Monthly Archives

June 2016

Review Posts

Instant Grits and Plastic Wrapped Crackers: Southern Culture and Regional Development

This essay was originally published in Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The American South: Portrait of a Culture, 1979, 27-37. In 1928, an unusually far-sighted southerner named Broadus Mitchell pondered the implications of the South's impending modernization, wondering "whether these great industrial developments will banish the personality of the South ... or whether the old spirit will actuate the new performance." "Will…
John Shelton Reed
June 30, 2016
Blog

Q&A on Nullification and Interposition

Q: What can I read that can give me a serious overview of the true impact of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 on South Carolina? A: I think the question of the impact of the protective tariff on South Carolina is the wrong question to ask. It is something of a diversionary tactic, for reasons I will try to…
Clyde Wilson
June 29, 2016
Blog

Brexit: Dividing the Indivisible

REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth In his first Inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln explained his moral justification for invading the Southern States. Plainly, he said, “the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” He reasoned that if a State can lawfully secede from the Union, so can a part of that part and a part of that part, on down to one…
Donald Livingston
June 28, 2016
Blog

The Brits Believe in Secession After All

As I spend some wonderful time with family in my home state of Alaska, I watched with intrigue as the UK appears to have decided to exit from the European Union. I am an Alaskan by birth and a U.S. citizen, and now reside in Tennessee. So, my perspective or stake in the UK’s decision is not rooted in how…
Bradley G. Green
June 27, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 32

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 20-24, 2016 Topics: Nullification, United States Constitution, Religion, Political Correctness, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-32
Brion McClanahan
June 25, 2016
Blog

Wikipedia Book Burning

Editor's note: Mr. Leigh has published a new book titled The Confederacy at Flood Tide.  A sample chapter is available here. I once attempted to correct a Wikipedia article by citing Robert Selph Henry’s 1938 The Story of Reconstruction. The change was automatically rejected by software explaining the book was an unacceptable source. Next, I changed the article’s mistake by…
Philip Leigh
June 24, 2016
Blog

More Secession Theology: Thomas Smyth of Charleston

Lately there has been mention of Dr. Thomas Smyth in two Abbeville Institute blog and review posts, namely, “The Theology of Secession” by M. E. Bradford, and “What Lincoln's Election Meant to the South” by Bradley J. Birzer. Having written about this Charleston clergyman in an upcoming book, I thought our readers might be interested in learning a little more…
Karen Stokes
June 23, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXVI

In fact, capitalists have no objection to federal meddling.  They just want it to be such meddling as puts money in their pockets. Nothing more.  Ever.--Fred Reed The market is wonderful, but it is not everything.--Clyde Wilson Order is the first need of the soul.--Russell Kirk I am for peace:  but when I speak, they are for war.--Psalms 120:7 The…
Clyde Wilson
June 22, 2016
Review Posts

Is Pluralism Enough?

Fr John Strickland, reflecting on the Renaissance of Western Europe, wrote, . . . For Burckhardt, the Renaissance (for the first time a distinct period in history) became the moment of cultural liberation, the breakthrough into the modern age of humanism, individualism, and secularism.  . . . At the heart of this breakthrough was the Renaissance’s reflection on the human…
Walt Garlington
June 21, 2016
Blog

Nullification to Save the Constitution

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from an 1833 4th of July Oration delivered by Henry L. Pinckney and is available in its entirety at The James McClellan Library.  This feature of our website contains over 100 primary documents on State's Rights and federalism compiled by one of the founding members of the Abbeville Institute. ....But why is it that…
Henry Laurens Pinckney
June 20, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 31

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 13-17, 2016 Topics: Southern Religion, Calvin Coolidge, Political Correctness, Thomas Jefferson, Secession https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-31
Brion McClanahan
June 18, 2016
Review Posts

My Son, Get Wisdom, Get Understanding

Address delivered to the graduates of the South Carolina College, December 1821. Gentlemen, YOU are now about to quit the precincts of the College, and to enter upon the commerce of the world. Your education is supposed to be finished; in reality it is about to commence. The roads that lead to knowledge useful and ornamental, have been pointed out…
Thomas Cooper
June 17, 2016
Blog

What Lincoln’s Election Meant to South Carolina

This essay was originally published at TheImagninativeConservative.org and is republished here by permission. The finest of gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the famous London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, upon his arrival in Charleston in April, 1861. “It was established not by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of Torquemada, and breathed…
Bradley J. Birzer
June 16, 2016
Blog

