Why Yankees Won’t (and Can’t) Leave the South Alone
Southerners rarely while away their leisure hours by contemplating Yankees, for there is no point in thinking of unpleasant things if one is not obliged to do…
Conservative Scholarship and the Problem of Myth
On the face of things, conservatism and historical scholarship would appear to be antithetical ideals. A viable social order seems to require, among its other adhesives, a…
The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton
The political rhetoric of the Founders of the American Republic has received scant attention from scholars. The relative neglect is understandable. On the one hand, the very…
The Role of the “Middle Delegates” at the Constitutional Convention
Historians of the Constitutional Convention have agreed that there were divisions among the delegates, but have disagreed as to what those divisions were and what underlays them.…
Original Unintentions: The Franchise and the Constitution
The controversy over originalism-the question whether judges, in interpreting the Constitution, should be guided by the original intentions of the Framers or by some other standard-has generated…
“The Speech”: Maintaining Sanity in an Insane World
American society is in trouble, and not only because our traditional values and institutions are under siege. The nuclear family is crumbling as a result of government…
George Washington: Indispensable Man
The men who established the American republic were acutely aware that they lived in a pivotal era in human history, and they eagerly rose to the occasion.…
Most Underrated Founder: John Dickinson
Having studied eighteenth-century America all our adult lives, we are prepared to offer a generalization: the more one learns about the subject, the less prone one becomes…