Monthly Archives

September 2022

Blog

Like Phil Harris Said, “That’s What I Like About the South”

I write a lot about the South. But then it seems necessary if you think “conservative.” That is conservative, not necessarily Republican. Conservatives aligning themselves with Republicans do so because politics is a realm of life much like the environment where dogs live; that is wherever they (dogs) can accredit their lives best.  Conservatives are much like working dogs: Bird…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 30, 2022
BlogMedia Posts

Big Bang Blues

Tom Daniel discusses blues music, from the 2022 Abbeville Institute Summer School at Seabrook Island, SC, July 5-8, 2022 https://youtu.be/NZ9_hcxfpLw Note: The views expressed on abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Tom Daniel
September 29, 2022
Blog

What the Transcendentalists Sought to do to the South

In 1860 your average Southerner did not have, by far, the same worldview as his Northern counterpart. He was, thanks to solid preaching in Southern pulpits, extremely doubtful about the “goodness” of human nature. He believed in the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness and depravity of man. He knew enough of man’s fallen nature to realize that secular political…
Al Benson
September 28, 2022
Blog

Happy Birthday Senator Sam

Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina was arguably one of the most important political figures of the twentieth century. His commitment to the Constitution and willingness to stare down executive power during the 1973 Watergate hearings place him among the great conservative voices in Senate history. Ervin was first and foremost a Tar Heel. He considered his election to the…
Brion McClanahan
September 27, 2022
Blog

The Stranger in Gray

Outside of Portland, Maine, sits the small town of Gray. During the Civil War, the population was around 1,700 residents. While Gray has experienced growth, the area gives the vibe of a typical small American town. Though Maine is one of the least-populated states in the nation today, surprisingly, Mainers played a pivotal role in the U.S. Civil War, seeing…
David Crum
September 26, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 326

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 19-23, 2022 Topics: Cancel Culture, Northern Studies, the Constitution, Southern Tradition, Confederate Monuments https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/podcast-episode-326-mp3
Brion McClanahan
September 24, 2022
Blog

John Reagan Was Right

Texas Senator John Regan was right when he argued in the chamber three months before the opening Civil War shots at Fort Sumter: “Suppose the people of the South would today voluntarily surrender $3 billion in slave property and send their slaves at their expense to the free states, would you accept them as freemen and citizens of your States?…
Philip Leigh
September 23, 2022
Blog

A Hispanic Confederate

Because the ethnic diversity of the Confederate Army is not appreciated by many historians, Jason Boshers, the commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and J. Brian McClure, the commander of the Louisiana Division of the SCV, declared September “Confederate Hispanic Heritage Month.” The ethnically diverse Confederate Army included Irish dock workers in the Louisiana Tigers, the German Fusiliers who…
Samuel W. Mitcham
September 22, 2022
Blog

Removing The Confederate Memorial At Arlington Isn’t About Racial Reconciliation, It’s About Political Power

Amid the steady stream of horrible economic news this week you might have missed a rather bland headline from the Associated Press: “Panel advises removal of Confederate statue at Arlington.” The news itself, that an independent commission charged with renaming U.S. military bases with Confederate names has recommended the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be dismantled and removed, might seem painstakingly…
John Daniel Davidson
September 21, 2022
BlogMedia Posts

The Southern Constitutional Tradition

Brion McClanahan discusses the Southern constitutional tradition, from the 2022 Abbeville Institute Summer School at Seabrook Island, SC, July 5-8, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TCufOUlq_4 Note: The views expressed on abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Abbeville Institute
September 20, 2022
Blog

Give Me That Old Time Rebellion

A while back, some of the folks at Abbeville Institute turned out a fine anthology of the greatest Southern rock melodies of the present day. Music, of course, like most everything else, changes with the times and there were other golden eras for country music that gave the listeners of their day a far different sound and put them in…
John Marquardt
September 19, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 325

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Sept 12-19, 2022 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, Cancel Culture, Southern Politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-325
Brion McClanahan
September 17, 2022
Blog