Why They Hate Jefferson

A Review of The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800, by Conor Cruise O'Brien, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 367 pages. What a marathon of Jefferson-bashing we have had in the last few years. This book by the "global statesman" O'Brien follows several other critical biographies, all of which have been highlighted in the fashionable reviews.…
Clyde Wilson
June 15, 2016
Review Posts

The Theology of Secession

At the very deepest level there is a central truth about the War Between the States which is now, even by the best of Southerners, almost never mentioned, although their forefathers had once spoken of its importance continuously. Indeed, they put emphasis upon it long after the War was over. From 1850 until 1912, this explanatory assumption was a commonplace…
M.E. Bradford
June 14, 2016
Blog

Silent Cal and the War

Calvin Coolidge is one of the more maligned presidents in American history. I rank him as one of the best in my 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America.  Coolidge should be commended for his executive restraint and homespun honesty, two character traits that have escaped the modern American executive.  He was a throwback to the nineteenth century when the president…
Brion McClanahan
June 13, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 30

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 6-10, 2016 Topics: Political Correctness, Nullification, Southern culture, Southern dress https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-30
Brion McClanahan
June 11, 2016
Blog

Who Will Be Our Monuments Men?

The 2014 movie “Monuments Men” exposed a little known aspect of the horrors of Hitler’s Aryan supremacist totalitarian regime – the looting of priceless historical treasures and cultural purge of peoples he viewed as inferior. In the years leading up to American involvement in WWII, art historians around the world were in an uproar, concerned about systematic theft and destruction…
Lunelle McCallister
June 10, 2016
Blog

How (and Why) to Dress Like a (Southern) Conservative, Part I

I probably should not admit this due to certain… ummm… shall we say… stereotypes, but since I was a young adult, I have had a particular interest in fashion. For the record, I am married with six children. Probably reflecting my underlying conservative disposition, however, I was always more concerned with the “rules” of fashion, such as they were in…
Dan E. Phillips
June 9, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXV

These Haters seem to want to destroy anything and anyone they can tie to slavery. . . . Let’s bulldoze the Washington monument and the Jefferson Memorial.--Henry Eversole I just don’t understand why people would choose to go the Washington & Lee and then complain about Lee.--Jason Moyer It is a flaw of the deeply self-interested men of the world…
Clyde Wilson
June 8, 2016
Blog

The South Carolina Doctrine

Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step further than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to go in relation to the present subject of our present complaints; not a step further than the statesmen from New England were disposed to go under similar circumstances; no further than the senator from Massachusetts himself once considered as within "the limits of a…
Robert Y. Hayne
June 7, 2016
Blog

Oh Say Can You See…Another One Bites the Dust….

Will the beloved author of our national anthem, Francis Scott Key, soon join Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert E. Lee as a demonized whipping-boy of the culture-war? Once the "Resolution of Hate" only inspired Confederophobes, but has now been expanded to an Anti-American icon industry, sweeping all in its path of cultural destruction. They started…
David McCallister
June 6, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 29

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 30-June 3, 2016 Topics: Patrick Henry, Political Correctness, Secession, the United States Constitution, John Randolph of Roanoke, Jefferson Davis https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-29
Brion McClanahan
June 4, 2016
Review Posts

Jefferson Davis: A Judicial Estimate

This piece is published in honor of Davis's birthday, June 3. With unaffected distrust of my ability to meet the demands of such a great hour as this, I rejoice to be again on the beautiful campus of my alma mater, and have the opportunity of bringing a message to the young men of my country. And as this commencement…
Charles Betts Galloway
June 3, 2016
Blog

May Top Ten

Our top ten articles for May.  Read 'em again. 1. Hampton Roads: A Twist in the Lincoln Myth by Dave Benner 2. Erasing Southern History, Step by Step by Alphonse-Louis Vinh 3. Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham 4. "Don't Leave Me Here to Bleed to Death!" by Karen Stokes 5. Is "White Supremacy" an Exclusively "Southern" Ideology?…
Brion McClanahan
June 2, 2016
Review Posts

A Character Sketch: John Randolph of Roanoke

Editor's Note: This piece is, at times, harsh in its assessment of Randolph's character and motives, but the anecdotes and language make it a fun read.  Randolph was eccentric, perhaps the greatest orator Virginia ever produced.  That is saying much.  He was a one man army against unconstitutional federal overreach, and as the author, Frederick William Thomas, notes spent much…
Frederick William Thomas
June 2, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXIV

A pioneer creates a new country from foresight, courage, and hard work.  An immigrant takes advantage of what the pioneer has created.   I suppose now we really are “a nation of immigrants.”--Clyde Wilson The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists . . . .--Alexis de…
Clyde Wilson
June 1, 2016