Monthly Archives

November 2015

Blog

Pilgrim Myths and Legends

Abbeville Institute scholars Carey Roberts and Sam Smith sat down with Off the Grind News last week and discussed Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims, Jamestown, the Mayflower Compact, and the Plymouth colony. You can listen to their interview HERE.
Carey Roberts
November 30, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 2

The week in review at the Abbeville Institute--November 23-27, 2015--with your host, Brion McClanahan. Topics: Thanksgiving, the Southern Tradition, and the "Lost Cause." https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ai-podcast-episode-2
Brion McClanahan
November 28, 2015
Blog

Stapleton

Chris Stapleton is now a household name.  This should have happened a long time ago.  After cleaning up at the Country Music Awards, Stapleton showcased his outstanding voice in a duet with Justin Timberlake.  He stole the show, both in hardware and in talent. In no time, his debut country music album, Traveller, rocketed up the charts.  As I write…
Brion McClanahan
November 27, 2015
Review Posts

Defending the Southern Tradition

History is a liberal art and one profits by studying the whole of it, including the lost causes. All of us arc under a mortal temptation to grant the accomplished fact more than we should. That the fall of Rome, the dissolution of medieval Catholicism, the overthrow of Napoleon, the destruction of the Old South were purposeful and just are…
Richard M. Weaver
November 26, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXII

The further a society strays from the truth, the more it hates people who tell it. --George Orwell When the South lost we all lost.   --historian Paul Hoar (New England-born) I don’t drink with Yankees.  --Joel McCrea in “South of St. Louis” Men more frequently require to be reminded than to be informed.  --Samuel Johnson You have a greater probability of…
Clyde Wilson
November 25, 2015
Review Posts

No Lost Cause

A speech delivered in Richmond, VA, February 22, 1896 at the opening of the Museum of the Confederacy. Ladies of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, Friends, and Fellow-Confederates, Men and Women: To-day commemorates the thirty-fifth anniversary of the inauguration of the last rebel President and the birthday of the first. It commemorates an epoch in the grandest struggle for liberty…
Bradley Tyler Johnson
November 24, 2015
Blog

Kentucky’s Baron Munchausen

A century prior to the War Between the States, a German magazine writer, pseudo-scientist and notorious swindler, Rudolf Erich Raspe, penned a series of fictional articles describing the fantastic adventures of a military character he called Baron Münchhausen.  In 1785, a book of Raspe’s collected stories was published in England under the title Baron Munchausen’s Narratives of His Marvelous Travels…
John Marquardt
November 23, 2015
Podcast

Podcast Episode 1

Brion McClanahan discusses the week that was in the Abbeville Institute, November 16-20, 2015. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-1
Brion McClanahan
November 21, 2015
Blog

Is The Campaign To Eradicate Southern Heritage Losing Steam?

The concept of a panacea has always fascinated me, the idea that there is a relatively simple cure-all for a complex set of problems. Panaceas do have mass appeal. Isn't it comforting to think that there is a simple way to solve complex problems? - But history has proven that panaceas seldom live up to their expectations. We know that…
Gail Jarvis
November 20, 2015
Review Posts

A New Reconstruction: The Renewed Assault on Southern Heritage

This article was originally printed in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Confederate Veteran Magazine. In June 2015, after the depraved shootings in a Charleston, South Carolina, black church, a frenzied hue and cry went up and any number of accusations and attacks were made against historic Confederate symbols, in particular, the Confederate Battle Flag. Monuments, markers, flags, plaques, street and…
Boyd Cathey
November 19, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Scholars’ Statement in Support of the Confederate Flag (2000)

Statement of College and University Professors in Support of the Confederate Battle Flag Atop the South Carolina Statehouse, drafted just before the legislative "compromise." To the General Assembly and People of South Carolina: Certain academics have issued a statement on the cause of the Civil War as it relates to the controversy over the Confederate battle flag. They held a…
Clyde Wilson
November 18, 2015
Blog

