Monthly Archives

April 2026

Blog

What Makes A Historian?

Some readers have encouraged me to identify as a historian, despite my not having a degree in history. For a long time, I have been reluctant to do so, thinking it would be both presumptuous and misleading, but I have recently changed my mind. Here is why. I think the very first seed was planted when I was interviewed by…
Jeb Smith
April 21, 2026
Blog

Gone With The Wind

Originally published at Reckonin.com At the University of South Carolina is a striking classical Greek building known as the South Caroliniana Library. It was built in 1840 by the outstanding architect Robert Mills and was said to be the first American college building for a separate library. The building anchors one side of the open end of a “horseshoe” of…
Clyde Wilson
April 20, 2026
Blog

Southerners for the King

Never has history been so perverted, never did misrepresentations so effectively deceive. Lewis L. Bogart, United Empire Loyalists (UEL) descendant, Adolphustown, Upper Canada, 1884 The American Revolution in the southern colonies was a ferocious civil war, particularly in the back county.  The 250-year anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence falls on the present year, 2026.  Contemporaries estimated that the…
Charles Roberts, MD
April 17, 2026
Blog

Bring Back the Southern Gentleman

Originally published at 1819News.com There is a man disappearing. Not suddenly – the way a candle gutters – but slowly, the way a word falls out of a language. No one notices until someone reaches for it and finds only air. I knew him once. We all did, or thought we did, which amounts to the same thing in a…
Allen Mendenhall
April 16, 2026
Blog

Constitutional Government and the Tenth Amendment

Originally published at Mises.org In their book Who Killed the Constitution, Thomas E. Woods and Kevin C.R. Gutzman argue that the demise of constitutionalism—the principle of limited government—is by no means a recent development. It can be traced back several decades, “close to a century.” It is not the work of just one political party or another, but an assault…
Wanjiru Njoya
April 15, 2026
Blog

Jefferson Could Play

We love to affectionately remember Thomas Jefferson as a mind detached from the body. Many accounts present him as a man of paper, of correspondence, of carefully arranged ideas set down in elegant prose. The familiar image is that of the “Sage of Monticello,” seated at a writing desk, producing language that would echo across the centuries. That image is…
Tom Daniel
April 14, 2026
Blog

Jefferson’s Bill for Religious Freedom

Jefferson’s most significant writing apropos of freedom of religion is his Bill for Religious Freedom, Bill 82 of the 126 bills proposed by him, Wythe, and Pendleton for the revisal of Virginia’s code of laws in 1776. Dumas Malone states in Jefferson and the Rights of Man, “Belief in the freedom of religion—which to him meant freedom of the mind—lay…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 13, 2026
Blog

The Tempo of a Civilization

Why does Southern music move the way it does? I’m not talking about a particular instrument it favors or a particular chord progression it follows. I’m talking about why Southern music leans into such a smooth shuffle groove instead of velocity, why it settles back instead of lunging forward, and why it stretches instead of snaps. And why, if one…
Tom Daniel
April 10, 2026
Blog

A Southern Future?

This piece was originally published at Reckonin.com Rather than continuing my detailed history of the Southern people I wish to comment on our situation at the moment, 2026, and prospects for the future. We have never been in greater danger of losing our identity as of the South. The population has changed. There are rust belt refugees. Some of these…
Clyde Wilson
April 9, 2026
Blog

The Strange Career of the Fourteenth Amendment

When the first session of the 39th Congress met in December 1865, Radical Republicans were out for blood. President Lincoln had been assassinated in April and the new president, Andrew Johnson, had crafted what he thought was a good plan of reconstructing the South, based on what he meant by reconstruction and that was to restore those states back to…
Ryan Walters
April 8, 2026
Blog

Distorting the Declaration

No "conservative" has done more damage to the interpretation of the American past than Harry Jaffa. He spent his career attaching the conservative movement to Abraham Lincoln and more importantly to a distorted version of the Declaration of Independence. Modern conservatism relies on Jaffa's version of the Declaration, and with the 250th anniversary of the adoption of Jefferson's work this…
Abbeville Institute
April 7, 2026
Blog

Cultural Reawakening is Not Impossible

Powerful people have conspired to erase Southern culture over the last several decades, many, but not all, of them of Northern extraction.  George Orwell would recognize the methods used.  Many historical truths have been thrown down the Memory Hole, while the honorable men of Dixie – Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, and many others – are subjected…
Walt Garlington
April 6, 2026
Blog

The Sound of Southern Easter

The South has produced many distinctive musical traditions, but few are as recognizable or as beloved as the Southern gospel quartet. I’ve written many essays about Sacred Harp and gospel, but I have inexcusably written very little about the Southern gospel quartet. And what better time of year than Easter to celebrate one of the most iconic sounds of the…
Tom Daniel
April 3, 2026
Blog

What Can We Learn From the Confederacy?

April is Confederate History or Heritage Month in six States. Virginia used to recognize the month as well, but no longer. Many Americans tend to believe that "Southern history" is nothing more than "Confederate history." That would relegate the history of the region to a failed four year attempt at independence. Drew Gilpiln Faust, former President of Harvard University and…
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2026
Blog

Melungeons

What is a Melungeon? Deep in southern Appalachia, there is a people whose history is clouded with ambiguity, but also intense distinction. Their exact origin is relatively unknown, but they have called these particular mountains home since well before the American War for Independence. The Melungeon (pronounced Meh-Lun-Jin) people are a historically distinct group whose roots lie in the rugged…
Cole Branham
April 1, 2026