Monthly Archives

December 2016

Blog

The Year in Review

Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina told a friend in 1980 that, "I'm bound to confess that President Carter has instilled some foreboding in prospect to the outcome of the election....As I interpret his campaign sermon, President Carter said states' rights had become as obscene as any four-letter word, and Ronald Reagan had proved his unfitness for the presidency by telling…
Brion McClanahan
December 30, 2016
Blog

When the South Was America 1607-1861

Dr. Donald Livingston on "When the South Was America, 1607-1861" at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School on "The Southern Tradition and the Renewal of America," June 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW4M46JXXzE
Donald Livingston
December 27, 2016
Blog

Stereotyping the South Up North

The 1861-65 war destroyed the American South’s economic, legal, political and social systems, and afterward ruled the region with proconsuls dispatched from Washington. From this aftermath of war came the invented view of the desolated South – a section known in antebellum times for providing the majority of presidents and exemplary political thinkers — as an uncouth and backward region…
Bernard Thuersam
December 22, 2016
Review Posts

The Conversation Club of Charleston

This essay was presented at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School.   When I was young I used to read a lot of books about archaeology—the study of ancient lost worlds and civilizations. I never got to study archaeology, but I became an archivist, and I suppose my job is a little like field archaeology—except that I work indoors, in air-conditioned…
Karen Stokes
December 21, 2016
Blog

I Am So Old I Can Remember When….

—there was no television; and then when there was one station on two hours a day. —newspapers were locally owned, had lots of locally written literate material, and even had intelligent independent commentary on the editorial page. —a male American seen carrying an umbrella would have been ridiculed and probably beat up. —most people had not been up in an…
Clyde Wilson
December 20, 2016
Review Posts

Kaitlin of Christmas

The true story of a girl’s human love embracing the Christ-calling in each of us You arrived the first evening of Spring And never left, not once - You cooked and loved and overflowed With cookies and pizza and gingerbread The Seasons of every year We sometimes didn't know you and Sometimes wondered where you were even Though standing side…
Vito Mussomeli
December 19, 2016
Podcast

Podcast Episode 52

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, 2016 in Review Topics: Conferences, Political Correctness, Southern Tradition, Donald Trump, Secession, Nullification https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-52
Brion McClanahan
December 17, 2016
Blog

Richard Taylor

General Richard Taylor was only son of President Zachary Taylor. His father and mother were natives of Virginia, and his grand father, also a Virginian, commanded a brigade of Virginia troops in the battle of Brandywine. The hereditary residence of the family was in Orange county, Virginia. President Taylor's eldest daughter married Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, the late President of the…
Dabney H. Maury
December 16, 2016
Blog

A Southern Saint

William Porcher DuBose of South Carolina is not well known today, but in the early 20th century, he achieved fame in America and abroad as an Episcopal theologian and author. He was born in Winnsboro, S.C., in 1836, and his father, a wealthy, well-educated planter, saw to it that his intellectually gifted son received a fine education. After attending schools…
Karen Stokes
December 15, 2016
Blog

Harvard Confederates

A review of Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men Who Fought for the South, By Helen P. Trimpi, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 380 pp. Someone, perhaps it was Thomas Carlyle, wrote that “History is the essence of innumerable biographies.” While that description does not cover all the duty of historianship, it is true in an important sense. History that becomes too…
Clyde Wilson
December 14, 2016
Blog

Southern Culture: Food

Food is one of the more tangible and recognizable elements of Southern culture and one that is worth exploring. It serves as a bridge between the tables of the Old South and the New. It was once said that Virginians dined, Yankees just ate. This was due in large part to the old Cavalier practice of multi-course meals that could…
Brion McClanahan
December 13, 2016
Review Posts

Death of Kin

“Family’s getting scarce,” Cousin Jeanette says As Uncle Wallace, her daddy, lies In hospital bed in Union Lashed with tubes that keep him fed. Wallace has outlived all siblings save one, Uncle Autry, “Aut,” father of two sons And one daughter; he fascinated us Younguns with missing thumb. Before them we’ve lost Uncles Russell, Doug, And Hub and Aint Bertie.…
Randall Ivey
December 13, 2016
Blog

They Came From the East

 It is generally thought that when the earliest Homo sapiens arrived on the scene in Africa and Asia less than a hundred-thousand years ago, all of North and South America was devoid of human habitation.  Most in the scientific community also contend that it was no more than twenty to thirty-thousand years ago, as the glaciers from the last Ice Age…
John Marquardt
December 9, 2016
Blog

Liberal and Conservative

The terms “liberal” and “conservative” were usable signs in a society in which the state was governed by politics. They are of little use the in 21st century United States because “politics” no longer plays any significant role in governance. In a dynamic and free republican society, citizens of similar ideas, values, and interests, and even inherited allegiances and inclinations,…
Clyde Wilson
December 8, 2016
Blog

“Rational People” Now Want Secession

 According to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, secession is now being advocated by "rational people, not the fringe."This is an insult to all rational people.Rational people for generations have supported secession, including every scholar at the Abbeville Institute. But now that idiot Leftists in California, Oregon, and Washington are for it, somehow secession has become "rational."I think George Washington, Thomas…
Brion McClanahan
December 7, 2016
Blog

Grant Never Faced Stonewall Jackson

Grant’s relentless and costly attacks on General Lee in Virginia earned him the title of “Butcher” among his own troops and was kept in command by Lincoln who was unbothered by the vast casualty numbers amassed by Grant. He quickly saw that following the Radicals after his master’s assassination was the proper path, and he was rewarded with election to…
Bernard Thuersam
December 7, 2016
Review Posts

A Miscarriage of Justice

"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway in 1775. Wise words from the wisest of America’s Founders, yet ninety years later the very government that Franklin helped create disregarded his wisdom, fell prey to those very passions, and trampled the constitutional rights of its own citizens in order to help quench what seemed an…
Ryan Walters
December 5, 2016
Blog

Censoring Jefferson to Safeguard Ignorance

This piece was originally published in the UVA Cavalier Daily.At the risk of offending 469 UVA faculty colleagues and students who protest President Sullivan’s practice of quoting UVA founder Thomas Jefferson “in light of Jefferson’s owning of slaves and other racist views” (“Professors ask Sullivan to stop quoting Jefferson,” Cavalier Daily, Nov. 13), I would submit another Jefferson quote: “This institution…
Robert F. Turner
December 2, 2016
Blog

Save Federalism, Save the Electoral College

Discussing immigration and sanctuary cities, Bill O'Reilly began speaking of the coming clash of two "sovereignties", the States individually and the national government, but never got to finish his sentence. Speaker Gingrich interrupted to say, "there is one sovereignty" in America and that's the national government. "The Civil War settled the sovereignty question." Unfortunately, the Speaker is correct. We need…
Vito Mussomeli
December 1, 2016