Monthly Archives

August 2022

BlogReview Posts

The 200 Most Important Confederate Books

In 1978, Georgia native Richard Harwell--older brother of the famous baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell--published In Tall Cotton, a list of the 200 most important Confederate books. He asked fellow Georgian E. Merton Coulter to write the introduction knowing that this list would provide a valuable resource to those seeking to understand both Southern history and the Confederacy. Modern establishment historians…
Brion McClanahan
August 31, 2022
Blog

Jefferson Davis on Robert E. Lee

Remarks of President Davis at the Meeting of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors held at the First Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia, November 3, 1870, for the purpose of organizing the Lee Monument Association, as reported in the Richmond Dispatch for Nov. 4, 1870. Robert E. Lee was my associate and friend in the military academy, and we were friends until…
Abbeville Institute
August 30, 2022
Blog

McCulloch v. Maryland

Editor's Note: This essay was written by Spencer Roane under the pseudonym Amphictyon in 1819. I. To the Editor of the Enquirer : SIR: I have read with considerable attention the opinion pronounced by the Chief Justice of the U. S. in the case of McCulloch against the State of Maryland. In that opinion we are informed, First, That it…
Abbeville Institute
August 29, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 322

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 22-26, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Reconstruction, Confederate monuments, Southern politics, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-322
Brion McClanahan
August 27, 2022
Blog

“His Richest Legacy to Posterity”

From Gustavus Pinckney, Life of John C. Calhoun. The attentive reader will not have forgotten that in the letter of Mr. Calhoun in reference to his acceptance of the Secretaryship of State he made mention of a project which he had in mind for leisure hours in the home routine to which at that time he looked forward. The home…
Abbeville Institute
August 26, 2022
Blog

The Red Ripple

Why the red wave will NOT be.  The typical contemporary Republicans lie for support, then reveal their lies. The Democrats just lie. The resignation of Dr. Ann Hunter McLean from her Youngkin appointment to the Virginia Historic Resources Board is a product of the same mentality wherein Ronald Reagan was deceived in 1981 insofar as Bob Bennett’s replacing M.E. Bradford.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2022
Blog

For the Fairfax County Confederate Dead

Editor's note: Delivered by Congressman John Warwick Daniel at the dedication to the Confederate monument at the Fairfax County, Virginia courthouse October 1, 1890. The monument stood on the courthouse square "upon Fairfax soil" on a lot purchased so the "grassy mound at the base of this monument now covers the remains of two hundred heroes." Funds were collected in…
Abbeville Institute
August 24, 2022
Blog

Northern Negrophobia

No doubt the media and the activists tearing them down justify the destruction of Confederate monuments on the premise that the South fought to perpetuate slavery and the North entered and fought the Civil War to end it. Today’s academics are comfortable acquiescing to that false public impression because it serves their anti-Southern agenda. Only if directly asked, “Did the…
Philip Leigh
August 23, 2022
Blog

The Better Men

John William Corrington (1932—1988) of Louisiana was a prolific author of poetry, stories, and novels. And, as with Faulkner, making a living in commercialised American “culture”  required him to expend talent in Hollywood on movie and television scripts. Corrington has received some recognition, but no less an authority on Southern literature than M.E. Bradford has said that his reputation falls…
Clyde Wilson
August 22, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 321

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 15-19, 2022 Topics: Southern literature, Southern tradition, Southern culture, Southern politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-321?si=6946f8f8370b4e718851ad8f571ec26f&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2022
BlogReview Posts

Confessions of a Copperhead

A review of Confessions of a Copperhead: Culture and Politics in the Modern South (Shotwell Press, 2022) by Mark Royden Winchell The concept of the South as a peculiar and singular region of America, indeed not quite American except in its vices of racism and violence, is something of an industry in the halls of academia. Numerous university centers and…
John Devanny
August 18, 2022
Blog

The Federalists and the Philadelphia Convention

We have before us The Federalist Number 10. I'd like to say a word about The Federalist. As you know, it was here (in Philadelphia) that the Constitution, that infamous document, was signed. It was a document that was already well on its road to destruction in my mind. When people ask me, “Well, when did the Constitution die?” I…
Ross Lence
August 17, 2022
Blog

Capitulation in Virginia

The resignation of Dr. Ann Hunter McLean from her Youngkin appointment to the Virginia Historic Resources Board is of seismic consequence for the Governor and his administration and for the Commonwealth. The Governor and his team were on the ropes in a very tight race in which the electoral outcome was in the balance. His low-key campaign worked to draw…
Cliff Page
August 16, 2022
Blog

