Monthly Archives

April 2019

Review Posts

The Real Cause

A review of For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford, 1997) by James McPherson Miss Emma Holmes of Charleston, SC, and a survivor of the War Between the States, has left us one of innumerable diaries from the South about the conflict of 1861-1865 (see The Diary of Miss Emma Holmes, 1861-1866 edited by John…
W. Kirk Wood
April 30, 2019
Blog

Ode to the Confederate Dead

Row after row with strict impunityThe headstones yield their names to the element,The wind whirrs without recollection;In the riven troughs the splayed leavesPile up, of nature the casual sacramentTo the seasonal eternity of death;Then driven by the fierce scrutinyOf heaven to their election in the vast breath,They sough the rumour of mortality. Autumn is desolation in the plotOf a thousand…
Allen Tate
April 29, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 166

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 22-26, 2019. Topics: Southern tradition, Richard Weaver, Southern culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-166
Brion McClanahan
April 27, 2019
Blog

Sins and Virtues of “Civil War” History

History is remembered as a narrative, not facts and figures. If the story is told from the viewpoint of past sins, the rendering condemns our ancestors and makes us ashamed of our legacy. If it is told from the viewpoint of ancestral virtues, it leaves us proud of our tradition and inspired to build upon the accomplishments of those who…
Philip Leigh
April 26, 2019
Blog

A Copperhead Loves the South

CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS  22 April 2019 American by birth -- Southern by the grace of God!  I come from a true Southern state, South Dakota, and I am honored to be probably the first Dakotan to give the Memorial Day address at the capital of the Confederacy. Last week I had a conference call with a man from Michigan,…
John A. Eidsmoe
April 25, 2019
Blog

Bluegrass and Jazz: What Do They Have in Common?

If you’ve come across some of the other things I’ve written for Abbeville, you might have been exposed to my assertion that almost all of American music is Southern music.  Therefore, an obvious answer to the question of what do Bluegrass and Jazz have in common would be geographic origin.  Yes, they definitely both come from Dixie, hallelujah.  And just…
Tom Daniel
April 24, 2019
Review Posts

A Tale of Two Churches

A Review of Sacred Conviction: The South’s Stand for Biblical Authority (Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by Joseph Jay Shotwell Publishing and author Joseph Jay have produced a wonderful short study of the theological divisions that existed between Northern and Southern churches in the antebellum period, and its contribution as a cause of the War Between the States. Many people are familiar…
Garrett Agajanian
April 23, 2019
Blog

The South and the American Union

Stretching from the Potomac River across the southeastern quarter of the United States in a broad arc into the plains of Texas is a region known geographically and politically as “the South.” That this region has been distinctive by reason of its climate, type of produce, ethnic composition, culture, manners, and speech is known to every citizen of the country.…
Richard M. Weaver
April 22, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 165

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 15-19, 2019. Topics: Southern tradition, Political Correctness, John C. Calhoun, Nationalism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-165
Brion McClanahan
April 20, 2019
Blog

Don’t Get Conned by the Neocons on the Constitution

So, smart moms in two homeschool social-media groups of which I’m a member are super-excited about Hillsdale College’s free “Constitution 101” course. “Hillsdale’s conservative, so it must be teaching Christian-centered history,” they say. “Hillsdale doesn’t accept grants from the federal government or participate in federal financial-aid or student-loan programs. How principled,” they opine. “Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine both endorse…
Dissident Mama
April 19, 2019
Blog

John C. Calhoun: American

Of all the American vice-presidents, none is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. Calhoun is known as the “defender of slavery,” the “cast iron man,” the “man who started the civil war.” His monument in Charleston has been vandalized, his name removed from Calhoun College at Yale, his Alma Mater, and now his home, Clemson University, is debating whether to…
Brion McClanahan
April 18, 2019
Blog

An Image of the South

“It is out of fashion these days to look backward rather than forward,” the poet John Crowe Ransom wrote almost thirty years ago. “About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living.” Ransom made the remark in an essay…
Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
April 17, 2019
Review Posts

