This year, students are asked to consider the following excerpt from Edmund Burke's March 22, 1775 Speech "Moving Resolutions of Conciliation with the Colonies".

"“…America, gentlemen say is a noble object – it is an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than of force; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us. My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource: for, conciliation failing, force remains; but force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. A further objection to force is that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover, but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me than whole America….."

Please focus your essay on the following prompt:
Ignored at a critical time preceding hostilies, comment on how Burke's salient arguments may have provided proscriptive emollients to America's bitter internecine conflict resulant from a perspective bias towards the compact formed by the United States Consitution.


The Douglas B. Rogers Essay Competition is hosted by The Abbeville Institute, Auburn, AL. Please direct essay submissions to JeffRogers@AbbevilleInstitute.org. Essay submissions will be due by January 15, 2022. Winners will be notified in February, 2022.


* For more details on this year's Essay Competition and essay requirements for submissions visit AbbevilleInstitute.org and click on the Douglas B. Rogers Essay Competition tab.