A Long Farewell: The Southern Valedictories of 1860-1861

This essay was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine, 1989. As we conclude bicentennial celebration of the drafting and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it may be hoped that we have finally arrived at the proper moment for looking back and ap­preciating the importance of those even more heated discussions of the document which occurred in the…
M.E. Bradford
November 17, 2015
Blog

Catalonia and the Southern Tradition

  Catalonia has voted to secede from Spain. This is a remarkable development in modern Western civilization, particularly in the age of the modern bureaucratic unitary imperial State. It signals that not all Europeans agree with the borderless European Union pushed by the political class and that culture and true nationalism still mean something. The shocking Paris attacks this past…
Brion McClanahan
November 16, 2015
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXI

The main problem with America today is the increasing scarcity of Americans. --Clyde Wilson The motive of those who have protested against the extension of slavery has always been concern for the welfare of the white man, not an unnatural sympathy with the negro. --William H. Seward, Republican leader Loyalty to party is treason to the South. --Congressman Lawrence M.…
Clyde Wilson
November 13, 2015
Blog

The Birthday Surprise

Martha Jane Davis (Campbell) was born in Reed Creek, Henry County, Virginia in 1840. Her mother died when Little Mattie was two, and, her Turner grandparents (who lived nearby) took her to raise. A pretty child with auburn curls and gray eyes, she soon became the spoiled darling of her grandmother, who preferred being called "Grahma"(Grandmere) possibly because she had…
Joscelyn Dunlop
November 12, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters, Part II

Several generations after his lifetime Jefferson became best known, as he still is, of course, for these words "All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Here is another important lesson in understanding history. The American Founders tend to be treated as…
Clyde Wilson
November 11, 2015
Review Posts

Sovereignty

The reader has perceived that the question concerning state powers, is condensed in the word sovereignty, and therefore any new ideas upon the subject, if to be found, would not be unedifying. A will to enact, and a power to execute, constitute its essence. Take away either, and it expires. The state governments and the federal government, are the monuments…
John Taylor of Caroline
November 10, 2015
Blog

When I Was Little: A tale of life in Mississippi during the War

This story was originally published at Alabama Pioneers and comes from the book Alokoli : the Choctaw County. “Tell us about when you were little” was the oft repeated request of two lovely wee girls, my grandchildren and now comes the request that I put it down in writing. Viewed from their own childhood of peace and plenty mine seemed…
Clemmie Parker Wilcox
November 9, 2015
Review Posts

Virginia First

I. THE name First given to the territory occupied by the present United States was Virginia. It was bestowed upon the Country by Elizabeth, greatest of English queens. The United States of America are mere words of description. They are not a name. The rightful and historic name of this great Republic is "Virginia." We must get back to it,…
Lyon G. Tyler
November 6, 2015
Blog

King Kudzu

“Cotton isn’t king in the South anymore … Kudzu is king!”                Channing Cole, Atlanta Constitution The mysterious disappearance of England’s first settlement in North America, Sir Walter Raleigh’s  “Lost Colony” which was established in 1584 on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina, may never be solved, but it is safe to assume that starvation must have played…
John Marquardt
November 5, 2015
Clyde Wilson Library

Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters, Part I

There was a popular ragtime song in the 1940s and ‘50s, derived from an old minstrel tune, that went like this: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Does the sun really shine there all the time? Do sweet magnolias blossom 'round every door? Do the folks eat possum till they can’t eat no more? If you really want…
Clyde Wilson
November 4, 2015
Blog

Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

‘If only I can restore to our institutions their primitive simplicity and purity, can only succeed in banishing those extraneous corrupting influences which tend to fasten monopoly and aristocracy on the Constitution and to make the government an engine of oppression to the people instead of the agent of their will, I may then look back on the honors conferred…
James Rutledge Roesch
November 3, 2015
Blog

Ferrol Sams and Run With the Horsemen

Do men read fiction anymore? In my youth I remember visiting other boys’ homes and finding novels from their fathers – you know, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming. In my own family there were no books, and I can confidently state that not one of my forebears had read even 50 books, fiction or nonfiction, not even…
Terry Hulsey
November 2, 2015