Jack Hunter, the Rand Paul aide once known as the “Southern Avenger” has resigned from the senator’s staff in order to avoid being a “distraction.” Hunter has a history of pro-Confederate and borderline racist statements, though he has repudiated them in more recent years. In addition to creating a political problem for Rand Paul, the […]
Archive | Civil War
John Stuart Mill on Slavery, the Confederacy, and the American Civil War
A reader reminded me that many of the same defenses of the Confederacy advanced by its modern apologists (including some of the libertarian ones discussed in my last post) were also advocated by wartime British sympathizers with the Confederates, and effectively rebutted by John Stuart Mill in his 1862 essay, “The Contest in America.” I […]
Libertarianism, the Confederacy, and the Civil War Revisited
By Ilya Somin on July 16, 2013 8:34 pm in Civil War, History, Libertarianism, Racial Discrimination, Secession
Revelations that Rand Paul aide Jack Hunter has a history of racist and pro-Confederate statements during his days as a radio shock jock have rekindled the longstanding debate over libertarian attitudes towards the Civil War. Hunter has repudiated many of his former statements and attitudes. But that hasn’t stopped the controversy from continuing. This uproar […]
Frederick Douglass on How We Should Remember the Civil War
On Civil War anniversaries, like today’s 150th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, it has become traditional to commemorate both sides equally. There is some logic to this practice. We do not want to unnecessarily perpetuate sectional grievances, or be seen as somehow blaming today’s white southerners for the wrongs of earlier […]
The 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
Today is the 150th anniversary of Pickett’s Charge and the last day of the Battle Gettysburg. Many modern historians take issue with the traditional view that this Union victory was the decisive battle of the Civil War. They point out that the Confederacy still had a chance to win by demoralizing northern public opinion during […]
Debating the Moral and Legal Status of Secession
Jason Kuznicki and Timothy Sandefur have written responses to my post critiquing Kuznicki’s earlier statement that the idea of legal secession is a “category error.” Kuznicki writes: Of course, it’s indisputably true that some secessions are authorized by some countries’ constitutions. Others, however, are not. Within these two types of cases, authorized and unauthorized, we […]
Is Legal Secession a “Category Error”?
As part of the ongoing discussion of libertarian views on the Civil War and secession, Jason Kuznicki of Cato and David Drumm of the Jonathan Turley blog have argued, in Kuznicki’s words, that “[s]ecession is the decision to step out of an existing political order, so it’s a category error to try to justify it […]
Libertarianism and the Civil War
By Ilya Somin on March 6, 2012 12:55 am in Civil War, Federalism, History, Libertarianism, Racism, Secession
Over at Libertarianism.Org, Jonathan Blanks has an interesting series of posts criticizing libertarians who defend the secession of the Southern states that precipitated the civil war (see here and here). Like Blanks, I believe that any possible justification that the Confederates may have had was negated by the fact that they seceded for the purpose […]
Whitewashing Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy
The New York Times has an article on yesterday’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy: Before a cheering crowd of several hundred men and women, some in period costume and others in crisp suits, an amateur actor playing Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president […]