Monthly Archives

June 2026

Blog

The Peoples’ Songs

A review of Confederate Poets and Poems, Volume II and III (Shotwell Publishing) edited by Clyde N. Wilson. For anyone who might say I do not have a spine, I would refute him or her by saying, “I most certainly do.  It’s been damaged twice.  And I have the walker, cane, and wheelchair to prove it.” My first bout with spinal…
Randall Ivey
June 30, 2026
Blog

Declarations of Independence: Meanings and Memory

The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is an appropriate moment to reflect upon how far Americans, both elites and regular people, have strayed from the principles of the movement for American independence from Britain. At its worst, the popular culture will celebrate the country’s “birthday” with celebrity entertainers performing in “kitschy” Hollywood…
John Devanny
June 29, 2026
Blog

Willie Jones and the Fight Against Federal Power

When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, North Carolina elected Willie Jones as a delegate, but he declined to accept his seat, recognizing that the gathering intended to create a centralized government that would diminish state sovereignty. A wealthy planter, radical Jeffersonian, and the foremost Anti-Federalist leader in North Carolina, Jones is remembered chiefly for blocking his state's…
Jose Nino
June 26, 2026
Blog

The Paradox of the Lomax Recordings

Every folk song collector runs into the same problem the moment the recording machine actually starts turning: the song they are capturing has never had one fixed shape, and the machine is about to give it one anyway. A ballad sung on a porch in Kentucky on a Tuesday might run six verses. Sung again on Thursday by the same…
Tom Daniel
June 25, 2026
Blog

Whither Leviathan

This is part 2 of my economic lamentations of 21st century America, continuing from my May 18th article ‘Modern Industrialism Is Betraying Us’. On the subject of a nation, I ask myself: what is the purpose of a nation? Is it security, economy, control, binding of a people, or some form of all these things? When so many elements of…
Matthew Conard
June 24, 2026
Blog

Southern Writers in the Modern World

Eugenia Dorothy “Dolly” Blount Lamar was born in Jones County, Georgia in 1867 and spent most of her life in Macon, where Mercer’s spires stood across Tattnall Square from her childhood home. She was Historian-General and President-General of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, helped get Sidney Lanier into the Hall of Fame, worked for the preservation of Stratford, and…
Chase Steely
June 23, 2026
Blog

Fabricating “History”

Joe Ellis, of Mount Holyoke College, has made a career of being controversial. At one point, his tenureship was in jeopardy, as he claimed falsely to his students at Mt. Holyoke College to have fought in the Vietnam War. He did not. Ellis has also been unfriendly to Thomas Jefferson. Yet that, Jefferson-unfriendliness, has been happening at least since the…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 22, 2026
Blog

Context Matters

In February 1837 the Senate took up abolition petitions. Senator William C. Rives of Virginia called slavery a misfortune and an evil in all circumstances, though perhaps the lesser evil in some places. He wanted it both ways. Whine about it but do nothing. Just keep everyone calm and get along. No plan. No action. Pure hedging to preserve the…
Garrick Sapp
June 19, 2026
Blog

Across the Rappahannock

The Confederate Army of 1861 went to war with music built into its structure. Every regiment was required by regulation to maintain a brass band — typically eight to twelve musicians, but authorized up to sixteen — whose duties were not ornamental. They beat the drum calls that moved men out of sleep and into formation before dawn. They played…
Tom Daniel
June 18, 2026
Blog

Can Gen Z Save the Southern Tradition?

Gen Z? Those insane young people on Tik Tok? The ones who are all addicted to the internet and pornography? The overmedicated ones? The ones who talk funny? The ones who embrace far left idiots as heroes and manipulative villains as role models? The generation that never received a biblical education? (Was St Luke on X?) Yes. Those people. My…
Elias Ryan
June 17, 2026
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Thomas Burke: The Architect of States’ Rights in the Federal Constitutions

Edmund Burke is rightly revered in English politics as one who nearly single-handedly steered the government of Great Britain away from friendship or compromise with the atheistic Revolutionaries in France and preserved the ancient, salutary traditions of England when it appeared that nothing would be able to withstand the crushing waves of the diabolical doctrine of the Rights of Man.…
Walt Garlington
June 16, 2026
Blog

