Freedom is the genius of American civilization. Other great nations have been born in conquest.  Ours began with the Declaration of Independence, and the enshrining of the idea of the Natural Rights of Man. It was founded, not on the power of the State, but on the liberty of the individual. That principle of individual liberty has had its good days and its bad days in the United States, and it’s been denied to many groups of people for far too long. But the ideal has always survived. It is our answer, and our hope. — Ed Clark, 1979

We stand on the shoulders of giants. Heroic and courageous men and women of integrity blazed the path to liberty before us and in many cases have been lost to history, especially in these egregious times of neocon and cultural Marxist SJW politically correctness.

Here are three items to save for later reading which retell the amazing stories of such nearly forgotten pioneers:

William Leggett, Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy [1834], Compiled, Edited, and With a Forward by Lawrence H. White (.pdf)

“Democratick Radical: William Leggett and Jacksonian Political Economy,” by Anthony Comegna.

“The Dupes of Hope Forever:” The Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Movement, 1820s-1870s, by Anthony Comegna

This dissertation illustrates the impact of the Loco-Foco movement (1820s-1870s), most notably its role in the development of “Manifest Destiny,” the Free Soil Party, and the Republican Party. While historians have assumed that the Loco-Foco movement ended with the existence of the original third party in New York (1836-7), I pursue their philosophy and activism throughout the time and space of the late antebellum period. Loco-Focoism can be characterized as radical classical liberalism, including commitments to natural and equal rights, individualism, private property, laissez-faire, democratic republicanism, and, often, antislavery. Self-avowed and influential Loco-Focos included Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and countless other important figures in antebellum thought, culture, and politics ranging across the continent from New England and the northern border to the Pacific frontier zone and even the increasingly proslavery, anti-locofoco South. This study compiles the largest collection of primary sources related to the movement of any treatment to date, including dozens of newspapers, published books, poems, and pamphlets, public speeches, paintings, and private correspondence collections. This is the first and only history of the Loco-Foco Movement as such, and its conclusions offer sharp challenges to prevailing interpretations of the development of democratic-republican government, liberalism, and corporate-capitalism in the United States. While their ideology offered radical alternative models for American political and intellectual life, their efforts at practical politicking created much of the modern democratic, corporate-capitalist nation-state familiar to present-day readers.

The Best of Charles Burris