For God, Family and Republic

The Abbeville Institute
At the behest of one H. Lee Cheek, Jr., I got a scholarship to attend the Abbeville Institute this past July 2005. How did that happen? My Amazon Top 500 book reviews on the Internet captured his eyes, and he gave generously me an autographed anthology of the southern statesman John C. Calhoun’s writings last fall 2004. I’ve found that Cheek is an upstanding guy having dialogued with him on occasion. He is a Calhoun scholar, a champion of southern conservatism, a political science professor and a Methodist preacher to boot… (Being a Bible preacher and a college professor, who else wants to do that? We have a lot in common.) Well, I gave him a flattering but well-deserved book review of one his other books, Calhoun and Popular Rule. A few months later he unexpectedly recommends me for a near-one-thousand dollar scholarship (with room, board and meals) to attend an Abbeville Institute. The Institute had a colloquium series at the Young-Sanders Civil War Center on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in St. Mary’s Parish just south of New Orleans. Well, he figured the Institute’s discussions would interest me and figured right.

After doing my homework on the Abbeville Institute, I realized that it was right up my alley. I had to go! All my meals were paid for, and my hotel, and I got to meet with some renowned scholars and authors who all support the southern tradition. For someone that was fined and repimanded for refusing to take down his Confederate flag from his dorm window in undergrad, I figured this was right up my alley!

Onward to the Cajun Coast of Louisiana
After a thirteen-hour drive down to bayou country with a VCU history student, I arrived for an enlightening educational seminar spanning a week and including a weekend. I had nice hotel accommodations. On the way down, I detoured through the French Quarter in New Orleans, which was full of charming waterfront houses and stores with an Acadian architectural charm. Anyway, parts of New Orleans were not that beautiful, the roads were terrible, and the city was riddled with open sewer ditches. Plus, you wouldn’t want to be caught dead on those streets at night least you meet your fate in some bizarre voodoo ritual.

Concern for personal safety and automotive alignment didn’t end after leaving the New Orleans… Making haste across this bizarre contraption known as the Huey Long bridge to cross the Mississippi, I was jubilant. The bridge was as almost as crooked as the real Huey Long and it strangely crossed the river in a semicircle fashion, and at a pitched 30˚ angle up and then back down again. Railroad tracks hovered above. The lanes were not even wide enough. It yielded a deafening sound of clanking metal as brave vehicles ventured over it. Afterwards, I could think of no better name-bearer for that Louisianan monstrosity of engineering lunacy than the so called Kingfish—Senator Huey Long. He was the new breed of politicians representing the worst of the gaudy New South espousing socialist demagoguery while being in the pawn of mobsters, gamblers and organized crime.

Our final destination was Franklin, Louisiana (Google map) which was a tranquil little town off the beaten path and surrounded by mangrove swamps and huddled against the banks of a lazy gator-filled bayou river—the Teche. Franklin was full of beautiful architecture and plantation homes (well the homes that didn’t meet the Yankee torch during the war.) Every now and then one could run into French-speaking Acadians or people with that distinctive bayou Cajun accent. It was also full of slot machines and two-bit casinos, as gambling is legal in Louisiana… but I didn’t spend a single dime on gambling! The weather was beautiful and it only rained when we drove through Atlanta going down. I heard everyone else back at home was lamenting the imminence of tornadoes while my mother needlessly worried a hurricane was going to hit me.

Ironically, just prior to the Abbeville Institute’s July event Time Magazine ran a special article entitled Loathing Lincoln as part of its July, 4 issue with Lincoln on the cover. Of course, Time mentions the Abbeville Institute which hosted the July 2005 colloquium that I attended, and the Clyde Wilson and other faculty are cynically described as “a small, scrappy band…” Time’s Jeff Chu declares:

Wilson and the rest of a small, scrappy band of like-minded professors see themselves as intellectual warriors. They teach history—and philosophy, religion and politics—from what they call the "Southern tradition," at top universities like Emory and the University of Virginia as well as at seminars held by groups like the Abbeville Institute.

The Abbeville Institute
Needless to say, the Time article is a very condescending hatchet job full of selective quotations and unflattering adjectives. But hey it’s Time Magazine… Hitler and Stalin were once their man of the year, and that sort of journalism is to be expected. Likewise, it has assembled a multitude of accomplished scholars among its faculty. Many of the scholars are published, and many of which I was quite familiar with through their various books and online Internet columns.

The Abbeville Institute gave us this statement about the Institute and their agenda.

