Contrary to the vast majority of my fellow scholars of American history, I have never found the account of the creation of political parties in the Founding Era and Early Republic to be credible. Admittedly, my position is one of an extremely small minority, so I do not mean to suggest that historians are ready [...]
Editor's Note: Thomas Jefferson wrote several lists of advice about the virtuous life to his children, grandchildren, and the children of friends. The final list, which he called "A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life," was sent during his retirement years from his beloved home of Monticello to Thomas Jefferson Smith, the son [...]
From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition by Clyde N. Wilson (356 pages, The Foundation for American Education, 2003) Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Publisher W. Winston Elliott III, as he considers a classic collection of essays about the Jeffersonian tradition. —Stephen M. [...]
Maryland has one of the oldest state constitutions in use today, as well as one of the longest Declarations of Rights. As such, it provides both the historian and constitutional scholar much to occupy their time. A detailed study of the rights of Maryland’s citizens will be time well spent. Maryland is the seventh [...]
Had the Nationalists carried the day in 1776 and turned the Continental Congress into a national government, implied powers would have been the normal constitutional practice from the moment of independence… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Nathan Coleman, as he considers the role and legacy [...]
Article II of the Articles of Confederation codified that one of the purposes of the American Revolution was the protection of state sovereignty, by making state sovereignty a fundamental aspect of the American constitutional order… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Nathan Coleman. The crisis with [...]
The direction that constitutional practice has taken in the past hundred years shows that the Framers’ conception of republican government has passed and the era of populist democracy has arrived. The underlying transformation of the unwritten constitution renders efforts to return to the Framers’ original intent problematic. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series [...]
When we think of “the faith and the South” we tend to think of Protestantism in general, and perhaps the Southern Baptists in particular, especially in terms of the so-called Bible Belt. There is, however, much more to the South than the Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist culture that has made its presence felt, socially [...]
We see that the creation of one’s own opinions is to a large degree a community affair. According to James Bryce, the individual has a powerful role in crafting a nation’s political discourse, but can only be involved in doing so if they act in concert with others. This neither denies the possibility of conflicting [...]
Editor's Note: The following is the conclusion of Professor Forrest McDonald's 2002 address to the last class he taught as a regular member of the faculty at the University of Alabama—known as "The Speech." Dr. McDonald retired thereafter from teaching. The other pre-requisite for living sanely in an insane world is an attitude toward life, [...]
What George Washington and George Marshall have to say to us has to do most of all with the ethical claims of the virtue of duty. Teachers would ably fulfill their calling if they convey to their students their conviction that civil society is best understood and entered into as a partnership in every virtue, [...]
Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]
Standing with his father as they watched the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, eight-year-old John Quincy Adams must have wondered in amazement at the bloody and brutal nobility of it all. And, what must he have thought as he traveled from one European seat of government to another as his father attempted to [...]
The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods, against a stormy sky, Their giant branches tost; […]