Monthly Archives

May 2014

Blog

Hollywood’s South — 20th Century Wars

(3rd in a 5-part series) Hollywood’s treatment of Southerners in the vast output of World War II movies is a mixed bag. There is a fair amount of favourable portrayal of Southerners. This doubtless reflects the good will with which the American public entered the war and its recognition that we were needed and doing our part or more. On…
Clyde Wilson
May 30, 2014
Blog

Whistlin’ Dixie Loud Enough to Brag

Many music fans believe Southern rock died in 1977 when Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crashed in the Mississippi woods. Certainly, there were Southern bands that had some commercial success afterward—Molly Hatchet, .38 Special, Charlie Daniels, Hank Williams, Jr.—but the Southern sound quickly disappeared from mainstream rock music and was replaced by the pop-driven scene out of Los Angeles and New York.…
Brion McClanahan
May 30, 2014
Blog

Hollywood’s South — 20th Century Wars

(3rd in a 5-part series) Hollywood’s treatment of Southerners in the vast output of World War II movies is a mixed bag. There is a fair amount of favourable portrayal of Southerners. This doubtless reflects the good will with which the American public entered the war and its recognition that we were needed and doing our part or more. On…
Clyde Wilson
May 30, 2014
Blog

Whistlin’ Dixie Loud Enough to Brag

Many music fans believe Southern rock died in 1977 when Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crashed in the Mississippi woods. Certainly, there were Southern bands that had some commercial success afterward—Molly Hatchet, .38 Special, Charlie Daniels, Hank Williams, Jr.—but the Southern sound quickly disappeared from mainstream rock music and was replaced by the pop-driven scene out of Los Angeles and New York.…
Brion McClanahan
May 30, 2014
Blog

“Liberty Ought to be the Direct End of Your Government”

One of the greatest American statesmen, Patrick Henry, was born on this day (May 29) in 1736. Jefferson once said that Henry single-handedly delivered Virginia to the cause of independence. He also said that Henry was the laziest reader he knew, and modern critics consider Henry to have been nothing more than a sliver-tongued, hayseed demagogue. Certainly, he did not…
Brion McClanahan
May 29, 2014
Blog

“Liberty Ought to be the Direct End of Your Government”

One of the greatest American statesmen, Patrick Henry, was born on this day (May 29) in 1736. Jefferson once said that Henry single-handedly delivered Virginia to the cause of independence. He also said that Henry was the laziest reader he knew, and modern critics consider Henry to have been nothing more than a sliver-tongued, hayseed demagogue. Certainly, he did not…
Brion McClanahan
May 29, 2014
Review Posts

A Compact Theory?

States’ rights are anathema to the historical profession, viewed as nothing more than a specious pretext for chattel slavery. A prominent, Pulitzer-winning court historian of the “Camelot” Administration dubbed states’ rights a “fetish.” Another Pulitizer-winning scholar of what he outrageously terms the “War of Southern Aggression” claims that to Southerners, “liberty” was just a code word for “slavery.” A past…
James Rutledge Roesch
May 29, 2014
Blog

Confederate Hollywood Part 2

In Part 1 we demonstrated how during Hollywood’s Golden Age nearly every Northern-born major star willingly portrayed a sympathetic and admirable Confederate character. That phenomenon has continued up to the present. Admirable Confederates still appear played by major actors. What has changed in recent times is that there have been evil Confederates appearing more often on the screen and the…
Clyde Wilson
May 28, 2014
Blog

Confederate Hollywood Part 2

In Part 1 we demonstrated how during Hollywood’s Golden Age nearly every Northern-born major star willingly portrayed a sympathetic and admirable Confederate character. That phenomenon has continued up to the present. Admirable Confederates still appear played by major actors. What has changed in recent times is that there have been evil Confederates appearing more often on the screen and the…
Clyde Wilson
May 28, 2014
Review Posts

Caveat, America, Emptor

Probably no man in America in 1800 knew more about, or cared more passionately for, republicanism than Thomas Jefferson. It was the common belief that a true republic had to be of a fairly limited size, on the model of the Greek republics, in which Athens, at perhaps 200,000 was the largest, or the Italian republics of the middle ages,…
Kirkpatrick Sale
May 27, 2014
Blog

Ron Maxwell’s Civil War Classics

Dear Civil War enthusiasts, students, re-enactors, historians, friends, Over a lifetime of reading and research, I've accumulated an amazing collection of short stories written about the war, a priceless treasure trove of Civil War fiction written by both obscure and famous American authors over the hundred and fifty years since the war was fought. These stories are ideal for films…
Ronald F. Maxwell
May 27, 2014
Blog

