Monthly Archives

May 2019

Blog

What Did 19th Century Black Americans Think About Confederate Monuments?

One argument used by those wanting to remove Confederate statues is that contemporary blacks had little chance to oppose them when they were erected.  Aside from anecdotal evidence that blacks joined white crowds to observe the dedication ceremonies, one example in Mississippi provides undeniable evidence of explicit high-level black support. In 1890 the Mississippi legislature voted on a bill to appropriate $10,000 for…
Philip Leigh
May 31, 2019
Blog

Dignity and Peace

Catholic and non-Catholic Southerners alike have reason to mourn the loss of Father James Schall, S.J., who passed away shortly before Easter at the age of 91.  As an erudite representative of an older generation, Father Schall preserved for the benefit of the 21st-Century a perspective that has been largely swept away with the many communities and neighborhoods upon which…
Jerry Salyer
May 30, 2019
Blog

The Inescapable Anti-Americanism of the Left

It’s telling indeed that while everyone, irrespectively of political partisanship, can’t refer to “racism” enough, few people, if any, want to spend any time at all talking about “anti-Americanism.” The remotely curious should want to know why the topic of anti-Americanism has seemed to have fallen into disrepute. I have a theory: Democrats and the left would prefer not to…
Jack Kerwick
May 29, 2019
Review Posts

American Statesman

A Review of American Statesman. Patrick Henry (Houghton Mifflin, 1887) by Moses Coit Tyler Of all the figures of the Revolution, there is perhaps not one which the mists of a century have so enveloped in legend as that of Patrick Henry. A Patrick Henry myth has been formed, and has been fixed in literature by the uncritical character of…
Blog

Memorial Day

Noblest of martyrs in a glorious fight! Ye died to save the cause of Truth and Right. And though your banner beams no more on high, Not vainly did it wave or did ye die! No blood for freedom shed is spent in vain; It is as fertile as the Summer rain; And the last tribute of heroic breath Is…
Podcast

Podcast Episode 170

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 20-24, 2019. Topics: Political Correctness, Fake News, Social Justice Warriors, Southern monuments. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-170
Brion McClanahan
May 25, 2019
Blog

The Truth No Longer Matters

“All we need to do is to tell the truth about the War.” I became actively involved in the “Southern” movement in the early 1960s. From that time up to the present I have often heard my fellow Southerners declare of our enemies, “They (our enemies) just do not understand the truth about the War. All we need to do…
Blog

Show Me Where the Statue Hurt You

I attended a protest to tear down the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston on May 16, 2019. This event was being hosted by “The Independent Media Institute,” and consisted of “artists” explaining how the monument is a symbol of white supremacy to them. Almost two years ago, in August of 2017, I attended a similar protest put on by…
Michael Martin
May 23, 2019
Blog

“An Epic Poem in Bronze.”

On August 22, 2018, Forbes Magazine published an article written by Kristina Killgrove entitled "Scholars Explain the Racist History of UNC's Silent Sam Statue." 1 Two days earlier, the statue had been pulled down by a crowd of students and activists, who saw it as a symbol of "white supremacy" that had no place on the campus of UNC Chapel…
Shane Anderson
May 22, 2019
Review Posts

Adventures in the Southwest

A Review of Doniphan’s Expedition, Containing an Account of the Conquest of New Mexico . . .  by John T. Hughes.  Cincinnati, 1847 and Reid’s Tramp, or a Journal of the Incidents of Ten Months Travel Through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora, and California by John Coleman Reid.  Selma, Ala., 1858. The Mexican War and its aftermath turned American attention…
Clyde Wilson
May 21, 2019
Blog

Think Progress Publishes Fake News

We hear a lot about “fake news” these days. Until I was its victim, I was skeptical about the extent of its existence. Now I understand why trust in the media is so low and why news networks are associated with leftist bias. I have learned, as well, that fake news does not necessarily consist of flagrant, outright lying; it…
Allen Mendenhall
May 20, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 169

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 13-17, 2019 Topic: Southern conservatism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-169/s-px7Cz
Brion McClanahan
May 18, 2019
Blog

A “Republic of American Values?”