The Federalist Crucible

From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson have dinner. It looks like funding an assumption of State debts by the general government is not going to go through, and Hamilton’s very worried because U.S. stock is plummeting in the international finance markets. So, a deal is struck. Jefferson will put pressure on his people to…
John Devanny
September 16, 2022
Blog

Destroying the Past to Change the Present

On June 17th, 2015, a deranged white man, Dylan Roof, attacked an all-black prayer meeting in a South Carolina church killing nine of the participants. Of course, most rational, intelligent (that is, ordinary) Americans saw the mass shooting as another opportunity for the “gun violence” crowd to demand an end to the rights of law-abiding Americans to own guns; and…
Valerie Protopapas
September 15, 2022
Blog

Biden’s Political Slavery

Joe Biden’s “address to the nation,” delivered September 1, 2022, was one of the most illuminating—as in revealing—speeches ever given by a president since Lincoln’s speech in which he falsely declared that the Union preceded and created the states. Biden’s speech, as in Lincoln’s speech, was full of emotion and ideological passion, supported by a fawning press but totally absent…
James Ronald Kennedy
September 14, 2022
Blog

History by Emotion

I presume the decision by the U.S. Postal Service leadership didn’t sound like a difficult one, especially in 2022. In Montpelier Station, Virginia, a post office was operating in a building where signs reading “White” and “Colored” hung over two separate doors. The signs were a historical artifact, and were intended to direct visitors to an exhibit about historical racial…
Casey Chalk
September 13, 2022
Blog

The Cry of the Vanquished

Owen Wister’s novel Lady Baltimore is the story of a Northern man spending time in South Carolina around 1905.  He is not your typical arrogant Yankee, but openly acknowledges the modern decay he sees in the North and is sympathetic to the South.  He is staying in a boarding house with a variety of guests; they include Juno, an elderly…
Julie Paine
September 12, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 324

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 5-9, 2022 Topics: Federalism, United States Constitution, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-324?si=437e52939fb0486e8aa31e53914712a4&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahan
September 11, 2022
BlogConferencesMedia Posts

Loving Home

Loving Home by Carey Roberts from the 2022 Abbeville Institute Summer School, July 5-8, 2022 at Seabrook Island, SC https://youtu.be/48dJnuFhfHc Note: The views expressed on abbevilleinstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Carey Roberts
September 9, 2022
Blog

Calhoun and the 21st Century

In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy issued a report on the five most important Senators in United States history. He included John C. Calhoun, and while he understood the historical controversy it might create, Kennedy insisted that Calhoun's "masterful" defense "of the rights of a political minority against the dangers of an unchecked majority" and "his profoundly penetrating and original…
Brion McClanahan
September 8, 2022
Blog

Vendetta Over Alabama

Originally published at barelyablog.com In the mid-1950s my family arrived in Athens, Alabama, I being eleven, my father a mathematician working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in nearby Huntsville. Athens was small, the county seat of Limestone County. The town square had the courthouse in the middle with the statue of a Confederate soldier and a Baptist church. The…
Fred Reed
September 7, 2022
Blog

Old State Rights

From Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics by Charles Henry Ambler Ritchie was not a genius. Either of the others of the great "Democratic Triumvirate" of political editors, Francis P. Blair of the Washington Globe, or Edwin Croswell of the Albany Argus, was his equal in natural ability. Possibly John Hampden Pleasants, Duff Green, and even others surpassed him…
Abbeville Institute
September 6, 2022
BlogPodcast

Podcast Episode 323

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 29 - Sept 2, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Southern tradition, Southern religion https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-323
Brion McClanahan
September 4, 2022
Blog

The Confederate Army and God

This article was first published by Crossfire: The Magazine of the American Civil War Round Table and is republished by permission. Introduction The United States Civil War produced some very dark days in American history. Ideas and values separated the North and the South. The whole world watched as America was at war with itself. Having been established as a…
David Crum
September 2, 2022