Monthly Archives

August 2016

Blog

More Deja Vu, circa the George W. Bush Years

Twenty-three Republican Senators joined a large majority of Democrats to vote for the Bush bill to amnesty millions of present and future illegal aliens. The bill passed the Senate 62–36. The Republican Senators supporting amnesty and future immigration increases were from Maine (2), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio (2), Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona,…
Clyde Wilson
August 31, 2016
Review Posts

Who Won the Webster-Hayne Debate of 1830?

The dominant historical opinion of the famous debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Young Hayne of South Carolina which took place in the United States Senate in 1830 has long been that Webster defeated Hayne both as an orator and a statesman. According to the legend, Webster managed in the course of the debate to isolate the South,…
H. A. Scott Trask
August 30, 2016
Blog

Slavery in Pennsylvania

Indentured servitude is one of the more neglected elements of American labor history. Most historians gloss over the subject in route to African slavery. This is largely due to the impact of long standing issues of race in America, but Southerners understood Northern complicity in the institution of African slavery and often pointed to Northern hypocrisy in regard to the…
Brion McClanahan
August 29, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 39

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 22-26, 2016. Topics: Political Correctness, Southern Tradition, I'll Take My Stand, Federalism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-39
Brion McClanahan
August 28, 2016
Blog

From Monument to Cenotaph

In 1896 at the Reunion of United Confederate Veterans in New Orleans, Gen. Steven Dill Lee, the Commander of organization delivered his famous ‘charge’ speech where he laid out the goals of the UDC and the SCV, and also the goals for the surviving veterans. The first item on his list was the erection of public monuments to the Confederate…
Lunelle McCallister
August 26, 2016
Blog

South of New York with Charley and Me

Southerners (and there are many who still proudly spell that with a capital “S” even if positioned in the middle of a sentence; we don’t simply think we are that because we live farther south of Canada than the masses in New York et al.) remain steadfast when in a fight, sometimes to the point of leading, like the great…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2016
Blog

Filmlog: Three for the Resistance

World War II has provided a vast amount of material for cinema in Europe, America, and Japan. Some if this is superb. Much of it is hokey entertainment and propaganda. We perhaps did not realise how hokey until the horrors of D-Day were portrayed in Saving Private Ryan. That useful dose of realism deserves to be set off against Stephen…
Clyde Wilson
August 24, 2016
Review Posts

Reflections of a Ghost: An Agrarian View After Fifty Years

Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the symposium I'll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive vice-president of the University of Illinois, and myself, a writer and reader of fiction. I don't presume to speak either for Warren or Lanier, and I don't know how to…
Andrew Nelson Lytle
August 23, 2016
Blog

Confederate Memorial Hall and Jack Daniels

In 1935 the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) constructed Confederate Memorial Hall as a residence for girls at Nashville's Peabody College. Originally residents who were descendants of Confederate veterans and agreed to become teachers were granted free room and board. The school and dormitory were acquired by Vanderbilt University in 1979. Earlier this month university chancellor, Nicholas Zeppos, announced…
Philip Leigh
August 22, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 38

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Aug. 15-19, 2016. Topics: Political correctness, NASCAR, Southern culture, Southern politics. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-38
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2016
Blog

NASCAR’s Slow Ride to Nowhere

The thrill is gone, and the numbers prove it. After decades of phenomenal growth, NASCAR’s popularity has hit the wall. At Bristol Motor Speedway a couple of years ago, Jeff Gordon told reporters he couldn’t believe the rows of empty seats. Where were the cheering fans who normally packed the stands and infield? Attendance is down at NASCAR races, and no…
Mike C. Tuggle
August 19, 2016
Blog

The Art of Ugliness, Part I

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published at The Fleming Foundation. This piece appeared  in the second issue (1980) of the Southern Partisan, which Clyde Wilson and I (along with John Shelton Reed, Sam Francis, and Chris Kopff) had created.  I have corrected a number of errors--including the quotation from the film version of Gone with the Wind--made several small  verbal…
Thomas Fleming
August 18, 2016
Blog

Your Future as a Terrorist

The Homeland Security apparatus has garnered quite a bit of attention lately for a paper that identified anti-abortionists, anti-immigrationists, and war veterans as terrorist suspects. (I thought “profiling” was forbidden, but in that matter, as so often these days, it would seem that some people are more equal than others.) Some Republican politicians are playing at outrage and demanding an…
Clyde Wilson
August 17, 2016
Review Posts