Prager University has a video presentation, “American values” which is no more than historical fiction. These values, Dennis Prager claims in the video, are a result of America’s unique position as not being defined by race and ethnicity. He claims America is defined by three values: 1. E Pluribus Unum 2. Liberty 3. In God We Trust. Such claims redefine…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 17, 2019
Blog

Nat Turner’s Massacre Apologists

The Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly announced that it will spend taxpayer money to erect a statue honoring Nat Turner who was the leader of a drunken slave rebellion that massacred fifty-five whites in the Southeastern part of the state in 1831. Most of the victims were women and children hacked to death with hatches and axes. Thirty-one…
Philip Leigh
May 16, 2019
Blog

The Procrustean Constitution

We have seen how Mississippi, with its campus free speech bill, totally ignored its own State constitution in favor of federal 1st Amendment arguments.  Now Texas is doing likewise in response to the San Antonio City Council’s decision to reject Chick-fil-A’s request to be a vendor in the San Antonio International Airport.  The opposition to this decision rests mostly on…
Walt Garlington
May 15, 2019
Review Posts

George Washington: A Biography

A review of George Washington: A Biography in Seven Volumes (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948-54) by Douglas Southall Freeman This is the definitive George Washington biography and is for the serious reader. The life of Washington is in chronological order. Think of this book as reading, rather than watching, a TV series about Washington. If you decide to commit…
Jeff Wolverton
May 14, 2019
Blog

John Randolph of Roanoke and the Formation of a Southern Conservatism

One of the great issues of American political history is whether an authentic American conservatism exists.  This is a crucial question for Southerners, as the South is historically viewed as the most conservative of the regions of the United States. Louis Hartz, a prominent political theorist during the middle of the twentieth century, answered no, American conservatism does not exist. …
John Devanny
May 13, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 168

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 6-9, 2019 Topics: Confederate symbols,Southern tradition, Mel Bradford, Southern history https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-168
Brion McClanahan
May 11, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia, Part II

The first English settlement in what is now Hampton was started in 1610, when Colonist under Governor Sir Thomas Gates captured a Native American village, Kecoughtan.  Forts Henry and Charles were early defensive work in the area, but by 1637 were abandoned. Hampton is the oldest continually occupied English town in America since Jamestowne was later abandoned. Called Elizabeth Cittie…
Brett Moffatt
May 10, 2019
Blog

Truman and Treason?

Most people believe the novel 1984 by George Orwell was about some futuristic dystopia. Published in 1949, the story reflected the fear of what the world could be like under totalitarian government. The main character in the story, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department of the “Ministry of Truth” as a reviser of historic records. Thought police, misleading language,…
Michael Martin
May 9, 2019
Blog

Are Confederate Memorials Preventing “Social Justice?”

As a stalwart Southerner who came of age before the 1960s, its hard to believe how much that era has transformed our society. Unfortunately, the majority of today's citizens were born long after that decade, so what they know about decades prior to the 1960s comes from agenda-driven Leftist mainstream media. In previous articles, I have expressed my concern about…
Gail Jarvis
May 8, 2019
Blog

Guerilla War from the Pulpit

Jabez Lafayette Monroe Curry was one of the major political figures of the Old South. In the Alabama Assembly and the United States Congress, he was a passionate and articulate advocate for state sovereignty limited government and a strict construction of the Constitution. With the creation of the Confederacy, he helped draft its new constitution and design its “stars and…
John Chodes
May 6, 2019
Review Posts

Remembering Mel Bradford

A review of A Defender of Southern Conservatism: M.E. Bradford and His Achievements (Missouri, 1999) by Clyde N. Wilson, ed. Clyde Wilson, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun, has assembled and introduced this collection about a man notable, among other things, for his own affinity with Calhoun and…
J.O. Tate
May 6, 2019
Podcast

Podcast Episode 167

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes, Apr 29-May 3, 2019 Topics: the War, Southern Tradition, Political Correctness https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-167
Brion McClanahan
May 4, 2019
Blog

The Southern Tradition: Twenty Years After Richard Weaver

The image of Richard Weaver that sticks in my memory is a disturbing one. He is standing before an audience in a conference room at Vanderbilt University, his gnome-like features barely rising above the tall, polished oak podium that holds his manuscript. He wears a brown, wrinkled suit, shiny at the elbows; and at midmorning he is already in need…
Thomas Landess
May 3, 2019
Blog

God Bless America

Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were only the beginning. For anyone that believed American iconoclasm would stop once Confederate statues were removed or "contextualized," they were rudely awakened last week after the Philadelphia Flyers decided to remove the Kate Smith statue in front of the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia due to her "racist" recording history. They first bagged…
Brion McClanahan
May 2, 2019
Blog

The Death of a Christian “Knight Without Fear”–RIP Aaron Wolf

A week ago Sunday—Easter Sunday, April 21—Aaron D. Wolf, Executive Editor of Chronicles Magazine, passed away. After what had been for him, his wife Lorrie, and his family one of the best weeks of his life, he was struck down on the Day of Resurrection by a sudden and massive heart attack: Our Lord had called Aaron unto Him. I…
Boyd Cathey
May 1, 2019