What the Institute Is. The Abbeville Institute is an association of scholars in higher education devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition. The Institute conducts seminars and conferences for college and graduate students, and guides research and publication on all aspects of the Southern tradition. The Institute is not a Southern heritage preservation society, nor is it concerned merely with the history of the region. Its work is more philosophic in nature, namely to explore the metaphysical image of things human and divine to which the Southern tradition bears witness. This includes seeking to understand the value of those features of community that promote an enduring and humane order: the importance of private property, place, piety, humility, manners, classical liberal studies, rhetoric, and the importance of a human scale to political order. We are interested both in what those values intimate for our own time, and in how they
came to be features of the Southern tradition.

Why the Institute was Founded. In a healthy society, education is the thoughtful enjoyment of a cultural inheritance. But American society today is in the grip of an ideological culture war. During the last thirty years, colleges and universities have come to be dominated by the ideologies of multiculturalism and political correctness. The result is that the distinctly Southern interpretation of American history and identity is simply not taught. If the Southern tradition is mentioned at all, it is usually vilified as little more than a mask for racism. In ignoring or eliminating the Southern tradition, much that is good and noble in American life is rendered inexplicable; but perhaps more importantly one erases from memory a valuable intellectual and spiritual resource for exposing and correcting the errors of American modernity. Eugene Genovese, a distinguished historian of the South--a northerner and a man of the left--has been a rare voice in criticizing this purge of the Southern tradition from the academy. In the Massey Lectures given at Harvard, he had this to say: "Rarely these days, even on southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity--an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners, and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity. They are being taught to forget their forebears or to remember them with shame."

The Goals of the Institute. This condition is not going to change overnight. Those who created it are tenured, and will dominate in higher education for at least a generation—and even longer since they are disposed to hire and tenure only their own. Even so, there are many scholars in America and abroad who take inspiration from the Southern tradition, and many others who are open to what it has to teach. Students too are open. Many feel they are somehow encountering on campus a profound intellectual and spiritual disorder, but they do not know how to think about it.

What is needed is an association of faculty and students outside the university—but connected to it—where new questions can be raised and new lines of research explored. Students who attend Institute events discover faculty with national and international reputations who have a different, and more thoughtful conception of the Southern tradition and of its place in the increasingly contested question of American identity. Armed with scholarly understanding and the lineaments of a different program of research, students return to the university better able to engage in fruitful debate with their teachers and fellow students.

In addition to education, the Institute provides a circle of fellowship for students and faculty. We keep in touch with students, providing academic support, and advising them about programs of study, graduate schools, scholarships, fellowships, and grants. After graduation from their respective colleges or universities, we provide assistance in getting them placed in teaching, research, or other professional positions.

Yippie! In extol of the compact nature of the Union, here are the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions verbatim and uncut, which stands in the patriotic tradition of remonstrance, protest and interposition. Madison and Jefferson's resolution were not novel innovations but remain in the continuity of a long-standing American colonial and revolutionary tradition. Those very words of "remonstrance" and "interposition" were echoed by patriots in the Continental Congress, such as Patrick Henry who vehemently protested the usurpations of the British government. Likewise, the colonial magistrates interposed on behalf of the Crown's colonial subjects and arrested the unlawful acts and abuses when and where possible. The highest act of interposition came when their petitions and protests for redress of greviences went unanswered. So, they exercised the highest act of interposition, which is political separation or secession, as manifest in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

To deny interposition as a reserved right of the States, or to deny that the States are in any way arbitrators over the extent of powers of the general government that themselves created, entails embracing a faulty nationalist constitutional hermneutic based on state inferiority. Negating the reserved rights of the States renders the Constitution a hollow parchment barrier.

May good and honorable state magistrates continue to interpose against the federal government's encroachments on state sovereignty, their abdications of our nation's moral foundations such as the Ten Commandments, and usurpations of the Anglo-American civil liberties espoused in the Bill of Rights.


Virginia Resolution of 1798

RESOLVED, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocably express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.

That this assembly most solemnly declares a warm attachment to the Union of the States, to maintain which it pledges all its powers; and that for this end, it is their duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles which constitute the only basis of that Union, because a faithful observance of them, can alone secure it's existence and the public happiness.

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has in sundry instances, been manifested by the federal government, to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them; and that implications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which having been copied from the very limited grant of power, in the former articles of confederation were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning and effect, of the particular enumeration which necessarily explains and limits the general phrases; and so as to consolidate the states by degrees, into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency and inevitable consequence of which would be, to transform the present republican system of the United States, into an absolute, or at best a mixed monarchy.

