Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by John Devanny
A More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union?
A review of Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America (University of Kansas Press, 2023) by Peter Radan As with all creditable works of scholarship, Peter Radan begins with a question, why was a war required to end slavery in the United States when it was ended by legal means elsewhere? The answer Radan offers is surprising.
The “Slave Power” You Say?
Old myths die hard. One of the oldest with its roots firmly in the sectional crisis of the nineteenth century is the belief in the existence of the “Slave Power.” This uniquely American conspiracy theory, found mostly among the folks of the Midwest, posited that Southern slaveholders were bent on spreading the institution of slavery into the territories and even into the states of the Old Northwest itself.
Declarations of Independence: Meanings and Memory
The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is an appropriate moment to reflect upon how far Americans, both elites and regular people, have strayed from the principles of the movement for American independence from Britain. At its worst, the popular culture will celebrate the country’s “birthday” with celebrity entertainers performing in “kitschy” Hollywood splendor.
Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Tale of Two Primaries
President Donald J. Trump’s use of the primary to remove his opponents from political office was singularly successful this past primary season. In the past, the tactic was not always successful. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, much to his later chagrin, attempted the same tactic in 1938 to remove conservative Southern Democrats who began to oppose what they viewed as the New Deal’s encroachment upon states’ rights.
The South and the American Empire
A Review of Joseph R. Stromberg, The South and the American Empire: Essays (Shotwell Publishing, 2026) Those familiar with the work of Joseph Stromberg know the mastery Stromberg has over the secondary literature in a diversity of academic fields. In the preface, Clyde Wilson states, “Joseph Stromberg is the consummate scholar for all seasons. . . . [H]is many essays show his immense seamless scholarship in history, economics, culture, and philosophy.
Lincoln’s Mercenaries
A review of William Marvel, Lincoln’s Merenaries: Economic Motivation Among Union Soldiers During the Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2018) As the eminent historian John Lukacs observed, causation and motivation are the two most difficult historical phenomena to prove and explain. In part, this is due to the complexities of human nature; men and women are rarely, if ever, motivated to action by a single motive. Human actions are most often the result of mixed motives.
The Day After in the Old Dominion
Virginia’s contribution to the blue wave this fall saw the usual round of Republican hand wringing and finger pointing. President Donald Trump blamed the defeats in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City on the absence of his name on the ballot, as well as voter frustration with the government shutdown.
Livin’ in the DMV
Colin Woodward, author of American Nations, identified eleven regional and rival cultures overlapping state boundaries that shapes American culture and politics. The work is insightful, bringing to mind the European observation that America is a continent, not a country. Woodward’s work has its limitations. One of these limitations is how to deal with the Megalopolis known as the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Northern Virginia.
Stewards of History
Caryl Johnston is a contemporary Southern writer who has so far not received as much recognition as she merits. That lack was partly corrected in 2021 when the Abbeville Press published her Stewards of History: Land and Time in the Story of a Southern Family. Then last year her fourth volume of verse, Storyteller in Times Square, appeared.
John Randolph of Roanoke & the Formation of a Southern Conservatism
One of the great issues of American political history is whether an authentic American conservatism exists. This is a crucial question for Southerners, as the South is historically viewed as the most conservative of the regions of the United States. Louis Hartz, a prominent political theorist during the middle of the twentieth century, answered no, American conservatism does not exist.
Confessions of a Copperhead
A review of Confessions of a Copperhead: Culture and Politics in the Modern South (Shotwell Press, 2022) by Mark Royden Winchell The concept of the South as a peculiar and singular region of America, indeed not quite American except in its vices of racism and violence, is something of an industry in the halls of academia. Numerous university centers and institutes for Southern studies assure us that this is so. Outside of the intelligentsia, this is not the common view.
“Poison Under Its Wings”: The Constitution and Its Defects
The beginning of the American political order goes much further back than the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Political scientists and political theorists are understandably fixated on the Constitution and the convention that produced it. Eric Voegelin, Willmoore Kendall, and a few others go even further back searching for a continuity in the political symbolization present in some certain select, but not all, American political documents of the colonial era.
Remembering John C. Calhoun
Though John C. Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman and thinker, he is little appreciated in his own country. Calhoun rose to prominence on the eve of the War of 1812 as a "war hawk" in the House of Representatives and was the Hercules who labored untiringly in the war effort.
"The Reactionary Imperative" Revisited ~ The Imaginative Conservative
In “The Reactionary Imperative,” Mel Bradford calls for a return to the roots of American order. Sadly, a return to a revised form of the Articles of Confederation is all but impossible. Hope, however, lies in a revivification of the principles of the Old Republicans of Thomas Jefferson’s day. Mel Bradford published a collection of political and literary essays in 1991 titled The Reactionary Imperative.
John Randolph of Roanoke & the Formation of a Southern Conservatism
One of the great issues of American political history is whether an authentic American conservatism exists. This is a crucial question for Southerners, as the South is historically viewed as the most conservative of the regions of the United States. Louis Hartz, a prominent political theorist during the middle of the twentieth century, answered no, American conservatism does not exist.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with John
Contact John, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack