Monthly Archives

December 2015

So Red the Rose Blog

So Red the Rose

You might not find Stark Young's So Red The Rose in current recommendations of novels set during the civil war era, but Young's novel, published in 1934, was a record-breaking best seller, so popular with the reading public that it was made into a Hollywood film. It differs from most novels in that it doesn't have a protagonist, nor is…
Gail Jarvis
December 31, 2015
The Immortals Review Posts

The Immortals

THE IMMORTALS: A STORY OF LOVE AND WAR In 1861, as a deadly conflict looms between North and South, Charleston sits like a queen upon the waters—beautiful, proud and prosperous—and no native son loves her more than George Taylor. A successful Broad Street lawyer, Taylor has won the heart of an enchanting young woman and looks forward to a brilliant…
Karen Stokes
December 29, 2015
Rebels of the Golden State Blog

Rebels of the Golden State

On July fourth 1861, Major J.P. Gillis made a public display of his support of colonial secession from the British Empire as well as Southern secession from the United States by parading in the streets with a Confederate flag of his own design. He drew cheers from a large crowd of onlookers, but two men named Curtis Clark and J.W.…
Matt De Santi
December 28, 2015
Christmas in Richmond, 1864 Review Posts

Christmas in Richmond, 1864

This piece is taken from Varina Davis's recollections of life in the South, published in the New York World on December 13, 1896, and reprinted here. ...Rice, flour, molasses and tiny pieces of meat, most of them sent to the President's wife anonymously to be distributed to the poor, had all be weighed and issued, and the playtime of the…
Varina Davis
December 25, 2015
A Christmas Story for the Old South Blog

A Christmas Story for the Old South

This piece was originally published on the Canada Free Press. Much to the annoyance of multiculturists, Christmas is still America’s most celebrated holiday, and in the weeks preceding this festive time, traditional Christmas stories will appear on television screens. We can expect to see numerous versions of Charles Dickens renowned tale, A Christmas Carol, O.Henry’s The Gift of the Magi,and…
Gail Jarvis
December 24, 2015
For the Paris Dead Review Posts

For the Paris Dead

The Wehrmacht coveted the wealth of France, its grain, vines, ports, its past—and Paris most of all.  They planned, and took their shining chance. Admiring it, they didn’t want its ghost,   or ruins!  They too were Franks.  “Leben wie Gott in Frankreich” was their watchword.   Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Concorde, the Louvre besot them: vital presence, history, art.  The…
Catharine Savage Brosman
December 22, 2015
Podcast Episode 5 Podcast

Podcast Episode 5

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 14-18, 2015 Host: Brion McClanahan Topics: The PC Attack on the South, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Southern politics, Northern opposition to Mr. Lincoln's War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-5
Brion McClanahan
December 21, 2015
A Tale of Two Plantations Blog

A Tale of Two Plantations

In the 1850s, Ann Pamela Cunningham, a frail woman from South Carolina, was responsible for preserving the plantation home of George Washington, founding the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, an organization which still maintains this historic site. Thanks to her efforts, Mount Vernon remained virtually untouched during the War for Southern Independence. Arlington Plantation, the beautiful Virginia home of Robert E.…
Karen Stokes
December 21, 2015
South from Egypt Blog

South from Egypt

Illinois has been known as the “Land of Lincoln” for the past sixty years . . . the state legislature having officially adopted the motto in 1955, but a century prior to that most residents of the state’s sixteen southern counties would certainly have objected to the term.  That area of Illinois has been called “Little Egypt” or merely “Egypt”…
John Marquardt
December 18, 2015
A Wisconsin Copperhead Review Posts

A Wisconsin Copperhead

We have been taught that the North was united behind Lincoln in his war. This is simply not true. It is an outright lie told and taught by the victors of the war who, after implementing the government (“public”) schools called for by Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto, now control education in this land. As a Copperhead, I was…
John Battell
December 17, 2015
The Jeffersonian Democrat Rediscovered Clyde Wilson Library

The Jeffersonian Democrat Rediscovered

A Review of A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Robert W. Whitaker. New York: Robert B. Luce, 1976, 208 pages. Hardly anyone has commented upon the seeming disappearance from American life of the Jeffersonian democrat. The Jeffersonian democrat was a hardy American breed, perhaps the only political type original to this continent. Outnumbering all other species between 1800 and…
Clyde Wilson
December 16, 2015
“We want not Gascons, but Southern gentlemen, honorable, high-toned men of strict integrity and straight hair.” Review Posts

“We want not Gascons, but Southern gentlemen, honorable, high-toned men of strict integrity and straight hair.”

