Donald Livingston

Last updated

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]

Contents

Early life and education

Livingston was raised in South Carolina. [3] 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. [4] 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. [5]

Career

After teaching in several venues, Livingston became a professor of philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. [6]

Philosophical views

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, [7] 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)." [8] Chris Hedges has called him "one of the intellectual godfathers of the secessionist movement." [9]

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'". [10]

Abbeville Institute

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 is named for the town of Abbeville, South Carolina, often regarded as the birthplace of the Confederacy. [11]

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"; [3]

As of 2009, the Abbeville Institute had a total of 64 associated scholars from various colleges and disciplines. [3] 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. [12] In 2010, it held a conference on secession and nullification. [3]

Notable faculty include Thomas DiLorenzo and Clyde Wilson.

The Abbeville Institute has a press, an Abbeville Institute Review, and a blog.

Books

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Confederate States of America</span> Former self declared North American state (1861–65)

The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States, 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 comprised 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jones County, Mississippi</span> County in Mississippi, United States

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar</span> US Supreme Court justice from 1888 to 1893

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II was a Confederate soldier, American politician, diplomat, and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Mississippi in both houses of Congress, served as the United States Secretary of the Interior, and was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He also served as an official in the Confederate States of America.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Border states (American Civil War)</span> Slave states that did not secede from the Union during the American Civil War

In the context of the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states were slave states that did not secede from 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-Confederates</span> Modern American political grouping

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.

Regionalism is a political ideology that seeks to increase the political power, influence and self-determination of the people of one or more subnational regions. It focuses on the "development of a political or social system based on one or more" regions and/or the national, normative or economic interests of a specific region, group of regions or another subnational entity, gaining strength from or aiming to strengthen the "consciousness of and loyalty to a distinct region with a homogeneous population", similarly to nationalism. More specifically, "regionalism refers to three distinct elements: movements demanding territorial autonomy within unitary states; the organization of the central state on a regional basis for the delivery of its policies including regional development policies; political decentralization and regional autonomy".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas DiLorenzo</span> Economist

Thomas James DiLorenzo is an author and former university economics professor who is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He has written books criticizing President Abraham Lincoln.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">League of the South</span> American white supremacist organization

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Lowndes Yancey</span> American politician (1814–1863)

William Lowndes Yancey was a political leader 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Barnwell Rhett</span> American politician (1800–1876)

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kirkpatrick Sale</span> American author (born 1937)

Kirkpatrick Sale is an American author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology. He has been described as having a "philosophy unified by decentralism" and as being "a leader of the Neo-Luddites," an "anti-globalization leftist," and "the theoretician for a new secessionist movement."

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Carolina in the American Civil War</span> Involvement of the Confederate state of South Carolina in the American Civil War

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Peter Richardson II</span> American politician

John Peter Richardson II was the 59th Governor of South Carolina from 1840 to 1842.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secession in the United States</span> A state leaving the Union

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Secession Convention of 1861</span>

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.

References

  1. 1 2 Terris, Ben (December 6, 2009). "Scholars Nostalgic for the Old South Study the Virtues of Secession, Quietly". The Chronicle of Higher Education . Retrieved January 17, 2011.
  2. 1 2 "About". abbevilleinstitute.org. Archived from the original on November 24, 2012. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Terris, Ben (December 6, 2009), "Scholars Nostalgic for the Old South Study the Virtues of Secession, Quietly", Chronicle of Higher Education
  4. "Profiles". Mises Institute - Austrian Economics, Freedom and Peace. June 20, 2014. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  5. Livingston, Donald. "Why The War Was Not About Slavery". Confederate Veteran (September/October 2010): 16–22, 54–59.
  6. "WayBack Machine". Department of Philosophy - Emory University. January 23, 2010. Archived from the original on January 23, 2010. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  7. Donald Livingston. "The Secession Tradition in American". In Gordon, David (ed.). Secession, State, and Liberty. Transaction Publishers. ISBN   9781412833837 . Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  8. Erin Ryan (2018). "Secession and Federalism in the United States: Tools for Managing Regional Conflict in a Pluralist Society". In López-Basaguren, Alberto; Epifanio, Leire Escajedo San (eds.). Claims for Secession and Federalism: A Comparative Study with a Special Focus on Spain. Springer. p. 21. ISBN   9783319597072 . Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  9. Chris Hedges (April 27, 2010). "The New Secessionists". LewRockwell.com . Retrieved October 6, 2012.
  10. "League of the South". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  11. Gelbert, Doug (2005). Civil War Sites, Memorials, Museums and Library Collections: A State-by-State Guidebook to Places Open to the Public. McFarland. p. 130. ISBN   978-0786422593 . Retrieved July 10, 2017.
  12. Chu, Jeff (June 26, 2005). "Loathing Abe Lincoln". Time.com . Time Warner. Archived from the original on October 30, 2005.