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Donald Livingston is a former Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and a David Hume scholar. In 2003 he [1] founded the Abbeville Institute, which is devoted to the study of Southern culture and political ideas. [2]
Livingston was raised in South Carolina. [1] He received his doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis in 1965. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and has been on the editorial board of Hume Studies and Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. [3] Livingston is a convert from Anglicanism to the Eastern Orthodox Church. His wife Marie also received her Ph.D. in philosophy and has studied under Edmund Gettier and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Livingston is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. [4]
After teaching in several venues, Livingston became a professor of philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. [5]
He supports the compact theory of the United States, with its concomitant provisions for corporate resistance, nullification, and secession.[ citation needed ] He views the American Revolution not as a revolution but an act of secession, [6] which has raised for some the concern "that characterizing the favorably-viewed American Revolution as a secession from Britain confers legitimacy on the later attempt by the Confederate states to secede from the Union (Livingston 1998)°—an attempt that, by most contemporary perspectives, wants for legitimacy (Simpson 2012)." [7] Chris Hedges has called him "one of the intellectual godfathers of the secessionist movement." [8]
Livingston was a member of the League of the South's Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, but left the group in the early 2000s. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "Livingston told the Report that he was put off by the group’s racism and other 'political baggage'". [9]
In 2003, Livingston founded the Abbeville Institute. [1] According to its website, the 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's work has been described as neo-Confederate by the Southern Poverty Law Center and sociologist James W. Loewen. [9] [10] Abbeville Institute scholars have promoted the Lost Cause myth, contending that the American Civil War and was "not about slavery." [1] [11] The Institute is named for the town of Abbeville, South Carolina, often regarded as the birthplace of the Confederacy. [12]
The Institute adopted as part of its mission statement the following by slavery historian Eugene Genovese: "Rarely these days, even on Southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of white people in the South"; [1]
As of 2009, the Abbeville Institute had a total of 64 associated scholars from various colleges and disciplines. [1] It operates an annual summer school for graduate students and an annual scholars' conference. [2] It focuses particularly on issues of secession, which its scholars believe is a topic excluded from mainstream academia. [11] In 2010, it held a conference on secession and nullification. [1]
Notable faculty include Thomas DiLorenzo and Clyde Wilson.
The Abbeville Institute has a press, an Abbeville Institute Review, and a blog.
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy was composed of eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Jones County is in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 67,246. Its county seats are Laurel and Ellisville.
Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession. A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal is the creation of a new state or entity independent of the group or territory from which it seceded. Threats of secession can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.
In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess. Since the 1940s, the term "states' rights" has often been considered a loaded term or dog whistle because of its use in opposition to federally-mandated racial desegregation and, more recently, same-sex marriage and reproductive rights.
The origins of the American Civil War are rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery. Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict. They disagree on which aspects were most important, and on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding states' own secession documents. After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. The League of the South, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other neo-Confederate organizations continue to defend the secession of the former Confederate States.
Thomas James DiLorenzo is an American author and former university economics professor who is the President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He has written books denouncing President Abraham Lincoln.
The League of the South (LS) is an American white nationalist, neo-Confederate, white supremacist organization that says its goal is "a free and independent Southern republic".
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet was an American lawyer, minister, journalist, educator, and humorist, known for his book Georgia Scenes. He held strong pro-slavery and pro-secessionist views which he publicly advocated for in his various positions. He personally owned dozens of slaves throughout his life. He held the presidency of several southern universities, including the University of Mississippi (twice), South Carolina College, and Emory College.
William Lowndes Yancey was an American politician in the Antebellum South. As an influential "Fire-Eater", he defended slavery and urged Southerners to secede from the Union in response to Northern antislavery agitation.
Thomas Ernest Woods Jr. is an American author, podcast host, and libertarian commentator who is currently a senior fellow at the Mises Institute. A proponent of the Austrian School of economics, Woods hosts a daily podcast, The Tom Woods Show, and formerly co-hosted the weekly podcast Contra Krugman.
Robert Barnwell Rhett was an American politician who served as a deputy from South Carolina to the Provisional Confederate States Congress from 1861 to 1862, a member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1837 to 1849, and US Senator from South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. As a staunch supporter of slavery and an early advocate of secession, he was a "Fire-Eater", nicknamed the "father of secession".
Colonel Thomas Patterson Brockman was an American merchant and planter in the Greenville District and also owned land in the Spartanburg District. He was born in the Greenville District, South Carolina, the son of Susannah Patterson and Henry Brockman. According to the 1850 slave schedules, he possessed thirty slaves in Greenville. He was also a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and the South Carolina Senate.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860, and was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy in February 1861. The bombardment of the beleaguered U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, is generally recognized as the first military engagement of the war. The retaking of Charleston in February 1865, and raising the flag again at Fort Sumter, was used for the Union symbol of victory.
Thomas Herbert Naylor was an American economist and professor. From Jackson, Mississippi, he was a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University, the author of thirty books, and a founder of the Second Vermont Republic (2003). Naylor authored ten academic books and three books advocating secession.
Historiography examines how the past has been viewed or interpreted. Historiographic issues about the American Civil War include the name of the war, the origins or causes of the war, and President Abraham Lincoln's views and goals regarding slavery.
In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state. Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents.
Michael Hill is an American former university professor and political activist from Alabama. He is a co-founder and the president of the "Southern secession" movement the League of the South, an organization whose stated goal is to create an independent country made up of the former states of the American South.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
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