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

They say that writing is good for the soul, and my soul needs something good. So, I think it’s time I talked about being one of the Southern white babies raised by a black maid. Sometimes, I forget that I not only grew up during the Civil Rights struggle, I grew up in the middle of it. It wasn't something…
Tom Daniel
May 27, 2014
Blog

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

They say that writing is good for the soul, and my soul needs something good. So, I think it’s time I talked about being one of the Southern white babies raised by a black maid. Sometimes, I forget that I not only grew up during the Civil Rights struggle, I grew up in the middle of it. It wasn't something…
Tom Daniel
May 27, 2014
Blog

Ron Maxwell’s Civil War Classics

Dear Civil War enthusiasts, students, re-enactors, historians, friends, Over a lifetime of reading and research, I've accumulated an amazing collection of short stories written about the war, a priceless treasure trove of Civil War fiction written by both obscure and famous American authors over the hundred and fifty years since the war was fought. These stories are ideal for films…
Ronald F. Maxwell
May 27, 2014
Blog

The Other Side of Slavery

The concept of a faithful slave goes against today's authorized slave narratives. Before the social upheavals of the 1960s, it was still permissible to depict different reactions of slaves towards their masters; all slaves didn't have to be portrayed as resentful. Admittedly, most slaves wanted freedom and many slaves were mistreated and consequently bitter towards their masters. Indeed there were…
Gail Jarvis
May 26, 2014
Blog

The Other Side of Slavery

The concept of a faithful slave goes against today's authorized slave narratives. Before the social upheavals of the 1960s, it was still permissible to depict different reactions of slaves towards their masters; all slaves didn't have to be portrayed as resentful. Admittedly, most slaves wanted freedom and many slaves were mistreated and consequently bitter towards their masters. Indeed there were…
Gail Jarvis
May 26, 2014
Review Posts

The Antique Dealer

I arrived at the tiny Episcopal church just minutes before the service. As I got out of the car, dressed in my best seersucker suit, all eyes of those waiting outside of the church shot towards me. They stood, fans in hand, in the shadow of the looming church, some shedding polite tears, others yawning in wait for the long…
Rachel Miller
May 26, 2014
Clyde Wilson Library

Inventing a New Nation at Gettysburg

Few actors in history have been hallowed in as many points of the political compass as Abraham Lincoln. During the 1930s, portraits of Lincoln appeared at New York City rallies of American fascists and in the publications of American Communists. He was also the favourite of the most reactionary industrialists and the most advanced liberals of the time. “Getting Right…
Clyde Wilson
May 23, 2014
Blog

Albion’s Seed: Cavaliers and Puritans

Random observations from reading David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (which I've not yet finished)- Ain't, betwixt, innards, unbeknownst- These are words that originated in the Southern and Western parts of England, and which came to America with the people who migrated to the American South. Y'all and "dawg" denote the pronunciations that would lead to what is now known as…
Carl Jones
May 23, 2014
Blog

Albion’s Seed: Cavaliers and Puritans

Random observations from reading David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed (which I've not yet finished)- Ain't, betwixt, innards, unbeknownst- These are words that originated in the Southern and Western parts of England, and which came to America with the people who migrated to the American South. Y'all and "dawg" denote the pronunciations that would lead to what is now known as…
Carl Jones
May 23, 2014
Blog

Hair Cane Creek

In a recent Abbeville blog, I wrote about the correct pronunciation of the racetrack located in Talledega, Alabama, and I think it struck a familiar chord with some readers. Or it might have been a nerve – it was hard to tell. All in all, I received some very positive feedback. One person even wondered to me why we continue…
Tom Daniel
May 22, 2014
Blog

Cheesehead Secessionists

In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It was voted down May 3, but the move received national press. The Daily Beast published an article on both the resolution and modern secession movements in Vermont and Alaska, and…
Brion McClanahan
May 22, 2014
Blog

Hair Cane Creek

In a recent Abbeville blog, I wrote about the correct pronunciation of the racetrack located in Talledega, Alabama, and I think it struck a familiar chord with some readers. Or it might have been a nerve – it was hard to tell. All in all, I received some very positive feedback. One person even wondered to me why we continue…
Tom Daniel
May 22, 2014
Blog