Recovering Authentic (Politically Incorrect) Conservatism

A review of Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism For Our Times (Routledge, 2017) by Joseph Scotchie Joe Scotchie’s recently published anthology Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism For Our Times made me aware of the task that confronts every serious student of the Right—recovering what otherwise might slip down the Memory Hole. Both the American media and,…
Paul Gottfried
April 16, 2019
Blog

Critical Race Theory and the Verdict of R.L. Dabney

Back last year an OpEd piece showed up in The News & Observer by one Professor John Biewen, who is Audio Program Director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. In his essay Biewen explained: “White supremacy today is not mainly about the guys with Tiki torches. It’s about power, and systemic patterns of…
Boyd Cathey
April 15, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 164

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Apr 8-12, 2019 Topics: Thomas Jefferson, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-164
Brion McClanahan
April 13, 2019
Blog

The Culture of Thomas Jefferson

To the student of the Classics the most interesting thing in the Library of Congress at Washington is the considerable remnant of the library of Thomas Jefferson. On October 6, 1820, Jefferson wrote to his young grandson, Francis Eppes, "I consider you as having made such proficiency in Latin and Greek that on your arrival at Columbia you may at…
Fred Irland
April 12, 2019
Blog

Respect Across the Bows

'The Journalist & The General' Thomas Morris Chester, the war correspondent in the Eastern Theater for the Philadelphia Press paid homage to General Robert E. Lee on his return from Appomattox and arrival in Richmond, Virginia in 1865. Chester was the only Black American figure to serve in this role for a major newspaper on either side. (1) Chester's account…
Gerald Lefurgy
April 11, 2019
Blog

The Crisis of the Electoral College

A decisive moment is coming for the peoples of the States, especially for those who consider themselves conservatives yet belong to the cult of Lincoln:  Will the Electoral College system for selecting the federal president continue on, or will it be scrapped for a purely national vote?  At the State and federal level, attempts to change it are ongoing: Calls…
Walt Garlington
April 10, 2019
Review Posts

Yankee Empire

A review of Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home (Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy The Kennedys have fired a well placed shot across the bow of the Yankee Empire designed to illuminate the history of the past 150 years.  This book is a bonfire in the night, shedding light on some of the…
Brett Moffatt
April 9, 2019
Blog

Reconstruction and Recreation

2019 marks the 150th anniversary of U.S. Grant’s inauguration as President of the United States. It also has sparked a renewed interest in Reconstruction, particularly the notion that America failed to capitalize on an “unfinished revolution” as the communist historian Eric Foner describes the period. This general description of the 1860s has been used by both radical leftists like Foner…
Brion McClanahan
April 8, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 163

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 25-April 5, 2019 Topics: Political Correctness, the Southern Tradition, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-163
Brion McClanahan
April 6, 2019
Blog

Strom’s Advice

Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, in 1902 and lived to be over 100 years old. He grew up in a time when the average person knew how to live off the land and he learned the values of health and fitness early on when he attended Clemson College, which was a military school at the time. Strom…
Michael Martin
April 5, 2019
Blog

Teach Your Children Well

Compatriots, how do y'all seek to maintain alive the Confederate heritage within your family & relatives? This would be a great discussion point for any Sons of Confederate Camp or United Daughters of the Confederacy Chapter. At the time of the Southern War For Independence, my ancestors were fighting my beloved French. It was a war that lasted 29 hard…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
April 4, 2019
Blog

Reparations: Let’s Do It!

Reparations for the deserving.? Who gets the money? Who gives up the money?  Who owes the money? The idea for reparations for which many of the current political and /or media hacks call the “original sin” of “the country” is restitution. That is, a large number of thugs like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or the usual peripheral suspects of…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 3, 2019
Review Posts

The First Congress

A review of The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (Simon and Schuster, 2016) by Fergus Bordewich Amateur historians usually write excellent histories. Left unshackled by the latest groupthink of the academy, these historians tend to be independent thinkers and more importantly better writers than their professional counterparts. Shelby Foote…
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2019
Blog

The Leftist Long March, “Silent Sam,” and the REAL Question

Most every Thursday I gather with a group of friends for lunch at some restaurant in Raleigh. Among the group are three PhDs in history, and one who holds two masters degrees in history. All of us are former employees of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (now Natural and Cultural Resources)…and we all share very similar points of…
Boyd Cathey
April 1, 2019