At his death, Robert E. Lee was not fully a citizen despite the efforts he made in his last years to regain his citizenship. This final aggression against the name of a great man continued to trouble many Americans, both in the North and the South. At the time of his death, was Robert E. [...]
Americans have tried the Hamiltonian experiment of centralized government, usury, and gigantism long enough. Surely it is time, somewhere, for the Jeffersonian vision to begin to reappear. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Arthur J. Versluis as he explores the Jeffersonian vision for America and how we may [...]
This is the village where the funeral Stilted its dusty march over deep ruts Up the hillside covered with queen’s lace To the patch of weeds known finally to all. […]
If racism was not the primary motivation for Confederate monument-building, what exactly was? In the wake of the current controversy over Confederate monuments, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has created a timeline that has made its way around the worldwide web like wildfire. It purports to show that two spikes in the building of [...]
At this time, as perhaps never before, we Americans are as a people well on our way to being forced into belated recognition of the truth behind Mr. Jefferson’s alarm at the Compromise of 1820, our first attempt in employing the engines of national power to regulate and reform our domestic economic and social relations [...]
Because the Civil War is the American Iliad, it is constantly being refought in the public memory. Much is at stake, for myths make meaning, meaning makes politics, and politics make myths… Jesse Jackson made a remarkable run for the presidency in the early months of 1988—two decades before America would elect its first black [...]
The culture of Houston really shines through during events like Hurricane Harvey. Despite what the narrative spinners would have you believe, we are not rugged individualists; we are rugged communitarians... Narratives are not necessarily built on facts; they’re built on stories, pictures, graphics, and videos. Ideally, we want our narratives to be aligned with the [...]
Wendell Berry’s poetry sings with the love of a man for his home, enticing the reader to embrace his vision of local agrarian economy as sufficient for the good life. “From knowledge of the forest comes/at last knowledge of forestry:/what, without permanent damage,/can be spared and carefully removed,/leaving the whole forest whole. This learning/’takes decades. [...]
Whether or not Mary Surratt participated in the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln will never be known with certainty. But we can judge definitively the manner in which federal authorities obtained her conviction, and ultimately her execution. “Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway in 1775.[1] Wise words from [...]
The literature of the American West embodies a clear perception of the frailty of corporate freedom and of the importance of men who have learned on their own to face down the barbarian, even though no one backs their play. There are two important corporate myths that shaped the life of eighteenth and nineteenth century America. [...]
For William Faulkner, the American Dream lay in the promise of true community, where manners and customs regulate behavior. In a mere society, man’s actions are constrained only by brute force (either public or private) or by the fear of force. On the Prejudices, Predilections, and Firm Beliefs of William Faulkner by Cleanth Brooks (Louisiana State [...]
Looking at the whole of the South’s promise and achievement, I would be unwilling to say that it offers a foundation, or, because of some accidents of history, even an example. The most that it offers is a challenge… History is a liberal art and one profits by studying the whole of it, including the [...]
In defining the Great Divide as that between Old Western Man and New Western Man, C.S. Lewis has given us a radically new way of looking at the past. I write not as an expert to tell you of my thought but to explain a particular concept of Lewis’s and my own application of it [...]
American Populism, from its beginnings to the present moment, is an expression of hostility to state power and those who exercise it or seek to exercise it. Consider the Whiskey Rebellion: It was an enormity, a gratuitous act of power. Nobody likes it except the ruling elite who do not participate in it. It exists [...]