The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar. 26-30, 2018. Topics: the New South, Southern Culture, Hank Williams, Confederate Symbols https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-114
Brion McClanahanMarch 31, 2018
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 LeighMarch 30, 2018
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 LandessMarch 29, 2018
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 KoonMarch 28, 2018
A review of Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States: The Attack on Leviathan by Donald Davidson (Transaction Books, 1991). August 18, 1993 will mark the centennial of Donald Davidson’s birth. On April 25 of that year, he will have been dead a quarter of a century. During his lifetime Davidson was considered the most minor of the major Fugitives,…
Mark Royden WinchellMarch 27, 2018
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 PageMarch 26, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 19-23, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern culture, the New South, Reconstruction, Yankees https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-113
Brion McClanahanMarch 24, 2018
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 MamaMarch 23, 2018
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 LeighMarch 22, 2018
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. YarbroughMarch 21, 2018
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. SmithMarch 20, 2018
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am speaking but the plain truth when I tell you that I would rather be here tonight facing an assemblage of men and women of Irish blood and Irish breeding than in any other banquet hall on earth. For I am one who is Irish and didn't know it; but now that I…
Irvin S. CobbMarch 19, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Mar 12-16, 2018 Topics: the War, Southern culture, Southern literature, Abraham Lincoln, 20th century Southern history https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-112
Brion McClanahanMarch 17, 2018
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 MarquardtMarch 16, 2018
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 MartinMarch 15, 2018
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 ClarkMarch 14, 2018
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 McClanahanMarch 13, 2018
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 DanielMarch 12, 2018
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 McClanahanMarch 10, 2018
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 LibermanMarch 9, 2018
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
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. YarbroughMarch 7, 2018
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 WoodMarch 6, 2018
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 JohnsonMarch 5, 2018
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 26- Mar 2, 2018 Topics: the War, Confederate symbols, Southern culture, Yankees, Spencer Roane https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-110
Brion McClanahanMarch 3, 2018
“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 MamaMarch 2, 2018
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 JarvisMarch 1, 2018
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