Orestes Brownson Essay Contest

The Nineteenth Century was a tumultuous period for Western civilization. Europe was dealing with the aftershocks of the French Revolution. The viability of popular government in the United States was still in question and threatened by a Civil War. Darwin challenged the creation story. Marx was calling for revolution. And the early feminists wanted to destroy the family.

Commenting on these phenomena and many more was Orestes Brownson. Born in poverty on a Vermont farm with a life spanning three-quarters of the Nineteenth Century, Brownson was one of America’s most important and original thinkers. As a journalist, he wrote incisively about many of the philosophical, constitutional, and political debates of his day. In his 1939 biography of Brownson, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. asserts that there was no other American writer who equaled him: “For thirty years in his magazines he commented on virtually all important questions both of the day and of eternity…His observations on society had a profundity no other American of the time approached.”

Brownson was not only a commentator. He was a prophet who foretold the Administrative State, the collapse of the family and the transfer of power from “We the People” to corporate interests.

The problems of his day continue to plague us in our own and his insights will be helpful guides to our future. It’s time to bring Brownson back. The Orestes Brownson Essay Contest is a small step toward a Brownson revival.

Essay topics could be as varied as Brownson’s own interests: Politics, Authority, the U.S. Constitution, the Family, Philosophy, Evolution, Faith and Science, Capitalism and the Economy, etc.

Alternatively, essays might compare Brownson with Kant, Locke, Hegel, Aristotle, Tocqueville, Marx, Herbert Spencer, G.K. Chesterton, Max Weber, or a host of others.

A treasure trove of essay ideas can be found at the end of Patrick Carey’s biography of Brownson, “Orestes Brownson, American Religious Weathervane,” which should be in your university library. A 12-page Note on the Sources names 235 books, journal articles and PhD dissertations written between 1918 and 2002, arranged by subject matter.

Essays must be submitted by December 31, 2025. There will be eight cash prizes: one first place prize, two second place prizes, and five third place prizes. Winners will be announced by March 1, 2026 and the awards ceremony will take place in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 2026. All contestants will be invited to a full day conference marking the 150th anniversary of the death of Orestes Brownson at The Catholic University of American on the following day April 16, 2026.

If you are a university undergraduate interested in registering for the contest, please complete the short form HERE.