Truth in the Pit of Political Correctness

Last week’s vote (June 2016) to repudiate the Battle Flag by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) caught me by surprise and left me in shock. I have long considered our denomination to be socially conservative, prudent, and wise to stay out of issues that do not directly impact the mission of our church. I am a deacon but more importantly on…
Ben Thompson
August 16, 2016
Blog

David Duke Does Not Represent Conservative Louisiana

The perennial champion of racial division and hatred has, unfortunately, returned to Louisiana politics. Duke’s return will be a boon to his race-hustling counterparts on the left. The likes of Al Sharpton and the Southern Poverty Law Center are no doubt already preparing their mailing list to solicit millions of dollars to fight racism in Dixie. And Duke, one can…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 15, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 37

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 8-12, 2016. Topics: Gary Ross, Myths of the "Civil War," Secession, the New South, Reconstruction, Southern Economy, Thomas Jefferson, the First Amendment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-37
Brion McClanahan
August 13, 2016
Blog

Jefferson’s True Wall of Separation

The United States Constitution does not contain the words “separation of church and state,” nor does it require the general government to purge all religious influence from public institutions. To the contrary of modern conceptions, the document does not require that elected officials abstain from making decisions based on religious proclivities, nor does it call for government to intervene to…
Dave Benner
August 12, 2016
Blog

The Vanishing Republic of Our Fathers

The New South is one of the more misunderstood periods in American history. The contemporary narrative generally describes the period and its leaders as dense political hacks riding the coattails of Northern business elites. They were "wannabe" statesmen whose political ideology was singularly tied to race. This perspective is clouded by present conditions and our own short-sighted infatuation with racial politics. Historians…
Brion McClanahan
August 11, 2016
Review Posts

A Southern Political Economy vs. American State Capitalism

General Lee was a soldier and leader of men, not a politician. Although several of his decisions as soldier had an important political impact in American history, he seldom discussed such matters. An exception is his correspondence with the British historian Acton shortly after the war. Acton had spent a long career studying how constitutional liberty had gradually developed as…
Clyde Wilson
August 10, 2016
Blog

Rats and Republicans

Never knew for sure where the expression came from that my grandmother voiced to my brother and me from time to time, “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” but whether or not it was original with her, that probably wasn’t vital to her concern; only the intent to make a point for her grandsons. I’d like…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 9, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 36

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 1-5, 2016 Topics: War for Southern Independence, Southern Culture, Abraham Lincoln, United States Constitution https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-36
Brion McClanahan
August 6, 2016
Blog

The Inside War

Editor's Note: This article was originally published at The Southern Literary Review and is an interview with author Robert J. Ernst by Allen Mendenhall covering Ernst's book, The Inside War. APM: Thanks for taking the time to sit down for this interview, Bob. Your novel The Inside War is about an Appalachian mountain family during the Civil War. How long…
Allen Mendenhall
August 5, 2016
Blog

The Compact Fact

Mainstream historians are both an incestuous and snarky bunch. They latch on to trends--fads really--and pull those trends like mules lugging a heavy cart to market (where they hope to sell books to their tens of fans). In time, the mules give out, but unlike the mule, these historians never realize they are whipped.  They hire more mules like them…
Brion McClanahan
August 4, 2016
Review Posts

American Culture: Massachusetts or Virginia

Delivered at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. A Frenchman has observed that the qualities of a culture may be identified by two characteristics--- its manners and its cuisine. If that is so, then we can safely say that the United States, except for the South, has no culture at all. Aside from the South the only American contributions to…
Clyde Wilson
August 3, 2016
Blog

The Unionist Davis vs. The Radical Lincoln

Jefferson Davis was the conservative who tried vainly to save the Union in the face of Republican attempts to pit North against South, and force the South to seek a more perfect union without the North. The greatest ironies of that era was Rhode Island being the slave trading center of North America by 1750; Yankee inventor Eli Whitney making…
Bernard Thuersam
August 2, 2016
Review Posts

The Tariff and Other Tales from Alabama

My friends, there is one issue before you, and to all sensible men but one issue, and but two sides to that issue. The slavery question is but one of the symbols of that issue; the commercial question is but one of the symbols of that issue; the Union question is but one of those symbols; the only issue before…
James Rutledge Roesch
August 1, 2016
Blog

July Top Ten

The Top Ten for July 2016. Read 'em again. 1. The Free State of Jones: History or Hollywood? by Ryan Walters 2. Understanding the Battle Hymn of the Republic by Howard Ray White 3. Why Vicksburg Canceled the Fourth of July – For a Generation by Karen Stokes 4. Rethinking the Declaration of Independence by Brion McClanahan 5. Nathan Bedford…
Brion McClanahan
August 1, 2016