Monthly Archives

February 2016

Blog

A Tale of Two Southern Books

This time of year we begin seeing recommendations of books for Christmas presents. This article is also a recommendation for a gift book but I admit that I have an ulterior motive. I intend to compare this book with another one in order to illustrate a political phenomenon that has always intrigued me. The phenomenon I am referring to is…
Gail Jarvis
February 29, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 15

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 22-26, 2016. Topics: George Washington, Agrarianism, the Southern tradition, Antonin Scalia, Abraham Lincoln, Southern heroes. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-15
Brion McClanahan
February 27, 2016
Blog

Rethinkin’ Lincoln

The most frequent question I have received during promotion of my new book, 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her, has been, “How can you say that Lincoln screwed up America?” After all, he is the man who saved the Union and who put slavery on the path to extinction. There should be a…
Brion McClanahan
February 26, 2016
Blog

Scalia, the Constitution, and the Court

With the recent passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, folks are writhing in fear over the prospect of Obama appointing a new SC Judge. "This", they say, "could be the most monumental appointment in history and could drastically change our political landscape" and this "is especially true with regards to how the 2nd Amendment is interpreted." This is all…
Carl Jones
February 25, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXVI

A friend’s encounter with a clergyman:  His mission, he says, is Social Justice.  Our South Carolina governor, when she removed the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, had “a Jesus moment,” a Divine Revelation of Social Justice.  He hopes that  others will have such a Moment.  What impressed me most about this leader of the faith was not the arrogant…
Clyde Wilson
February 24, 2016
Review Posts

Manifesto of Old Men and Simple Preachers

Over time a man, if he is perceptive, comes to certain conclusions.  The most startling is that the greatest truths were spoken to him throughout his life by ordinary men, simple preachers, old men sitting around drinking soda and eating peanuts, his father.  These men, if beneficiaries of a culture and community that embraces common-sense as a virtue, know truths…
Barry Clark
February 23, 2016
Blog

George Washington

From Washington and the Generals of the American Revolution by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and William Gilmore Simms, 1847. (Editor's Note: Thank you to Simms scholar Jeff Rogers for correcting the auhtorship of this article.  Griswold, not Simms, wrote this chapter on Washington.  Simms wrote several chapters in this two volume work, notably on Southerners Pinckney, Sumner, and Moultrie). An attentive…
Rufus Wilmot Griswold
February 22, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 14

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 15-19, 2016. Topic: Abraham Lincoln https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-14
Brion McClanahan
February 21, 2016
Blog

The Nationalist Myth

Dave Benner, Compact of the Republic: The League of the States and the Constitution (Life and Liberty Publishing, 2015). James Ronald Kennedy, Uncle Seth Fought the Yankees (Pelican Publishing, 2015). Jack Kerwick, The American Offensive: Dispatches from the Front (Stairway Press, 2015). One of the results of the Northern victory in 1865 was the codification of Lincolnian nationalism and its…
Brion McClanahan
February 19, 2016
Review Posts

The Lincoln Legacy: A Long View

This essay is a chapter in M.E. Bradford, Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative (University of Georgia Press, 1985). With the time and manner of his death Abraham Lincoln, as leader of a Puritan people who had just won a great victory over "the forces of evil," was placed beyond the reach of ordinary historical inquiry and…
M.E. Bradford
February 18, 2016
Clyde Wilson Library

Dilorenzo and His Critics

Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln has provoked the utterly predictable torrent of abuse from state worshipers and self-appointed prophets of The True American Way. All DiLorenzo has done (and this does not in the least detract from his courage, eloquence, and insight) is to analyze Honest Abe as a historical figure just like any other, rather than treat him…
Clyde Wilson
February 17, 2016
Review Posts

Executive Usurpation

Mr. President, during the special session of the Senate in March last, when seven States had withdrawn, by the action of their people, from the Federal Union, disclaimed all allegiance to the Government, and organized a separate common government, I took occasion, before the public mind had become excited, to express fully my views of the structure of our Government,…
James A. Bayard
February 16, 2016
Blog

