Recommended Reading

A generous sampling of political, sociological, and theological thinking and historical sources associated with the South and/or Rightism.

*For the links to Google Books and other ebook sources, I use Calibre for easy (and free) format conversion and exporting to Kindle or other ebook readers.

Early Southern Liberals

Thomas Jefferson- Political Writings

James Madison- Writings 1772-1836

St. George Tucker- A Dissertation on Slavery; Blackstone’s Commentaries

John Taylor of Caroline- Tyranny Unmasked; Arator; Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated

John Randolph of Roanoke- Letters to a Young Relative; Collected Letters to Dr. John Brockenbrough

Political/Constitutional Theory

John C. Calhoun- A Disquisition on Government; A Discourse on the Constitution; Selected Writings and Speeches; Correspondence

Jefferson Davis- The Essential Writings; Speeches

The ‘Reactionary Enlightenment’

George Fitzhugh- Sociology for the South; Cannibals All!; Selected Articles

Albert T. Bledsoe- An Essay on Liberty and Slavery; Inquiry Into the Freedom of Will

Various, incl. Hammond, Harper and Bledsoe- Cotton is King, and Pro-slavery Arguments

Henry Hughes- Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical

William Harper- Memoir on Slavery

James Henry Hammond- Selected Letters and Speeches

Edmund Ruffin- Nature’s Management; Slavery and Free Labor

John Fletcher- Studies on Slavery

George S. Sawyer- Southern Institutes: An Inquiry

William Grayson- The Hireling and Slave; The Country

Old South Theology and Philosophy

R.L. Dabney- Systemic Theology; Discussions; Sacred Rhetoric; The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century; The Practical Philosophy

James Henley Thornwell- The Rights and Duties of Masters; Hear The South!; Discourses on Truth

George Howe- Discourse on Theological Education

Robert Means, George Howe- Sermons

Postbellum Apologia

R.L. Dabney- In Defence of Virginia

Jefferson Davis- Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government; A Short History of the Confederate States

Jabez Curry- The Southern States of the American Union

The Southern Agrarians

Twelve Southerners- I’ll Take My Stand

John Crowe Ransom- Selected Letters; Beating the Bushes

Donald Davidson- Still Rebels, Still Yankees; Regionalism and Nationalism

J. Donald Wade, Donald Davidson- Agrarian Letters

John Donald Wade- Augustus Baldwin Longstreet; Selected Essays and Writings

Allen Tate- Essays; Memoirs and Opinions

John Gould Fletcher- Arkansas

Andrew Nelson Lytle- A Wake For the Living; From Eden to Babylon; Southerners and Europeans

Robert Penn Warren- The Legacy of the Civil War; Who Speaks for the Negro?; Segregation

Stark Young- The Pavilion; A Southern Treasury

20th Century Keepers of the Flame

Richard M. Weaver- Ideas Have Consequences; The Ethics of Rhetoric; In Defense of Tradition; The Southern Tradition At Bay; Essays

Walker Percy- Lost in the Cosmos; Signposts in a Strange Land

Mel Bradford- A Better Guide Than Reason; Remembering Who We Are; The Reactionary Imperative; Against the Barbarians

Clyde N. Wilson- From Union to Empire; Defending Dixie; Chronicles of the South; Articles

Eugene Genovese- The Southern Tradition; The Southern Front; A Consuming Fire

Samuel T. Francis- Shots Fired; Revolution From the Middle; Beautiful Losers; America Extinguished

Southern History

Thomas J. Wertenbaker- Origins of Social Class in Virginia

Nehemiah Adams- A Southside View of Slavery

Eugene Genovese- Roll, Jordan, Roll

U. B. Phillips- American Negro Slavery

Hilary Herbert- The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences

Charles Adams- When In The Course of Human Events

Walter Cisco- War Crimes Against Southern Civilians

Thomas DiLorenzo- The Real Lincoln

George Lunt- The Origin of the Late War

Burke Davis- Sherman’s March

Hampton M. Jarrell- Wade Hampton and the Negro

Thomas Nelson Page- The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem

C. Vann Woodward- Origins of the New South, 1877-1913

Charles Francis Adams- ‘Tis Sixty Years Since

Southern Social Studies

Alexis de Tocqueville- Democracy in America

Daniel Hundley- Social Relations in Our Southern States

Frank L. Owsley- Plain Folk of the Old South

Grady McWhiney- Cracker Culture

Bertram Wyatt-Brown- Southern Honor

Horace Kephart- Our Southern Highlanders

Donald Davidson- The Tennessee

Tony Horwitz- Confederates in the Attic

Southern Recollections

Mary Boykin Chestnut- A Diary From Dixie

Margaret Devereaux- Plantation Sketches

Irving E. Lowery- Life on the Old Plantation 

Mamie Garvin Fields- Lemon Swamp and Other Places

William Alexander Percy- Lanterns on the Levee

Ben Robertson- Red Hills and Cotton

Wilt Browning- Linthead

Non-Southern Rightism

Robert Filmer- Patriarcha and Other Writings

Edmund Burke- Reflections on the Revolution in France

Joseph de Maistre- Against Rousseau; Considerations on France; On the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

Thomas Carlyle- Chartism; Latter-Day Pamphlets; Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question; Shooting Niagara; Past and Present

Gustave Le Bon- The Crowd

Julius Evola- Revolt Against the Modern World; Men Among the Ruins; Ride the Tiger

Hilaire Belloc- The Servile State

G.K. Chesterton- The Uses of Diversity; In Defense of Sanity; Orthodoxy; What’s Wrong With the World

Hans-Hermann Hoppe- Democracy: The God That Failed; From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn- Liberty or Equality; Leftism

Rudolph Carlyle Evans- The Resurrection of Aristocracy

On Race/Genetics

Sir Francis Galton- Hereditary Genius

Jared Taylor- White Identity; Paved With Good Intentions; Face to Face with Race

Nicholas Wade- A Troublesome Inheritance

Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray- Bell Curve

Samuel T. Francis- Essential Writings on Race

Magazines / Periodicals / Essays / Items of Interest

Archive of DeBow’s Review (Journal published in New Orleans, 1846-1869)

Archive of Southern Literary Messenger (Literary periodical published in Richmond, 1834-1864)

Archive of Southern Quarterly Review (Magazine published in Columbia, 1842-1857)

Archive of The Southern Review (Quarterly published by LSU, 1935-present)

Print Archives of Foxfire Magazine (Appalachian Lifestyle and Culture, 1967-present)

R. L. Dabney on Feminism (Article, 1871)

Collections of the Virginia Historical Society (1891)

Louis Hartz on the Reactionary Enlightenment (Essay, 1952)

C. Vann Woodward on George Fitzhugh (Essay, 1959)

Mencius Moldbug on the War Between the States (Blog Post, 2009)

Foseti on Cannibals All! by George Fitzhugh (Blog Post, 2010)

Ideas Have Consequences Condensed (Paper, 2012)

Eugene Genovese on James Henley Thornwell (Essay, 2015)

Mark Malvasi on Donald Davidson and the Agrarians (Essay, No Date)

Requests (for free versions; please contact me if found)

Gerald Straka- The Spirit of Carlyle in the Old South (Article, 1957)