cultural state, the greater number still hold to a hierarchy that runs from the father of the family, up through political leaders, to the pastor of the local church, and finally to God the Father.  The outcome is a familiar, stable form of morality that does not shift blame or deny punishment, but places them squarely where they belong.  An episode from the life of Elizabeth Allston Pringle is indicative of this.  As a very young girl, she ate some peaches that she was not supposed to have eaten and then lied about it to more than one person, which earned her a harsh reprimand from her father.  The story continues in her own words:

‘After a while my father came and gave me a severe switching. When he had finished he kissed me, put me on the bed, and threw a light linen coverlet over me, and I went to sleep. I slept a long time, for when I woke up it was nearly dark, and I felt like an angel in heaven—so happy and peaceful and, above all, filled with a kind of adoration for my father. It is strange what a realization of right and wrong that gave me, baby though I was. I have never ceased to feel grateful to papa for the severity of that punishment. It had to be remembered, and it meant the holding aloft of honesty and truth, and the trampling in the dust of dishonesty and falsehood. No child is too young to have these basic principles taught them’ (Pringle, pgs. 107-11, quote at pgs. 110-1).

Such is the Southern attitude to crime, punishment, authority, etc.:  Gratitude for an unchanging moral code and respect for those who enforce it.

Lindsay Clancy’s life has become a tragedy – three dead children, a broken family, physical and spiritual wounds that will take a lifetime to heal.  May the Lord have mercy on all involved.

But it is also a stark reminder – that a great chasm still exists between the North and the South and their respective cultures.  Various figures and forces are trying very hard to fill that chasm, to erase the distinctiveness of the South by blending it with Northern culture, as we see happening in northern Virginia and in some other parts of Dixie (Nicastro).  This would only add to the evils of the world.  All good-hearted Southerners must fight vigorously to prevent that, praying to the Holy Trinity for victory in this battle.

***************************************

Sources:

Jonathan Harris, https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/two-southerners-who-stayed-southern/

Jeff Crouere, https://thehayride.com/2026/09/crouere-courageous-juror-restores-faith-in-the-justice-system/

Rebekah Riess, https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/22/us/patrick-clancy-conspiracy-theories

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/murder-dr-parkman/

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese. The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005.

Elizabeth Allston Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 1922, https://ia803106.us.archive.org/28/items/chroniclesofchic56736gut/56736-h/56736-h.htm

Luke Nicastro, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-virginia-is-still-toppling-statues/

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

Walt Garlington

Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer (and, when able, a planter). He makes his home in Louisiana and is editor of the 'Confiteri: A Southern Perspective' web site.

View all posts