A Welcome Elixir

Sometimes we need someone else’s eyes to see our blessings. Most of us view the world thru distorted filters. Everyone reading this has a digital colander that sifts facts to console preconceptions. Images from across the country or around the world form or reinforce certitude about ambiguous (and mostly irrelevant) events. Having been manipulated by scenes on our screens that…
JD Breen
June 15, 2026
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Justice Clarence Thomas, Harry Jaffa, and the Declaration of Independence

In a speech given on April 15, at the University of Texas, to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Justice Clarence Thomas explained the meaning of formal equality before the law, saying: Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that reeked of bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had…
Wanjiru Njoya
June 12, 2026
Blog

Forward the Colors!

From the beginning of my brief tenure I have tried to focus on the fact that the Confederate soldier, whose name we are to protect and whose cause we are to vindicate were and are family members. The word “Sons” in our organisation's name means something. It does not mean the offspring of a ancient “birthing parent” or progeny of…
Paul C. Graham
June 11, 2026
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The Prophetic Southern Voices Who Opposed Federal Overreach

Some of the most forceful warnings against political centralization during the founding era came from a handful of figures rooted in the southern states. Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina produced voices who saw the proposed Constitution as a blueprint for consolidated, potentially tyrannical national power. With the benefit of hindsight, their warnings about the dangers of moving authority from…
Jose Nino
June 10, 2026
Blog

After the Cannons Have Cooled

Southern music is not a single thing. It never has been. What we casually call Southern music is in reality a family of related musical responses to history — responses that look and sound similar on the surface but serve entirely different human purposes. A song written to send men to war is doing something fundamentally different from a song…
Tom Daniel
June 9, 2026
Blog

Was Jefferson Wrong? TEXIT Argues No

The republicanism that Thomas Jefferson envisaged has never enrooted in America. Over its many decades, it has moved increasingly away from a model of thin, decentralized government, where the states are sovereign—a model at least that Jefferson hoped would slowly emerge, beginning with his two terms as president—to thick, centralized government where the federal government is sovereign and economic measures…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 8, 2026
Blog

The South Needs a Good French Translator

A good number of European historians have had interesting views on the War for Southern Independence. They are not born with Yankee self-righteousness or raised with pious Lincoln propaganda. With some cultural distance from the matter, they display fair understanding for the Confederate cause. Many British writers during the war of 1861-65 saw it for what it was---the federal government’s…
Clyde Wilson
June 5, 2026
Blog

Lincoln as a Monster in the Press

Above is a political cartoon of the “civil war” era. (And you thought that today’s political cartoonists were savage!) The cartoonist has managed to place in his work, a very clear, accurate and comprehensive image of Lincoln and his administration as the artist – and the publication – saw the matter at that time. Obviously, neither were devotees of the…
Valerie Protopapas
June 4, 2026
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Gen. Julius Franklin Howell and The Respect that Once Was

Dedication: to the memory of my cousin, Tony – U.S.M.C. Sergeant Dale Anthony Marion (Dec. 10, 1938-May 15, 2026), who was like a second father to me after the loss of my Dad, Dr. Jerry B. Marion (Dec. 10, 1929-Aug. 3, 1981). On June 3rd, 1944—Confederate Memorial Day and the birthday of Jefferson Davis—a former Confederate enlisted man, Julius Franklin…
Forrest L. Marion
June 3, 2026
Blog

Strike the Tent

Phil Leigh passed away April 9, 2026. Fitting. Leigh spent much of his retirement writing about Robert E. Lee and the South and fending off attacks from the woke mob. I met Leigh over a decade ago when we redesigned the website and had a soft relaunch in April 2014. Our website designer told me that he knew a man…
Brion McClanahan
June 2, 2026
Blog

Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Tale of Two Primaries

President Donald J. Trump’s use of the primary to remove his opponents from political office was singularly successful this past primary season.  In the past, the tactic was not always successful. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, much to his later chagrin, attempted the same tactic in 1938 to remove conservative Southern Democrats who began to oppose what they viewed as the…
John Devanny
June 1, 2026