Monthly Archives

October 2021

BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 285

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 25-29, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, slavery, Robert E. Lee, John C. Calhoun, Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-285
Brion McClanahan
October 30, 2021
Blog

A Sham of Free Government

  Editor's Note: United States Senator Thomas F. Bayard delivered this speech in January, 1875 on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. Bayard, later United States Secretary of State, considered the military occupation of New Orleans to be an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a direct assault on republican government. He denounced Gen. Philip Sheridan, insinuated that…
Thomas F. Bayard
October 29, 2021
Blog

On “Southern” Slavery

It has become fashionable to bash the South - not only by removing war memorials or looking the other way as they are vandalized, but even in discussions of things like slavery.  It's never just slavery; it's Southern slavery.  The existence of slavery in the North has been whitewashed and sent down the memory hole. Frankly, most of our American…
Rev. Larry Beane
October 28, 2021
Blog

Robert E. Lee and the “Will”ing Bogeymen

George Will writes what amounts to a review of Allen C. Guelzo’s biography, Robert E. Lee: A Life in the Washington Post. The review and apparently the book are disparaging of Lee. Considering who Lee was and the fruitful historical mindsets who have lionized him, both black and white: (Churchill, Eisenhower, both Roosevelts as well as Booker T, Washington to…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 27, 2021
Blog

Remembering John C. Calhoun

Though John C. Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman and thinker, he is little appreciated in his own country. Calhoun rose to prominence on the eve of the War of 1812 as a “war hawk” in the House of Representatives and was the Hercules who labored untiringly in the war effort. While still a congressman, he was the chief architect…
John Devanny
October 26, 2021
Blog

Poor Poe

At the University of Virginia, Room No.13 on the fabled Lawn is reserved as a permanent shrine to Edgar Allan Poe, who reportedly lodged in the room during his brief time on campus (or “the grounds,” as we say). One wonders what Poe, though a proud Virginian, would think about this honor — he was not terribly happy with his…
Casey Chalk
October 25, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 284

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, October 18-22, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern History, The War, Thomas Jefferson https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-284
Brion McClanahan
October 23, 2021
Blog

Disunion Then and Now

The delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, presumptuously shelving that document, concluded their work on the proposed U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.  On another September 17th three quarters of a century later, the quarrels that had commenced at that gathering were to continue in a cornfield at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. One hundred…
J.L. Bennett
October 22, 2021
Blog

Tradition and Culture

Our farm was a broadly covered area of green stalks, blanketing the ground for hundreds of acres all around. In a slow-motion explosion, day-by-day, week-by-week, the land revealed the white birth of cotton, the king crop of the Mississippi Delta. There were great vines of honeysuckle on one side of the house. The aroma seemed more noticeable in the open…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 21, 2021
Blog

Patrick Henry: The Real Indispensable Man

After finishing a biography titled, Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty, by John Kukla, I am convinced that Mr. Henry, Colonel Henry, nay, Governor Henry is the real father of our country instead of the beloved General, President George Washington. As I become more familiar with the particular history of Old Dominion and her role and that of her leading citizens…
Julie Paine
October 20, 2021
Review Posts

When in the Course of Human Events

A review of When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Rowman & Littlefield,  2004) by Charles Adams Did the South go to war for sport? Not being a professional historian, my historical toolbox is not large. But one tool has often gotten me to the heart of past events. That tool is to ask:…
Terry Hulsey
October 19, 2021
Blog

Our Solemn Task as Southerners

  Over the past several years I have been writing essays for several publications and media outlets regarding Southern and Confederate history and heritage, and, in particular, about the growing assault on the symbols of that history and heritage. None of what I wrote—nothing I put into print—should have seemed that unusual or radical. My thoughts and observations could have…
Boyd Cathey
October 18, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 283

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 11-15, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern Politics, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-283
Brion McClanahan
October 16, 2021
Blog

