Category: Principles
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There are few questions in American history more persistently debated, more politically burdened, or more vulnerable to inherited memory than the cause of the Civil War. For generations, Americans have argued over whether the Confederacy was formed primarily in defense of “states’ rights” or in defense of slavery. The argument often becomes circular because it…
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In an earlier essay, So Nobly Advanced examined how the Civil War reshaped the meaning of constitutional personhood. Yet an equally important question lies deeper in the Constitution itself: Who does the Constitution protect? Debates over the scope of constitutional rights often begin with the assumption that the Constitution protects primarily – or even exclusively…
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In the winter of 1848, as war with Mexico continued, a young congressman from Illinois wrote not to the nation, but to a friend. There was no crowd, no speech, no performance – only argument, reason, and conviction set down in ink. What Abraham Lincoln wrote in that letter was not about a single war.…
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In September 1875, nearly a decade after Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant addressed Union veterans gathered at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa. The war had been won. The Union preserved. Slavery abolished. Yet Grant spoke not of triumph, nor of sectional reconciliation, nor of personal memory. Instead,…
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The United States Constitution does not begin by defining citizenship. It begins by limiting power. This ordering is neither accidental nor incidental. From the nation’s founding through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the survival of American Liberty has depended upon a single foundational principle: that rights attach first to persons, and only then to legal…
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There are moments in history when words reveal more than armies ever could. One such moment came in 1861, when a senior leader of the Confederate government spoke plainly of what his cause meant. Those words stand today not as a relic to be softened, but as evidence to be examined – and rejected –…
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On the evening of February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln walked onto a stage in New York City as a little-known former congressman from Illinois. By the time he finished speaking at Cooper Union, he had altered the course of American history. The Cooper Union Address was not fiery. It was not theatrical. It was meticulously…
So Nobly Advanced 