Monthly Archives

February 2024

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The Gaslighting Commission and American History

This month marks 160 years since a relatively unrecognized, but noteworthy, battle between Union and Confederate forces in which black soldiers participated in relatively large numbers. The noteworthiness was not in terms of strategic significance, consequential results, exceptional leadership, or recognized valor. Rather, Olustee was the battle in which a relatively recent phenomenon – black U.S. soldier regiments – probably…
Forrest L. Marion
February 29, 2024
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The Use and Misuse of History

“I am heir to  the greatest civilization the world has ever known. I’d like to defend it but I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” --Alice Teller “By 2050—earlier probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared.  The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed….shall exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually…
Clyde Wilson
February 28, 2024
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Jefferson on the Pleasure of Pleasure Gardening

Thomas Jefferson, like others of his day, was a patron and admirer of the fine arts, which were “fine” because they were autotelic—viz., enjoyed as ends in themselves. The number of the Fine Arts was a matter of debate in his day. To granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph (10 July 1805), President Jefferson writes: I must observe that neither the number…
M. Andrew Holowchak
February 27, 2024
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I am the South

I AM THE SOUTH (After Padraig Pearse, Mise Eire) I am the South: I am older than Helena's dead. Great my glory: I that bore Jackson and Lee. Great now my shame: My children that bartered a mother. Great now my sorrow: My true sons betrayed. I am the South: I am lonelier than Helena's dead.
James Everett Kibler
February 26, 2024
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Why the North Wanted to Preserve the Union

One of the reasons for forming the United States in 1789 was to permit the thirteen states to trade among themselves with minimal interference. One example of interference occurred two years earlier when New York state unilaterally increased customs fees and assessed heavy clearance fees on vessels arriving from—or bound to—New Jersey and Connecticut. Similar disputes affected others among the…
Philip Leigh
February 23, 2024
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Forgotten Southern Wisdom

Over the years I  have occasionally encountered references to Edward P. Lawton’s book The South and the Nation. I was never able to find it until recently when  I was able to get a copy from  a company in India called Skilled Books.  This reprint is nicely printed and bound without any date or copyright  information. Lawton was from Savannah,…
Clyde Wilson
February 22, 2024
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Self-Evident Truths

Armies sometimes crush liberty, but they cannot conquer ideas. Jabez L. M. Curry (Lieutenant colonel, CSA, 1861-1865) From the African continent to the shores of America, the people coercively enslaved were victims of government action, inaction, or a combination of the two. Whether the government is led by a tribal chieftain or a so-called representative government, all governments are political…
Marshall DeRosa
February 21, 2024
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Thomas Jefferson’s “Holy War”

In a singular letter late in life to John Wayles Eppes (6 Nov. 1813), Thomas Jefferson describes the American Revolution as a “holy war.” He writes, “If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independance.” The letter rather mundanely concerns Jefferson’s abhorrence of banks and paper money. The letter I consider…
M. Andrew Holowchak
February 20, 2024
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The Closed Book of Southern Literature

Until the publication of Jay B. Hubbell’s great The South in American Literature 1607-1900 (Duke University 1954), nobody remembered many of the South’s great writers, apart from Edgar Allan Poe and, if only by deprecation, maybe Joel Chandler Harris.  Now nobody remembers Jay B. Hubbell. Hubbell’s work extends beyond scholarship through antiquarianism practically to archaeology.  The chief reason why modern…
Kevin Orlin Johnson
February 19, 2024
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Remembering an American President

From Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir (1890) Mr. Davis’s apparent feebleness had been accompanied by enough increase in weight to encourage my hopes of his health improving. He never stooped, but retained his fine soldierly carriage, and always walked with a light, firm step, and with apparent ease; his voice was sweet and sonorous as ever. A slight deafness…
Varina Davis
February 16, 2024
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Immigration, Race, and Poverty in the North

Mass immigration played a large role in the War for Southern Independence in some obvious ways. It provided a workforce for large scale industrialization, it populated the Midwest and created a large population and economic advantage when war did come, it brought large Catholic and Lutheran populations to the north threatening Yankee cultural purity, and it brought the neo-Marxists 48’ers…
James (Jim) Pederson
February 15, 2024
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Lincoln Sells His Slaves

“The literature on Abraham Lincoln is vast, but it isn’t very good.”  You have to love a book with a first sentence like that!  The book is Kevin Orlin Johnson’s The Lincolns in the White House. While he has some interesting history of the Executive Mansion (the White House) the author is not limited to that one place and  short…
Clyde Wilson
February 14, 2024
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Lincoln on Stilts

Thomas DiLorenzo, the President of the Mises Institute, has already reviewed Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation (Shotwell Publishing 2024) in characteristically excellent fashion, but the book is so insightful that some further comments are warranted. It is clear that Graham has a philosophical turn of mind and is a master of linguistic…
David Gordon
February 13, 2024
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Rowan Oak, June 1998

High circling hawk was clue: This is your home My kinsman true. Allspice bush in cedared yard Gave evidences too Green would and blue, The red-tail, far too far to hear Its brittle cry (But at my hone outside the window high, Persimmon perched, we're eye to eye-- Same hawk, same cry.) I leave the hawk behind And walk the…
James Everett Kibler
February 12, 2024
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How Northern Stupidity and Plundering Saved a Southern City

Lynchburg, Virginia, today displays many markers of its Civil War history. There are several signs in and around the city that indicate where Confederate forces were placed in defense of the city. There is a statue of a Confederate infantryman at the top of Monument Terrace. In Riverside Park, what is left of the hull of Marshall, which carried the…
M. Andrew Holowchak
February 8, 2024
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New York v. Tennessee

You’ve probably already seen the video of a mob beating up two New York City police officers. The incident happened about 10 days ago in broad daylight in Times Square, one of the most prominent public places and tourist attractions in New York. The video shows two officers apprehending a suspect who resists arrest and is wrestled to the pavement,…
John Avery Emison
February 7, 2024
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Monument Desecration in the U.S.: “If It’s Not Love….”

What do pro-Israel Jewish Americans, Italian Americans, and American Southerners have in common?  First and most obviously, they have proud traditions based on Judeo-Christian ethics.  Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, the predominant religions in the groups, share belief in God though there are many and complex variations in their beliefs and practices.  Second, another important thing they have in common is…
Philip Dickey, MD
February 6, 2024
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Democrats Did Not Keep Lincoln Off the Ballot

Democrat activists in Colorado and Maine dictatorially kicked Trump off the primary ballot in those states.  Historically ignorant Neocons had a field day, labeling the Left as “Neo-Confederates.” Fox News Jesse Watters ranted, “Democrats booted Lincoln off the ballot in 10 states.” Declaring that “history always has a way of repeating itself,” he continued, “Just like Southern Democrats did to…
Carole Hornsby Haynes
February 5, 2024
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Mr. H

When I was in school, many of my teachers were from North Carolina, one of them Miss M., a large and rather loud woman with steel-grey hair.  We liked her much better than her predecessor, the Chicagoan with the prominent nose who mocked our country speech.  We also liked our North Carolinian physical education teacher, a right pleasant person.  And…
J.L. Bennett
February 2, 2024
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Will Southern Literature Survive?

A few weeks ago, a man in our town was hospitalized because he was beaten upside the head with a horseshoe by his ex-wife. As I understand it, she showed up to her ex-husband’s family reunion as the “Plus One” of his second cousin. The incident occurred when the assailant found out that her ex, who hadn’t paid child support…
Brandon Meeks
February 1, 2024