The Father of Representative Government in America

It is not the purpose of this article to set forth any new discovery, nor to present any reflections which are especially startling or original. The purpose is, to emphasize a neglected fact of American history; a fact attested by ancient records, narrated in historical works, and familiar to historians; yet a fact the full significance of which is not…
William Robertson Garrett
October 15, 2021
Blog

Economic Interpretation of American History

This article was originally published in the May 1916 issue of the Journal of Political Economy. To turn men away from the “barren” field of political history is one professed object of Professor Charles A. Beard in the two volumes which he has in recent years submitted to the public. Other purposes of these interesting volumes are to call the…
William E. Dodd
October 14, 2021
Blog

Beautiful Losers

When T.S. Eliot said that there are no lost causes because there are no won causes, he probably was not thinking of American conservatism. Nearly sixty years after the New Deal, the American right is no closer to challenging its fundamental premises and machinery than when Old Rubberlegs first started priming the pump and scheming to take the United States…
Sam Francis
October 13, 2021
Blog

Eminent Southrons and Cinematic Slander

This essay was originally published in the August 1995 issue of Chronicles magazine. Some folks have been kind enough to notice my absence from these pages, and a few have been even kinder and expressed regret at it. The fact is that my wife Dale and I are working on a book. It will be called 1001 Things Everyone Should…
John Shelton Reed
October 12, 2021
Blog

Who Are Confederate Monument Critics Really Targeting?

The routine removal of Confederate statues signifies a new stage in the evolution of political progressives. Their vision for a new order that can provide social justice for the so-called oppressed is becoming a secular religion. Assaults on statues are symptomatic that the new faith is working to destroy traditional values. The birth of a new religion—even a secular one—is…
Philip Leigh
October 11, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 282

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 4-8, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Wokism, Political Correctness, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-282
Brion McClanahan
October 9, 2021
Blog

On the Wane

“Aggressive abroad and despotic at home.” --Robert E. Lee The empire Lincoln built is on the wane. Those who know history can see the signs— And even those with ears can hear the whines And bellows of frustration. All in vain! Empires commence in pain and end in pain. The honest haruspex no doubt divines This course from the beginning.…
Thomas Riley
October 8, 2021
Blog

Steppin Back

The locusts descend upon the land. Not the literal ones, but a kind much worse, in my estimation. The urbanites, long disenchanted with the social upheaval of late, have begun to migrate to the country. My home county, Newton County, Arkansas, is sadly not immune, though we are largely blessed. Rugged and in the remote mountains of northwest Arkansas, my…
Travis Holt
October 7, 2021
Blog

The Reparations Rip-Off

      In the dis-United States today, far too many of its people have now lost all sense of proportion and as movie magnate Richard Rowland said over a century ago . . .“the lunatics have taken over the asylum.” What was formally accepted as standard American history and sociology are now being replaced with the 1619 Project and…
John Marquardt
October 6, 2021
Blog

White Rice is Racist

The latest major study issued by a blue-ribbon commission on racism infecting American culture comes on the heels of other startling examples which “woke” academia, government and the media have pinpointed during this past year. Indeed, in recent months we have witnessed the Oregon Department of Education explain how traditional mathematics—you know the  2 + 2 = 4 version—is racist and unfairly…
Boyd Cathey
October 5, 2021
Blog

Our Marxist Revolution

Thomas Carlyle said that it takes men of worth to recognize worth in men (1). Among the many worthy men across Western Civilization who recognized the worth of General Robert E. Lee was Sir Winston Churchill who summed it up, saying Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains in the annals…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
October 4, 2021
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 281

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 27 - Oct 1, 2021 Topics: Confederate monuments, War for Southern Independence, Reconstruction, United States Constitution, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-281  
Brion McClanahan
October 2, 2021
Blog

Once Upon a Time

The following is an excerpt from an article by a man named Troy Cauley. It is titled “Hindsight” and was first printed in the Southern Partisan over 30 years ago. If one can appreciate anything beyond “modernity” as to life’s heart such as: family, tradition, manners, love, friendship and at the same time cease worshipping gold, silver, technology, “industrial revolutions”…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 1, 2021