Monthly Archives

March 2018

Trump’s Aluminum Tariff: A Teachable Moment Blog

Trump’s Aluminum Tariff: A Teachable Moment

President Trump’s proposed ten-percent tariff on refined aluminum yields a teachable moment for Southern history students. Historical analysis of the industry reveals an echo of the Northern tariff policies that angered Southerners during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the South was generally a raw materials exporter and feedstock supplier to Northern manufacturers. Tariffs during the era usually…
Philip Leigh
March 30, 2018
With Friends Like That… Blog

With Friends Like That…

The recent Klan activities in Forsyth County, Georgia and Summerville, South Carolina make it more and more difficult for those of us who are trying to keep the battle flag flying and Dixie in the repertoire of bands around the region. You saw them on your television screen: angry little clusters of the ignorant, assembled in front of the ravenous…
Thomas Landess
March 29, 2018
30 Years From Hank Williams Blog

30 Years From Hank Williams

This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1985. Hank Williams has now been dead longer than he lived. And outside of a hundred or more fine songs, his thrity-year-old memory survives best among some of his cousins down in Georgiana, Alabama, about sixty miles south of Montgomery. Among them are Taft and Erleen Skipper (Taft’s daddy and…
Bill Koon
March 28, 2018
Stony Creek and Virginia History Blog

Stony Creek and Virginia History

On an abnormally warm early Spring day, I took a 150 mile motorcycle ride from Portsmouth to Stony Creek, Virginia. It is where my Great Great Grandpa, Randolph Page, was captured by Federal Forces in 1864. He rode with the SC 6th Insurgent Cavalry (Aka: the Dixie Raiders). His unit fought in nearly every major engagement in Virginia from 1862,…
Cliff Page
March 26, 2018
His Truth is Marching On Blog

His Truth is Marching On

Social activist Julia Ward wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861, the same year that Henry Timrod composed his “Ethnogenesis” (the poem which kicked off part 2 of this series). In it, she penned that God will use His “terrible swift sword” to bring judgment upon “condemners” and “crush the serpent with his heel.” The wicked this New…
Dissident Mama
March 23, 2018
States’ Rights Blog

States’ Rights

Most modern historians reject any suggestion that the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights. They insist that the only states’ rights the South cared about, “as neo-confederates are loath to admit,” was slavery.  (According to Wikipedia, “neo-confederate is a term that describes the views of who use historical revisionism* to portray the and its actions in the Civil War…
Philip Leigh
March 22, 2018
Streety Blog

Streety

John Randolph of Roanoke with his dogs on the floor of Congress. There was a little dog down the street from us named Streety. My brother and I hadn’t got our own dog yet; that was five or six months in the future. So, we had adopted Streety as our own--though many in the neighborhood had done the same. He…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 21, 2018
Southern Horizons Review Posts

Southern Horizons

A review of Southern Horizons: The Autobiography of Thomas Dixon (IWV Publishing, 1994). The name of Thomas Dixon today is little remembered, North or South, but seventy years ago Dixon was one of the most prominent and controversial public figures in the country. The discovery and publication of his autobiography ought to be considered a significant event in the cultural…
Stephen P. Smith
March 20, 2018
Parallel Lines Of Division Blog

Parallel Lines Of Division

The complex issues which have and continue to divide America’s North and South have a long and at times violent history, as well as having involved an extensive list of differences.  Almost a century before the War Between the States and even prior to the establishment of a formal geographic boundary roughly dividing the two sections along the thirty-ninth parallel,…
John Marquardt
March 16, 2018
Calley’s Civil War Blog

Calley’s Civil War

In November 1970, Lt. William Calley (a Florida native born in 1943) went on trial for his life. He was being court-martialed by the U.S. military for his participation in the My Lai Massacre and was accused of killing twenty-two civilians. Even though twenty-six officers participated and an estimated five hundred South Vietnamese were killed, Calley was the only man…
Michael Martin
March 15, 2018
Tom’s Comedy Club Blog

Tom’s Comedy Club

There was a social order at Tom’s Service Station.  It wasn’t posted on the wall.  The “Welcome Wagon” didn’t slip it into the baskets they gave to the newcomers.  It wasn’t revealed as part of an initiation along with the rumored secret handshake. But the old men who held court on the long bench outside of Tom’s knew.  And the…
Frank Clark
March 14, 2018
Two Against Lincoln Review Posts

Two Against Lincoln

A review of Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition (University Press of Kansas, 2017) by William C. Harris In a speech before the Senate in 1863, James A. Bayard of Delaware stated that “The truth will out, ultimately…though they may be voted down by the majority of the hour, though they may not…
Brion McClanahan
March 13, 2018
Sacred Harp Singing Blog

Sacred Harp Singing

If I was forced to give an example of at least one good thing we got out of the Puritans, I would quickly point to Sacred Harp singing.  Sacred Harp is a traditional, primitive method of church singing still favored in the Deep South, and it even comes complete with several different annual conventions.  Brion McClanahan and others have written…
Tom Daniel
March 12, 2018
Podcast Episode 111 Podcast

Podcast Episode 111

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 5-9, 2018. Topics: the War, Maryland, the U.S. Constitution, Southern Founders, 2nd Amendment, Political Correctness, Southern Culture. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-111
Brion McClanahan
March 10, 2018
This is why the Founding Generation Crafted the 2nd Amendment Blog

This is why the Founding Generation Crafted the 2nd Amendment

With the current heated debate over gun rights and the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution (which serves to affirm our natural rights…rights we have whether the State recognizes them or not), I thought it might be interesting to talk briefly about the Battle of Athens. If you’re like a lot of people, you probably haven’t heard about this…
Lewis Liberman
March 9, 2018
The Barbarians at the Gates Blog

The Barbarians at the Gates

Since the 1960s, the interpretation of Southern history and the War Between the States put forth by most of the news media and academia is largely a fraud. It is driven by the racist identity politics of the Democrat Party and not historical truth. If Southern history was interpreted objectively as it was before 1960, instead of with liberal political…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
March 8, 2018
The Little Town with the Big Heart Blog

The Little Town with the Big Heart

If you travel I-20 east from Jackson, Mississippi, somewhere about 20 miles short of Meridian you’ll see a sign: Hickory Exit. This sign is one almost ad infinitum of green signs along a monster interstate that has sucked the life out of localism, particularly important throughout the South. But should you drive into downtown from old Highway 80, you’ll see…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 7, 2018
Founding Intentions Review Posts

Founding Intentions

A review of Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution by M.E. Bradford (Georgia, 1993). Since the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, numberless books re-examining the document and the convention that made it have issued forth from commercial publishing houses and university presses. While some of them are excellent and make important contributions in the…
W. Kirk Wood
March 6, 2018
Confederate History of the Maryland Flag Blog

Confederate History of the Maryland Flag

It is near impossible to express any admiration of the antebellum South without incurring the wrath of the perpetually offended mob, online or otherwise.  Even acknowledgment in the accomplishments of those men once universally and unequivocally admired by all Americans, such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lee, now brings the occasional sneer or mark of condemnation from “polite” society.  Unfortunately, for…
Reverdy Johnson
March 5, 2018
The New England Pharisees Blog

The New England Pharisees

“Religion, taking every mortal form But that pure and Christian faith makes warm, Where not to vile fanatic passion urged, Or not in vague philosophies submerged, Repulsive with all Pharisaic leaven, And making laws to stay the laws of Heaven!” — From “Ethnogenesis,” by Henry Timrod South Carolinian Henry Timrod penned these words in February 1861 at the meeting of the First…
Dissident Mama
March 2, 2018
The Pseudoscience Attack on the South Blog

The Pseudoscience Attack on the South

The term “science” is applied rather loosely today. In some cases what we call science might be more appropriately labeled pseudoscience. The field of sociology comes to mind. It is more politically correct that scientifically objective, and you would be hard put to find a sociologist who doesn't hold Leftist political views. Sociological theories, questionable to begin with, are being…
Gail Jarvis
March 1, 2018