Open Letter To Brion McClanahan Of The Abbeville Institute

He Called Me An Idiot For Disagreeing With Him; Race And National Identity Are Not Tangential Issues

The president of the Abbeville Institute, Brion McClanahan, recently published an article on the Abbeville Institute blog, in which race is sidelined as a non-issue and culture is propped up as the thing that matters to the exclusion of race. The article expresses what is effectively the concept of America as a proposition nation but with a Southern tinge to it. This is clearly indicated by this quote from the article:

"[S]aying there is an “America for Americans” is like saying there is a “Utopian [sic] for Utopians.”

In effect, the article denies American identity and denies the importance of race in the constitution of a healthy body politic, in stark contradiction to all American Founding Fathers, all notable Confederate figures, and the general sentiment of the American people for centuries. This article infuriated me, not just because the sentiment is completely false and repulsive, but because the mission of the Abbeville Institute is, as Abbeville Institute founder Don Livingston clearly states in their principles and introduction video, to "preserve and present what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition." Mr. McClanahan's November 15th article is the complete opposite, in that it presents ideas that are foreign to the Southern tradition, and that are neither true nor valuable.

I commented on Mr. McClanahan's article and stated my strong disagreement, and in response, I was personally sent an email from him in which he expresses a sarcastic, snarky attitude, and in which he euphemistically calls me an idiot for disagreeing with him. I will present this whole discourse here, starting with a link to the original article, then my comment on that article, then Mr. McClanahan's email to me, then my response to his email. I encourage anyone who has sympathies for the South to read this and stand up for what is right and what is true.

Mr. McClanahan's article:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/african-founders-and-albions-seed/

My comment on the article:

This article comes across as very mealy-mouthed. What is being said here? It sounds like this is a repackaging of the proposition nation nonsense, sans union. I get the impression that if those who constitute the Abbeville Institute had Jefferson Davis approach them and start talking to them, they would just ignore him and [c]ould not care less if he died of starvation. Why is the view of Mr. Davis being so violently and aggressively excluded from all discourse? I hate this; I cannot support the Abbeville Institute any longer if this is the direction they decide to take.

Mr. McClanahan's email to me:

Subject line:

Your Comment

Body:

Cody,

I will not publicly reply to your comment on my piece, but frankly it shows both your intellectual immaturity and your lack of understanding of American history.

Who is excluding Jefferson Davis from all discourse?

Must be us:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/jefferson-davis-on-trial/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-real-real-jefferson-davis/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/jefferson-daviss-farewell-address/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/jefferson-davis-american-statesman/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/what-jefferson-davis-would-tell-us-today-and-why-it-matters/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/jefferson-davis-a-judicial-estimate/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-sacrifice-for-his-people-the-imprisonment-of-jefferson-davis/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-truth-about-jefferson-davis/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/jefferson-davis-and-the-lame-lion-of-lynchburg/

Good day.

Brion McClanahan

My response:

I was not referring to the person of Jefferson Davis in a literal sense, I was referring to his perspective on America, which I indicated by saying that if Jefferson Davis approached those involved with the Abbeville Institute and started speaking with them, they would ignore him. And I'll get specific here, if you care about having discourse instead of just using ad hominem.

Excerpts from the article:

"Albion’s Seed empirically verifies John Taylor of Caroline’s argument that saying there is an "America for Americans" is like saying there is a "Utopian for Utopians.""

"Thorough studies of slavery bucked those trends, most importantly Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene Genovese, but even he treated the American black population as a “nation within a nation.” Race mattered more than culture."

Besides these excerpts, you use the term "black American(s)" or "black America" 15 times in the article.

Race is not everything, but it does matter. Thomas Jefferson acknowledged this, and I'll present it here:

"As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition so expedient on the whole, as that as emancipation of those born after a given day, and of their education and expatriation after a given age."

Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that black people were different, that they needed their own country, and that they needed to be distinct from white people, and so did all of the other Founding Fathers, and the founding generation, and multiple generations after that. The races should not mingle, and this is where Jefferson Davis comes in. Here is what he said in a speech in Maine in 1858:

"[Davis] said that everything around him spoke eloquently of the wisdom of the men who founded these colonies-their descendants, who sat before him, contrasted strongly, as did their history and present power, stand out in bold relief, when compared with those of the inhabitants of Central and Southern America. Chief among the reasons for this, he believed to be the self-reliant hardihood of their forefathers who, when but a handful, found themselves confronted by hordes of savages, yet proudly maintained the integrity of their race and asserted its supremacy over the descendants of Shem, in whose tents they had come to dwell. They preferred to encounter toil, privation and carnage, rather than debase their lineage and race. Their descendants of that pure and heroic blood have advanced to the high standard of civilization attainable by that type of mankind. Stability and progress, wealth and comfort, art and science, have followed their footsteps.

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days’ government ape the rulers of the earth. Even now the nearest and strongest of these American Republics, which were fashioned after the model of our own, seems to be tottering to a fall, and the world is inquiring as to who will take possession; or, as protector, raise and lead a people who have shown themselves incompetent to govern themselves.

He said our fathers laid the foundation of Empire, and declared its purposes; to their sons it remained to complete their superstructure. The means by which this end was to be secured were simple and easy. It involved no harder task than that each man should attend to his own business, that no community should arrogantly assume to interfere with the affairs of another—and that all by the honorable obligation of fulfiling that compact which their fathers had made."

And again in another speech in Maine that same year:

"Fears had once been entertained and much opposition was formerly made to an extension of the area of the United States. A wiser policy, however, prevailed, and the introduction of new regions, increasing the variety of our productions, have magnified the advantages of free trade between the States, and made us almost independent of other countries for the supply of every object whether of necessity or of luxury. I would be glad to extend our boundary and make the circle of our products complete, so that, whilst we would encourage commerce with christendom we should be, commercially as we are politically, absolutely independent, whenever it should be proper or necessary to terminate intercourse with any or every other country. A statesman of former days wished that the Atlantic was a sea of fire, that it might be a barrier to shut out European contamination. Whatever fear was once justifiable, no apprehension now need to exist, that our people will imitate or seek to adopt the political theories of Europe. We have recently rejoiced in the success of the attempt to establish telegraphic communication with England; because in closer commercial ties we saw no danger of political influence. I was happy this evening to receive assurances that the success of that enterprise was at last complete. I have not been of those whose doubts were stronger than their hopes—thanks to a sanguine temperament. I have from the beginning anticipated success, and have heretofore said that if the present attempt riled I was sure that Yankee enterprise and skill could make a cable and lay it across the Atlantic. And we look forward to the result with hope, not doubting, that the closest commercial connexion with other countries can only bring to us benefits. We are not, and have not been, political propagandists, yet believing our form of government the best, we properly desire its extension and invite the world to scrutinize our example of representative liberty.

The stars on our flag, recording the number of the States united, have already been more than doubled; and I hopefully look forward to the day when the constellation shall become a galaxy covering the stripes, which record the original number of our political family, and shall shed over the nations of the earth the light of regeneration to mankind. It has sometimes been said to he [sic] our manifest destiny that we should possess the whole of this continent. Whether it shall ever all be part of the United States is doubtful, and may never be desirable; but that in some form or other, it should come under the protectorate or control of the United States, is a result which seems to me, in the remote future, certain. It waits as the consequence upon intellectual vigor, upon physical energy, upon the capacity to govern, and can only be defeated by a suicidal madness, of which it does not belong to the occasion to treat.

I would not be understood to advocate what is called fillibustering. Our country has never obtained territory except fairly, honorably and peaceably. We have conquered territory, but have asserted no title as the right of conquest, returning to Mexico all except the part she agreed to sell and for which we paid a liberal price. England having fillibustered around the world, has reproached us for aggrandizement, and we point to history and invite a comparison. There is no stain upon our escutcheon, no smoke upon our garments, and thus may they remain pure forever! The acquisitions of which I spoke, the protectorate which was contemplated, were such as the necessities of the future should demand, and the good of others as much as our own require, and this step by step, faster or slower, will, I believe, finally embrace the continent of America and its adjacent islands.