Cheesehead Secessionists

In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It was voted down May 3, but the move received national press. The Daily Beast published an article on both the resolution and modern secession movements in Vermont and Alaska, and…
Brion McClanahan
May 22, 2014
Blog

A Little Banjo Pickin’

Excerpted from “The Banjo Entertainers, Roots to Ragtime, A Banjo History,” by Lowell H. Schreyer, Minnesota Heritage Publishing, 2007, pages 5-36. The James River valley of Virginia was a locale of banjo activity in the early 1800s. That river led to the city of Lynchburg. Only 25 miles away was the Clover Hill community in Buckingham County, part of which…
Lowell H. Schreyer
May 21, 2014
Blog

A Little Banjo Pickin’

Excerpted from “The Banjo Entertainers, Roots to Ragtime, A Banjo History,” by Lowell H. Schreyer, Minnesota Heritage Publishing, 2007, pages 5-36. The James River valley of Virginia was a locale of banjo activity in the early 1800s. That river led to the city of Lynchburg. Only 25 miles away was the Clover Hill community in Buckingham County, part of which…
Lowell H. Schreyer
May 21, 2014
Review Posts

The Unemancipated Country: Eugene Genovese’s Discovery of the Old South

This essay originally appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of Academic Questions (Volume 27, Number 2). On 26 September 2012, Eugene Dominic Genovese, one of the most influential and controversial historians of his generation, passed away at age eighty-two after a lengthy struggle with heart disease. His principal writings focused on the history of slavery and the Old South. Roll,…
Robert L. Paquette
May 21, 2014
Blog

Centennial Wars

Fifty years ago the master narrative of the Civil War Centennial failed to synchronize with the momentous 1960s Civil Rights movement. It minimized the roles of slavery and race. Instead the War was characterized as a unifying ordeal in which both sides fought heroically for their individual sense of “right” eventually becoming reconciled through mutual sacrifice. Slavery was considered only…
Philip Leigh
May 20, 2014
Blog

Centennial Wars

Fifty years ago the master narrative of the Civil War Centennial failed to synchronize with the momentous 1960s Civil Rights movement. It minimized the roles of slavery and race. Instead the War was characterized as a unifying ordeal in which both sides fought heroically for their individual sense of “right” eventually becoming reconciled through mutual sacrifice. Slavery was considered only…
Philip Leigh
May 20, 2014
Blog

The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music?

About ten years ago, one of my colleagues suggested to me that Americans listen to music differently than people from around the globe. According to his way of thinking, Americans favor lyrics and beat exclusively to all other aspects of music, and ignore things like harmonic structure (what some people might call chord changes), melody, dynamics, instrumentation, song-form structure (verses,…
Tom Daniel
May 19, 2014
Blog

Truth

At the annual reunion of the Alabama Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans I sat at the head table looking out at so many of my friends, compatriots and brothers of the South. It occurred to me that we share many commonalities beyond the lone fact that our ancestors all served under the same standard in a war that took place…
Carl Jones
May 19, 2014
Blog

The Lyrics or Melody in Southern Music?

About ten years ago, one of my colleagues suggested to me that Americans listen to music differently than people from around the globe. According to his way of thinking, Americans favor lyrics and beat exclusively to all other aspects of music, and ignore things like harmonic structure (what some people might call chord changes), melody, dynamics, instrumentation, song-form structure (verses,…
Tom Daniel
May 19, 2014
Review Posts

A Bostonian on the Causes of the War, Part IV

Part IV (Final) from a section of Dr. Scott Trask’s work in progress, Copperheads and Conservatives. Part I. Part II. Part III. Massachusetts’ Politics It is one of the perils and paradoxes of democracy that it often bestows disproportionate power and influence upon a minority. Two-party democracies are the most susceptible to this reversal of the familiar and rather tiresome…
H. A. Scott Trask
May 19, 2014
Blog

Confederate Hollywood—Those Were the Days!