That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution, in the two late cases of the "Alien and Sedition Acts" passed at the last session of Congress; the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government, and which by uniting legislative and judicial powers to those of executive, subverts the general principles of free government; as well as the particular organization, and positive provisions of the federal constitution; and the other of which acts, exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.

That this state having by its Convention, which ratified the federal Constitution, expressly declared, that among other essential rights, "the Liberty of Conscience and of the Press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States," and from its extreme anxiety to guard these rights from every possible attack of sophistry or ambition, having with other states, recommended an amendment for that purpose, which amendment was, in due time, annexed to the Constitution; it would mark a reproachable inconsistency, and criminal degeneracy, if an indifference were now shewn, to the most palpable violation of one of the Rights, thus declared and secured; and to the establishment of a precedent which may be fatal to the other.

That the good people of this commonwealth, having ever felt, and continuing to feel, the most sincere affection for their brethren of the other states; the truest anxiety for establishing and perpetuating the union of all; and the most scrupulous fidelity to that constitution, which is the pledge of mutual friendship, and the instrument of mutual happiness; the General Assembly doth solemnly appeal to the like dispositions of the other states, in confidence that they will concur with this commonwealth in declaring, as it does hereby declare, that the acts aforesaid, are unconstitutional; and that the necessary and proper measures will be taken by each, for co-operating with this state, in maintaining the Authorities, Rights, and Liberties, referred to the States respectively, or to the people.

That the Governor be desired, to transmit a copy of the foregoing Resolutions to the executive authority of each of the other states, with a request that the same may be communicated to the Legislature thereof; and that a copy be furnished to each of the Senators and Representatives representing this state in the Congress of the United States.

Agreed to by the Senate, December 24, 1798.

(authored by James Madison)


Kentucky Resolution of 1799

RESOLUTIONS IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
THE representatives of the good people of this commonwealth in general assembly convened, having maturely considered the answers of sundry states in the Union, to their resolutions passed at the last session, respecting certain unconstitutional laws of Congress, commonly called the alien and sedition laws, would be faithless indeed to themselves, and to those they represent, were they silently to acquiesce in principles and doctrines attempted to be maintained in all those answers, that of Virginia only excepted. To again enter the field of argument, and attempt more fully or forcibly to expose the unconstitutionality of those obnoxious laws, would, it is apprehended be as unnecessary as unavailing.

We cannot however but lament, that in the discussion of those interesting subjects, by sundry of the legislatures of our sister states, unfounded suggestions, and uncandid insinuations, derogatory of the true character and principles of the good people of this commonwealth, have been substituted in place of fair reasoning and sound argument. Our opinions of those alarming measures of the general government, together with our reasons for those opinions, were detailed with decency and with temper, and submitted to the discussion and judgment of our fellow citizens throughout the Union. Whether the decency and temper have been observed in the answers of most of those states who have denied or attempted to obviate the great truths contained in those resolutions, we have now only to submit to a candid world. Faithful to the true principles of the federal union, unconscious of any designs to disturb the harmony of that Union, and anxious only to escape the fangs of despotism, the good people of this commonwealth are regardless of censure or calumniation.

Least however the silence of this commonwealth should be construed into an acquiescence in the doctrines and principles advanced and attempted to be maintained by the said answers, or least those of our fellow citizens throughout the Union, who so widely differ from us on those important subjects, should be deluded by the expectation, that we shall be deterred from what we conceive our duty; or shrink from the principles contained in those resolutions: therefore.
RESOLVED, That this commonwealth considers the federal union, upon the terms and for the purposes specified in the late compact, as conducive to the liberty and happiness of the several states: That it does now unequivocally declare its attachment to the Union, and to that compact, agreeable to its obvious and real intention, and will be among the last to seek its dissolution: That if those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy: That this commonwealth does upon the most deliberate reconsideration declare, that the said alien and sedition laws, are in their opinion, palpable violations of the said constitution; and however cheerfully it may be disposed to surrender its opinion to a majority of its sister states in matters of ordinary or doubtful policy; yet, in momentous regulations like the present, which so vitally wound the best rights of the citizen, it would consider a silent acquiescence as highly criminal: That although this commonwealth as a party to the federal compact; will bow to the laws of the Union, yet it does at the same time declare, that it will not now, nor ever hereafter, cease to oppose in a constitutional manner, every attempt from what quarter soever offered, to violate that compact:
AND FINALLY, in order that no pretexts or arguments may be drawn from a supposed acquiescence on the part of this commonwealth in the constitutionality of those laws, and be thereby used as precedents for similar future violations of federal compact; this commonwealth does now enter against them, its SOLEMN PROTEST.
Approved December 3rd, 1799.

(authored by Thomas Jefferson)