I am not among those who desire to incorporate into our Union, countries densely populated with a different race. Deserts, ’tis the province of our people to subdue. A mere handful of inhabitants, such as existed in Louisiana, are soon enveloped in the tide of immigration; of this character of acquisition I have no fear; but the mingling of races is a different thing. I have looked with interest and pleasure upon the crosses of your cattle and horses, and saw in it the evidence of improvement. Let your Messengers, your Morgans, your Drews, and your Eatons be mingled with each other and with new inportations; so with your Durhams, Devons, Ayreshires and your Jerseys. The limit to these experiments will be where experience shows deterioration. There is one cross which it is to be hoped you will avoid: ’tis that which your Puritan fathers would not adopt or even entertain. They kept pure the Caucasian blood which flowed in their veins, and therein is the cause of your present high civilization, your progress, your dignity and your strength. We are one, let us remain unmixed. In our neighbors of Southern and Central America we have a sufficient warning; and may it never be our ill-fortune to learn by experience the lessons taught by their example."

Africa to Africans, America to Americans; and I will not stand for mixing the races, just like Thomas Jefferson, all the Founding Fathers, the first several generations of Americans, and Jefferson Davis. And you can even add Lee to this kind of sentiment too, although he was too harsh in my view:

"In talking with Colonel Carter about the situation of farmers at that time [shortly after the war] in the South, and of their prospects for the future, [Lee] urged him to get rid of the negroes left on the farm—some ninety-odd in number, principally women and children, with a few old men—saying the government would provide for them, and advised him to secure white labour. The Colonel told him he had to use, for immediate needs, such force as he had, being unable at that time to get whites. Whereupon General Lee remarked:

'I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.'"

And in reference to the idea that America has no national identity, Jefferson Davis disagrees; from a speech in Massachusetts in 1858:

"I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who preceded me in addressing you used the words national and constitutional in such relations to each other as to show that in his mind the one was a synonym of the other. And does he not do so with reason? We became a nation by the constitution; whatever is national springs from the constitution; and national and constitutional are convertible terms. [Applause.] [...]

With these views, it will not be surprising to those who differ from me, that I feel an ardent desire for the success of the State Rights Democracy, that convinced of the destructive consequences of the heresies of their opponents, and of the evils upon which they would precipitate the country, I do not forbear to advocate, here and elsewhere, the success of that party which alone is national, on which alone I rely for the preservation of the Constitution, to perpetuate the Union, and to fulfil the purposes which it was ordained to establish and secure. [Loud cheers.]"

Mr. Davis made a regular practice of asserting the nationhood of America at the federal level without denying the nationhood of the States also. He advocated for Union, even after the war. Here is an excerpt from one of his last public appearances, in Mississippi City, in 1888:

"Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens: Ah, pardon me, the laws of the United States no longer permit me to designate you as fellow citizens, but I am thankful that I may address you as my friends. I feel no regret that I stand before you this afternoon a man without a country, for my ambition lies buried in the grave of the Confederacy. There has been consigned not only my ambition, but the dogmas upon which that Government was based. The faces I see before me are those of young men; had I not known this I would not have appeared before you. Men in whose hands the destinies of our Southland lie, for love of her I break my silence, to speak to you a few words of respectful admonition. The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future—a future full of golden promise; a future of expanding national glory, before which all the world shall stand amazed. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished—a reunited country."

This is a perspective that I have not seen anywhere at the Abbeville Institute. I am aware that you guys have many articles about Jefferson Davis, and that explore a limited view of his perspective; I have many of those articles bookmarked. But, that is not what I'm talking about. These are deep ideas about what America is, and I have not seen these ideas represented anywhere at the Abbeville Institute. In a broader sense, I am tired and furious, as a young person, of being excluded and disrespected by older people. The Founding Fathers at the time of the Revolution were primarily young people; they had the courage to do the right thing, while older people in many cases were the Loyalists. I am tired of having my perspective be sidelined and disrespected and insulted and ignored and attacked simply for holding the views of Jefferson Davis and the Founding Fathers. This isn't right, and it's not right for you to call me an idiot because I disagree with you, especially when my disagreement is based on the views of the Founding Fathers and Jefferson Davis.

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