HeyJaredBrownson's Occasional Blog
Orestes Brownson, the most profound American thinker of the 19th Century, argued that the cause of our Civil War was two - equally erroneous - interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. His analysis is crucial today to resolve our current divisions.
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- Sep 14, 2026
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- Jul 5, 2026
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The Loyal People (opens the original)
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After reading my recent piece in Public Discourse, The American Pope and the American Constitution, a friend questioned me about a quote from Orestes Brownson:[T]he great body of the people in the non-slaveholding States, wedded to American democracy as they were, and are, could never, as much as they detested slavery, be induced to make common cause with the abolitionists …The great body of the loyal people instinctively felt that pure socialism is as incompatible with American democracy as pur
Reconstruction Revisited Again (opens the original)
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As I mentioned in a post last month, Brownson immediately objected to the plan for reconstruction proposed by Lincoln in December, 1862. Before that plan was put into legislative form, Brownson objected once more in The American Republic. His point was that a Providential aspect of the U.S. Constitution was its territorial nature that created a delicate balance between solidarity and subsidiarity [his terms were humanitarian democracy and personal democracy]. The Constitution kept these opposing
A Brownson Memorium (opens the original)
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American Catholic Quarterly Review began publication in January 1876, very probably to continue Brownson’s Quarterly Review which closed with its Q4, 1875 issue due to Brownson’s deteriorating health. The editors of ACQR were three Catholic priests: Edmond Francis Prendergast, Patrick John Ryan, and James Andrew Corcoran.The first issue of ACQR contains Brownson’s last published essay, The Philosophy of the Superna
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