Having passed my allotted three score and ten, I realise that I have spent too much time watching movies. I can only hope that come judgment a merciful Lord will forgive my frivolous wasted hours. My excuse is that cinema has been the major literary form of my time, a powerful influence on the ideas, attitudes, values, and behaviour of…
Clyde Wilson
May 16, 2014
Review Posts

At the Grave of General Francis T. Nicholls (1834-1912)

St. John's Episcopal Church, Thibodaux, Louisiana Fenced off by iron and antebellum oaks These April graves grow fragrant in the sun. Sprung dandelions, puffballs, and buttercups Tremble against the fissured concrete urns Whose lichen-blotched worn bowls of measured earth Hold lilies bloomed and risen from the dead. And there where other tombs have sunken in Or tilted with the shiftings…
David Middleton
May 16, 2014
Blog

On the Hunt

One of the greatest examples of the Southern tradition is a love of the great outdoors. When I was a kid in the 4th Grade, I loved reading about Confederate heroes, but I was also fascinated by the stories about famous pioneers and mountain men like Jim Bridger, Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone, the latter of whom I proudly count…
Carl Jones
May 14, 2014
Clyde Wilson Library

Devolution

Equipped with an abundant knowledge of history, Michael Tuggle has cast a discerning eye on the trends of the present. Not the ‘trendy’ trends but the real ones, those which can guide our steps into the future (as far as the future can be known to us mortals). The trends suggest to him something very hopeful – the probability and…
Clyde Wilson
May 14, 2014
Clyde Wilson Library

Three Cheers for the President (Jimmy Buchanan)!

The historians have put out another one of those ratings of Presidents – the great, the near great, etc. I always hoped that I would be asked to participate in that survey so I could start a boomlet for the truly greatest – John Tyler. But, alas, I was never asked. My disappointment has been assuaged, however, on seeing that…
Clyde Wilson
May 14, 2014
Clyde Wilson Library

Rethinking the War for Southern Independence

(13th Annual Gettysburg Banquet of the J.E.B. Stuart Camp, SCV, Philadelphia) We human beings are peculiar creatures, half angel and half animal, as someone has said. Alone among creatures we have a consciousness of ourselves, of our situation, and of our movement through time.We have language, and by symbols can communicate knowledge to one another and across generations. We can…
Clyde Wilson
May 14, 2014
Blog

“It’s a Trick General, There’s Two of Them!”

Twenty years ago this Spring, I lost the greatest friend I never met, Lewis Grizzard. Throughout the 1980’s, Lewis Grizzard was literally the voice of the Deep South as he vocalized many of the feelings and frustrations many Southerners shared about remaining proudly Southern in a growingly intolerant culture, and he made us laugh our butts off in the process.…
Tom Daniel
May 13, 2014
Review Posts

A Bostonian on the Causes of the War, Part III

Part III from a section of Dr. Scott Trask's work in progress, Copperheads and Conservatives. Part I. Part II. Warnings of the Wrath to Come Southerners were by no means alone in deprecating the antislavery agitation. The northern anti-abolition movement was far stronger than the movement it opposed. Many northern leaders accurately forecast the consequences of agitation. In his annual…
H. A. Scott Trask
May 13, 2014
Review Posts

Democracy, Liberty, Equality: Lincoln’s American Revolution

Several months ago, The American Conservative magazine reviewed Forgotten Conservatives in American History, a book I co-authored with Clyde Wilson, and one reader left an online comment about the book. Normally, I do not discuss responses to reviews, but this one caught my eye, in particular because the reader admits that they know little about conservatism yet think they are…
Brion McClanahan
May 12, 2014
Blog

Honouring Our Fathers

Presented at the SC Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Confederate Memorial Day Commemoration South Carolina Statehouse, Columbia, South Carolina 03 May 2014 It is my high honour and distinct privilege to be addressing you on this day and at this place; honouring the memory of our fathers at the Confederate soldiers’ monument—with its sentinel ever vigilant, eyes northward—flanked by the flag…
Paul C. Graham
May 12, 2014
Blog

Starry-Eyed Varlet

Tito Perdue is a self-described “problematic author” and “cultural reactionary.” His novels are bitter and amusing accounts of a Western civilization that seems hell-bent on suicide. But that culture is haunted by Perdue’s literary alter ego, Lee Pefley, a man who acts as both a Jeremiah and cultural guerilla fighter. Pefley’s sorties apparently arise out of pure outrage, with no…
Mike C. Tuggle
May 9, 2014
Blog

St. Elmo

Most people who visit or live in Columbus, Georgia probably don't realize that one of the most famous houses in American literature sits on a back street near Lakebottom Park in the midtown section of the city. The impressive Greek revival home, first named El Dorado, was built by Colonel Seaborn Jones between 1828 and 1833. Jones' daughter married Hennry…
Brion McClanahan
May 9, 2014
Blog

College Football

Yankees don’t understand the Southern obsession with college football, and if they don’t understand it, then they naturally believe there’s something wrong with it. As for me, I don’t hate hockey. I’ve just never been exposed to it enough to like it. I know enough about it to know that it was a horrible mistake once to attempt staying awake…
Tom Daniel
May 8, 2014
Review Posts