Gentlemen of the Historical Society of Mecklenburg (1876): Our president has appropriately introduced the series of historical lectures with the inquiry, why so few have attempted to preserve the record of the great events in the history of North Carolina, and to. embalm the memories of the illustrious actors therein. Perhaps, it may not be amiss in me to pursue…
Daniel Harvey Hill
December 15, 2015
Jefferson Was Right Blog

Jefferson Was Right

I am writing in response to the recently posted piece at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, entitled “History proves Thomas Jefferson was wrong (whew).” The author of this article drastically overstates Madison's role in the finalized Constitution. Madison desired a highly nationalistic government, with a national legislature that had general legislative authority, two houses of Congress both of which were apportioned…
Dave Benner
December 14, 2015
Podcast Episode 4 Podcast

Podcast Episode 4

The Week in Review, December 7-11, 2015, with your host, Brion McClanahan Topics: The origins of the Southern and American tradition, George Mason, Henry Timrod, Abraham Lincoln, and the PC attack on the South and Western Civilization https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-4
Brion McClanahan
December 12, 2015
A Brave New World…in the South Blog

A Brave New World…in the South

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? George Orwell, 1984 The Abbeville Institute was founded over a decade ago to preserve and defend the South… her traditions, literature, history, arts, and faiths. Recently we came across the memorandum below from a student affairs office at a major Southern university. The officers…
William Wilson
December 11, 2015
What Was the Confederacy After All? Blog

What Was the Confederacy After All?

This article was originally published at lewrockwell.com. In all the recent fuss over symbols of the Confederacy, whether to honor them or get rid of the lot, not much attention has been paid to what that Confederacy was, after all, and why it might  be something that anyone would want to commemorate. Of course one side doesn’t care.  It is…
Kirkpatrick Sale
December 7, 2015
Podcast Episode 3 Podcast

Podcast Episode 3

The Week in Review, November 30-December 4, 2015 with your host, Brion McClanahan. Topics: The Pilgrims, the Jeffersonian tradition, secession, and the original Constitution. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-3
Brion McClanahan
December 6, 2015
Remembering Hugh Williamson Blog

Remembering Hugh Williamson

One of the most unknown, yet substantial political leaders in the founding generation was a patriot named Hugh Williamson. In his life he surrounded himself with the most famous people in North America, and gradually became an instrumental leader who contributed to the cause of American independence. Serving the role of an intellectual erudite, military hero, and champion of republican…
Dave Benner
December 4, 2015
“To the Size of States There Is a Limit”: Measurements for the Success of a State Review Posts

“To the Size of States There Is a Limit”: Measurements for the Success of a State

This essay was first published in Don Livingston, ed., Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century. Yes, Aristotle declared there to be a limit to the size of states: " a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large . . . , but they either…
Kirkpatrick Sale
December 3, 2015
Can the Republic Be Restored: Presidency Clyde Wilson Library

Can the Republic Be Restored: Presidency

The American President began as Cincinnatus, a patriot called to the temporary service of his country (a republican confederation). The President ends as Caesar, a despot of almost unlimited power, presiding over a global empire. Like the Caesars, in some quarters the President is even worshiped as a god. Cincinnatus was called because of his proven ability and patriotism. Caesar…
Clyde Wilson
December 2, 2015
November Top Ten Blog

November Top Ten

The Top Ten posts for November.  If you haven't read 'em yet, do so.  If you have, read 'em again.  And don't forget our new podcast. 1. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by James Rutledge Roesch 2. Is The Campaign To Eradicate Southern Heritage Losing Steam? by Gail Jarvis 3. Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters,…
Brion McClanahan
December 2, 2015
The Same Old Stand? Review Posts

The Same Old Stand?

This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I'll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981. When the Southern Agrarians took their stand, they did it stoutly, on two feet. Some emphasized the "Southern," others the "Agrarian," but fifty years ago it seemed that the two loyalties, to the South…
John Shelton Reed
December 1, 2015