Monthly Archives

May 2025

Blog

Why not “We the States”?

Editor's Note: Henry delivered this speech in June, 1788 at the opening of the Virginia Ratifying Convention and is reprinted here in honor of his birthday, May 29. EXTRACT FROM SPEECH ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. THE preamble and the two first sections of the first article of the constitution being under consideration, Mr. Henry thus addressed the convention: MR. CHAIRMAN:…
Abbeville Institute
May 30, 2025
Blog

Hubris

Serious studies of the causes of both the American Revolution and the later “Civil War” (sic) must produce the conclusion among scholars that one cannot truly understand the second “civil war” that took place in the middle of the 19th Century without an in-depth understanding of the causes of the first civil war that took place at the end of…
Valerie Protopapas
May 29, 2025
Blog

Beyond the Stone

A Review Beyond The Stone: Poems of Praise and Remembrance (Green Altar Books, 2025) by James Everett Kibler It wouldn’t be difficult to ridicule the poetry gathered in this volume—that is, if one had no sympathy for traditionalist, formal poetics, especially poetry embedded in Southern tradition and sensibility. A hostile critic might suggest that Jim Kibler dwells in world suffused…
Jack Trotter
May 28, 2025
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The Destruction of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

In 1985, Daniel Jordan—a Ph.D. in history from University of Virginia—became president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and runs Monticello. He would preside over Monticello for the next 24 years, during which time Thomas Jefferson’s life and legacy would be radically transformed through information made readily available by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Under his guidance, TJF created a…
M. Andrew Holowchak
May 27, 2025
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White Sulphur Manifesto

Editor's note: In 1868, former Union General William Rosecrans approached Robert E. Lee about making a statement in support of the Democratic ticket for the 1868 presidential election. The Republicans stirred fear among the Northern electorate that a Democratic victory would destroy race relations and subject black Southerners to harsh treatment at the hands of their former masters. This was…
Abbeville Institute
May 26, 2025
Blog

Trump’s Crusade to Rewrite History

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. - St. John 8:32 Mr. Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, writes that “The history of enslavement, segregation and discrimination in the United States traditionally has been seen as a Southern story.” This has been true ever since Reconstruction, for, as the…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.
May 23, 2025
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Nottoway

The South lost another cultural jewel. On May 15, Nottoway, the largest antebellum plantation home in the South, burned to the ground. The fire reportedly started in one of the second story bedrooms, but the cause of the blaze is still under investigation. And while it appears to be an accidental electrical fire, in our current political climate, arson can…
Brion McClanahan
May 22, 2025
Blog

Abolitionist Hypocrisies

Originally published at Mises.org. Lysander Spooner is well known as an abolitionist who argued that slavery was a violation of natural law. In his 1858 pamphlet, “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery, and To the Non-Slaveholders of the South,” Spooner set out what he considered to be the relevant “principles of justice and humanity,” arguing that “so long as…
Wanjiru Njoya
May 21, 2025
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Did Lincoln Deliberately Provoke War and Why?

It’s pretty well known that strong evidence exists from Lincoln’s own pen that he deliberately sent the resupply ships to Ft. Sumter to provoke war. Gustavus V. Fox was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy who oversaw the “rescue fleet” for Fort Sumter. Abraham Lincoln had provoked his war and was pleased but "concerned that Gustavus Fox, was depressed that…
Rod O'Barr
May 20, 2025
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Christian Nationalism and Country Music

These days some people are talking up “Christian nationalism.” It is not clear to me what Christ and nationalism have to do with each other. The New Testament, unlike the Old, strikes me as a message of liberation from nationalism. It’s true that America began as a Christian society and remained so until fairly recent times. However, our Founders did…
Clyde Wilson
May 19, 2025
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M.E. Bradford: In Memoriam

Originally published in the Fourth Quarter 1992 edition of Southern Partisan. I’m always amazed at how wisely good people face death, how perfectly they focus their attention at the end. 1 got a call from Mel Bradford the night before he was to undergo open-heart surgery; and we talked for a few minutes about the huge number of these operations…
Thomas Landess
May 16, 2025
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Reconstructed But Unregenerate

From I'll Take My Stand (1930) It is out of fashion in these days to look backward rather than forward. About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living. He is punished as his crime deserves. He feels himself in…
John Crowe Ransom
May 15, 2025
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To Free or Not to Free

It is often acknowledged that Jefferson did much in his years prior to his retirement from political activity to try to eradicate the institution of slavery. Writes Gilbert Chinard in Thomas Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism: “No New Englander had done more to promote the cause of abolition than Jefferson; on two occasions he had proposed legislative measures to put…
M. Andrew Holowchak
May 14, 2025
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On the Settling of North Louisiana: The Yeoman Farmers

Section iv of The Dwelling Place I have not changed any of my views on Agrarianism since the appearance of I’ll Take My Stand . . . . I never thought of Agrarianism as a restoration of anything in the Old South; I saw it as something to be created, as I think it will be in the long run…
David Middleton
May 13, 2025
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Springtime of Renewal in Serbia, but What of Dixie?

The European Christian country of Serbia may be considered something of a sister of Dixie’s.  Both peoples have followed similar paths:  After attaining a solid Christian identity and unity, both faced an horrible cataclysm:  The Serbs were conquered by the Muslim Turks in the 14th century and remained their vassals until the 19th century; the South was subjugated to the…
Walt Garlington
May 9, 2025
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The Wide Awakes

Originally published at the Alabama Gazette. C-Span recently featured John Grinspan speaking about the Wide Awakes, a topic covered on the Abbeville Blog and in Chapter Seven of my book, Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation. As early as 1856, numerous paramilitary clubs were organized in support of the Republican Party. Examples included the Rocky Mountain Clubs, Freedom…
John M. Taylor
May 8, 2025
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What the Confederate Constitution Got Right

In today’s hypersensitive society, saying anything nice about the South, and especially the Confederacy, could very well be a death sentence in many job fields, not to mention academia. The clowns of “cancel culture” will be out in force. This should come as a shock to no one, for the South has always had to defend itself, first in the…
Ryan Walters
May 7, 2025
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Building Conservatism

"I have never subscribed to the idea, apparently held by some, that conservatism is only a brake on somebody else's engine. Such persons seem to think that a conservative has done his job when he has issued a warning against going too fast." -- Richard Weaver, In Defense of Tradition (The Prospects of Conservatism). Recently I’ve began to read a…
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
May 6, 2025
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I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton…

Recently someone posted on Facebook that they had recently purchased a DVD copy of the 1948 picture-show (“picture show” being Southern for the Yankee appellation “movie”) Song of the South. SS being the award-winning partial animation of tales written in the 19th Century by Joel Chandlor Harris about animal characters and their personification of Southerners. Probably Southerners from Georgia, since…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 5, 2025
Blog

The Sede Vacante of Southern Tradition

Pope Francis was, at most, a peripheral figure in the story of the South.  Though the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination, his influence has largely remained on the Catholic fringes of our cultural sphere – Texas, Cajun country, Florida, Maryland, Savannah, and in pockets of many of our larger cities.  I primarily heard about Pope Francis and his…
J. Shaw Gillis
May 1, 2025