“Monsters of Virtuous Pretension”

When I was a child growing up in Kirkwood Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, I was fascinated by three works of Atlanta public art: The Cyclorama next to the Atlanta Zoo, is a 358 foot wide and 42 foot tall painting of the Battle of Atlanta, July 1864, the largest painting in the world – longer than a football field…
David Aiken
May 8, 2014
Blog

The Real Cornerstone Speech

From Bernard Thuersam's website: Senator Robert Toombs and the Cornerstone of the Confederacy “GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I very much regret, in appearing before you at your request, to address you on the present state of the country, and the prospect before us, that I can bring you no good tidings. We have not sought this conflict; we have…
Bernard Thuersam
May 7, 2014
Blog

Remember the Alamo!

T.R. Fehrenbach, author of the magisterial classic Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans, passed away late last year in San Antonio at the age of 88. I recently came by chance across his obituary in The New York Times, which is a museum quality specimen of the intellectual and ethical defects of current American journalism and “scholarship.” The…
Clyde Wilson
May 7, 2014
Blog

The “Fighting Bishop” of Louisiana

Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1806, the son and grandson of Revolutionary War heroes. His family was of Presbyterian Scots-Irish descent and had become successful in the plantation economy of the colonial South. His cousin, James K. Polk, later became President of the United States. In his late teens, Leonidas received an appointment to the United…
Roger Busbice
May 6, 2014
Review Posts

A Bostonian on the Causes of the War, Part II

Part II from a section of Dr. Scott Trask's work in progress, Copperheads and Conservatives. Part I. Historical Survey Lunt believed that the celebrated Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery in the territories north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi, had been a mistake. It was not because he believed slavery could have been profitably introduced…
H. A. Scott Trask
May 6, 2014
Blog

“I Make American Citizens and Run Cotton Mills to Pay the Expenses.”

The Callaway Gardens visitors center in Pine Mountain, Georgia shows a film explaining the history of the Callaway family, their conservation efforts, and the Gardens itself. At one point, the film directly refutes the conservation ethos made popular by Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt, namely that private individuals ruin land while governments protect and preserve it. The Gardens are hailed…
Brion McClanahan
May 5, 2014
Blog

Cliven Bundy and American Politics

Cliven Bundy recently stepped in it with his impolitic racial comments. The unfortunate comments are nevertheless an opportunity to learn some important lessons about American politics. First, the punditry’s reaction to the comments manifests the success of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in shaping public discourse and policy. CRT maintains: that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the…
Marshall DeRosa
May 5, 2014
Review Posts

Blue Girl

In swirl of broken lives in flood She stands solitary island In midwinter war eddy – Frail fixed point in blue, Bare-arms purple-blotching with cold. My father saw her there, And holds her in memory, To warm for half century Delicate figure etched in frost Of Alpine snow meadow, Where troop trains Mass and pass unheeding. No notice she seems…
James Everett Kibler
May 5, 2014
Review Posts

A Bostonian on the Causes of the War, Part I

Part I from a section of Dr. Scott Trask's work in progress, Copperheads and Conservatives. Academic historians continue to regard their work as one of scientific objectivity, one of the corollaries being that the more removed the historian is from the events he or she describes the more reliable the finished work. John Lukacs has argued against such dogma. He…
H. A. Scott Trask
May 3, 2014
Blog

Reconsidering Alexander H. Stephens

Limited by a popular and academic culture at the beginning of the 21st century that denigrates the past and places too much confidence in the present, the thoughtful student of Georgia politics and history should not be surprised that Alexander Stephens (February 11, 1812-March 4, 1883), Confederate Vice-President and American statesman, has often been neglected. One possible remedy to the…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
May 2, 2014
Review Posts

The Real Robert E. Lee

I was disappointed to hear of the demands of a group of Washington & Lee law students to ban the flying of the Confederate battle flag and denounce one of their school’s namesakes, General Robert E. Lee, as “dishonorable and racist.” This latest controversy appears to be yet another example of the double standard and prejudice against anything “Confederate.” Why,…
James Rutledge Roesch
May 2, 2014
Blog

Southern Night Life

Although I’m not a mountain man, and I would never dare call myself smart enough to be a farmer, I do live on a farm back in the woods of Alabama. I hear people all the time referring to the various types of “night life” they encounter where they live, and I know they’re talking about restaurants, bars, clubs, and…
Tom Daniel
May 1, 2014