The Lincoln Douglas Debates

This essay first appeared in National Review, 6/1, June 21, 1958, 18-19. Just one hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were stumping Illinois for tire office of United States Senator. They made a total of eighty-three appearances before the voters of that state, seven of which were in the form of joint debates. Now, on this anniversary…
Richard M. Weaver
February 15, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 13

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 8-12, 2016. Topics: Reconstruction, Southern History, Secession, James Iredell, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-13
Brion McClanahan
February 13, 2016
Blog

James Iredell

One of the greatest legal minds of the founding generation was also one of the most reserved and unobtrusive. On many levels, he differed from his peers. Outspoken Federalist from New York, John Jay, became the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Prominent Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph was selected by George Washington to be the first Attorney…
Dave Benner
February 12, 2016
Review Posts

The Principle of Secession Historically Traced

This essay is taken from The South in the Building of the Nation Series, Vol. 4 The Political History. THE political theory on which the Southern states in 1860 and 1861 based their right to withdraw from the Union was not the sudden creation of any one man, or of any one group of men. Like other ideas that have…
George Petrie
February 11, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXV

The death of the spirit is the price of progress. --Eric Voegelin The Athenians know what is right, but will not do it. --Cicero Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush:  therefore they shall fall among them that fall:  in time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith…
Clyde Wilson
February 10, 2016
Blog

Elephants in Dixie

The origin of the elephant as a symbol of the Republican Party occurred in 1874 after a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in the popular New York newspaper, “Harper’s Weekly.” It was during the congressional elections of that year when Nast, a renowned Republican satirist, drew a picture of the Democratic donkey dressed in a lion’s skin frightening away…
John Marquardt
February 9, 2016
Blog

Reconstruction in South Carolina

In 1872, Daniel W. Voorhees, a Congressman of Indiana, made a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he described conditions in the South after the war, during the period (laughingly) known as “Reconstruction.”  He accused the United States government, under the control of the Republican Party, of plundering and slandering the conquered Southern states, sending “powerful missionaries…
Karen Stokes
February 8, 2016
Blog

“Dar’s nuttin’ lak de ol’-time ways”

Many people are familiar with the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s. While some historians reject them for what has been called gross inaccuracies due in large part to the many positive memories of the institution (the negative accounts are always used), they have become the standard source for firsthand information on the institution from the…
Brion McClanahan
February 5, 2016
Blog

The Confederacy, Oscars, and Social Justice

"Social Justice" is one of today's manipulative phrases. In this case "justice" is defined as the equal distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges among all groups in a society. In past generations, the concept of "social justice" was referred to as "leveling"; a more accurate, and certainly more honest, description. Leveling is one of those Utopian goals often sought, but…
Gail Jarvis
February 4, 2016
Clyde Wilson Library

The Way We Are Now

I promised to keep you updated on our government’s radio ads. In the latest, the Department of Justice offers you its benevolent services for any problem you might be experiencing with school bullies. * * * * I may not be a good American. I have never watched a Super Bowl or an NBA championship, never been to Las Vegas,…
Clyde Wilson
February 3, 2016
Blog

January Top 10

Our top ten articles for January 2016: Black Slaveowners by Larry Koger Robert E. Lee: Gallant Soldier, True Patriot, Noble Christian by Mike Scruggs Did Black People Own Slaves? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A Southerner Repents by Fred Reed Stonewall Jackson by James I. Robertson, Jr. When the Yankees Come: Former South Carolina Slaves Remember the Invasion by Paul…
Brion McClanahan
February 2, 2016
Review Posts

European Influences in the South

This essay is a chapter from The South in the Building of the Nation series, History of the Social Life. The solidarity of public opinion in the South has been so often commented upon that it is difficult to realize the heterogeneous elements employed in making her population. The "solid South" is not only a political but in many respects…
Edwin Mims
February 2, 2016
Blog

What’s Holding Alabama Back?

As I watched my local Montgomery, Alabama news station this morning, I saw that question pop up on the screen. What’s holding Alabama back? Wait, what? What do you mean by “holding back?” In the segment, the news station sent out a roving reporter on the streets of Montgomery to ask random citizens to tell him what they believe is…
Tom Daniel
February 1, 2016