The Decaying Distillery

Very few things in my native Fairfax County are especially old. That’s unfortunate, given the county’s founding (1742) predates the United States of America, and boasts the homes of Founding Fathers George Washington and George Mason. Yet post-World War II development rapidly changed the character of the county, and many of the old properties were sold and their ancestral homes…
Casey Chalk
August 15, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 320

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 8-12, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Reconstruction, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-320?si=fb340de708a248db816dfc49c3f78545&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
August 13, 2022
BlogClyde Wilson Library

Emancipation and Its Discontents

There is an interesting little noted fact of African American history that would alter current standard views if it were ever to be properly recognised.  The U.S. African American population was in many measurable respects worse off fifty years after emancipation than it had been before the War Between the States. The census of 1900 showed that the average life…
Clyde Wilson
August 12, 2022
Blog

When Things Go South

“When things go south” is a phrase that typically means matters have taken a turn for the worse.  Well, things have gone south in my family for a while now, and I couldn’t be happier.  That is because I literally mean, gone South, and I feel more at home than I ever imagined possible.  For things to go South, they…
Julie Paine
August 11, 2022
Blog

The War that House Built

It might truly be said that the death, funeral and burial of Thomas Jefferson’s American republic came about at the hands of the nation’s three most prominent wartime presidents . . . with Abraham Lincoln digging the grave, Woodrow Wilson constructing the coffin and Franklin Roosevelt performing the final interment of America’s body politic. As to the wars themselves, while…
John Marquardt
August 10, 2022
Blog

Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 2

By early January 1861, South Carolina had seceded from the Union and stood alone as an independent republic. In the ensuing weeks, six additional Southern States would follow suit. Lame-duck President James Buchanan did nothing to stop the dissolution of the Union, mainly because he did not believe he had any authority to coerce a state, but also preferring to…
Ryan Walters
August 9, 2022
Blog

Aunt Elizabeth, the Desert Fox, and General Jackson

Raised on a tobacco farm at the edge of the Chinquapin Forest in Southern Maryland, my Aunt Elizabeth for much of her life attempted to divest herself of her rustic upbringing.  When she graduated from nursing school, she married and subsequently lived for long spells in South America and Europe.  In spite of all this, fortunately, she never succeeded in…
J.L. Bennett
August 8, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 319

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 1-5, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-319
Brion McClanahan
August 7, 2022
BlogClyde Wilson Library

George W. Kendall of New Orleans–America’s First War Correspondent

In the long range of history the war correspondent, a journalist embedded with a fighting army, is a fairly recent development.  George Kendall was the pioneer.  He was  with Winfield Scott’s army during the U.S/Mexico War 1846—1848, from Vera Cruz to Mexico City.  Like the soldiers he faced sickness and was wounded. His 215 dispatches from Mexico were the primary …
Clyde Wilson
August 5, 2022
Blog

The Attack on Leviathan, Part 3

VI. Still Rebels, Still Yankees Originally published as two essays in the American Review and can be found in the anthology Modern Minds. Many will recognize this chapter’s title from another book of Davidson’s collected essays with the same title published in 1957. Davidson begins recollecting a meeting of Southern writers in Charleston, SC. In 1932, Davidson penned a brief…
Chase Steely
August 4, 2022
Blog

NASCAR Goes Sissy

“As with so many other episodes in early American history, the true story of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion has been purposefully scrubbed from the collective American memory and replaced with a cleaner, more pro-statist version reaffirming one of the core tenets of that doctrine: federal law always trumps conflicting state statutes.” Joe Wolverton, The Abbeville Institute, “A Little Whiskey Rebellion.”…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 3, 2022
Blog

Lord Lyons and the Sectional Conflict, 1859-1861, Part 1

In 1859 the Union of American States entered the final stages of its greatest crisis, one that would eventually split the country in two. America was then a young republic but growing larger and stronger with each passing year. Yet North and South were growing apart, seeing the world through a different lens. The North was more industrial, while the…
Ryan Walters
August 2, 2022
Blog

The Religious Foundations of a Redeemer

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. After the decision was made to build a new capital on land granted by Virginia and Maryland, George Washington gave the task of sorting through proposals for the Federal buildings to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was very, very conscious of the enormity of what was about to happen. He wanted to…
Carey Roberts
August 1, 2022