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July 30, 2021

The Wild Man

At the top of the hill where my great-grandparents lived, there was a dusty, black and white picture on a shelf. It could’ve been my grandpa or great-uncle, but it…
Travis Holt 0
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July 29, 2021

Daniel Webster on the Expansion of Slavery

Daniel Webster was one of the most notable Northern statesmen of his day. He was an American lawyer who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress.  His list of…
Rod O'Barr 0
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July 28, 2021

Disunion Sentiment in Congress in 1794

John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, one year before James Madison, and the boys were neighbors; but Taylor afterwards moved to Caroline County, where he lived…
Gaillard Hunt 0
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July 27, 2021

What Makes This Musician Great? – Duane Allman

Recently, I started looking into the connections between musical preferences and personality types.  In the early and middle parts of the 20th century, there were some questionable and unfortunate attempts…
Tom Daniel 0
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July 26, 2021

Who’s Your People?

“Who's your people?” Though now somewhat rare, one still hears that question in Dixie, usually uttered from the lips of older or rural Southerners. Much is implied by the question.…
Casey Chalk 1
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July 23, 2021

Monuments

Their carven words all testify Of then and now and future time That these were they who kept the cause Was given them by fathers past And living still in…
James Everett Kibler 0
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July 22, 2021

Was the Battle of Liberty Place a “Race Riot”?

Although commonly portrayed as one of the largest mob attacks on blacks by white racists during Reconstruction, the so-called 1874 Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans was really a…
Philip Leigh 0
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July 21, 2021

Conservatism’s Dixie Roots

It is maddening to listen to people who attempt “conservative thought” with but a shallow mentality for the concept.  True conservative thought comes from the seeds of agrarians and various…
Paul H. Yarbrough 1
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July 20, 2021

Responding to the Scalawags

If timid and pacified Southerners needed more proof that we are a defeated and occupied people, then indisputable proof was recently provided by the United States House of Representatives. At…
James Ronald Kennedy 1
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July 19, 2021

How Southerners Committed Cultural and Political Suicide

Many Southerners are familiar with James “Ron” Kennedy and his brother, Walter “Donnie” Kennedy, who are prolific writers and staunch defenders of (what is left of) Southern tradition and heritage.…
Boyd Cathey 1
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July 16, 2021

Monuments According to Pliny the Younger

“To those who are ignorant of the jurisprudence of their country can have no taste for reasoning…” Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born roughly 61 A.D, to…
Justin Pederson 1
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July 15, 2021

Rules for Northern Immigrants

With the onset of the latest leftist government regime, many Americans are migrating South to escape oppressive taxes and gain other income advantages. Some of you may even be moving…
Leslie Alexander 6
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July 14, 2021

The Amendment That Never Was

The date of the latest federal holiday, June 19th, was touted as the one marking the end of slavery in America. While few today would argue with the idea of…
John Marquardt 0
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July 13, 2021

The Cyclic March of History

Hit mus’ be now de kingdom comin’, an’ de year ob Jubilo! ... (1) "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" has come down to us as the lofty rallying-cry of the French Revolution,…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 1
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July 12, 2021

The Star that is Called Wormwood

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and…
Enoch Cade 1
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July 9, 2021

The Happy Land of Cannan

The happy land of Caannan may be a Biblical story, but for some of us, it truly was fact. Growing up on the land my ancestors settled in the 1850s…
Travis Holt 0
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July 8, 2021

The True Cause of the War Between the States

I have been studying the War Between the States for 53 years. In all those years, the one quotation I have read which summarizes the true reason for the differences…
Timothy A. Duskin 0
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July 7, 2021

John Pelham and the “Myth of the Lost Cause”

Some twenty years ago I had planned to write a full-length study of John Pelham—known in the South as the Gallant John Pelham—and the making of myth. The business of…
Thomas Hubert 2
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July 6, 2021

Aristotle vs. Hobbes–The Cause of the Great War

The "ultimate cause" of the War of Secession was two mutually exclusive understanding of government. The South embraced the view of Aristotle that government was a natural outgrowth of communal…
Valerie Protopapas 3
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July 5, 2021

Independence Day and the Preservation of History

July 4, “Independence Day,” has become for most Americans little more than another holiday, a day off from work, and a time to barbecue with family and friends. Yet, the…
Boyd Cathey 2
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July 2, 2021

A New 4th of July Resolution

The solution offered by Mr Vivek Ramaswamy to the destructive ideology of the Woke Social Justice Warriors could not be stranger: The antidote isn’t to fight wokeness directly. It can’t…
Walt Garlington 2
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July 1, 2021

Cousin Lucius

The Southern version of Thoreau’s Walden may be considered I’ll Take by Stand, by Twelve Southerners, with its subtitle, The South and the Agrarian Tradition.  It was published in 1930…
Charles Stewart Roberts, MD 0
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June 30, 2021

When Bing Crosby Sang Dixie

In past columns I have written about some classic films, some of which have been effectively banned or “cancelled” by our contemporary cultural gatekeepers. The case of the immortal Disney…
Boyd Cathey 0
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June 29, 2021

Lincoln and the Border States

A review of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2014) by William C. Harris. William C. Harris has set before him the admirable task…
Terry Hulsey 0
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June 28, 2021

Facebook and Old Glory

Facebook canceled the Abbeville Institute. I was notified on June 10 that the Abbeville Institute Facebook page had been unpublished due to “repeated community standards violations.” Our offenses? We used…
Brion McClanahan 5
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June 25, 2021

Requiem for a Hell Raiser

We all, as we go through life, encounter people that who deserve to be remembered. Everyone does, in a sense. But all these people, their good and bad characteristics, are…
Travis Holt 3
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June 24, 2021

A Plague on the South

While the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has also wreaked havoc throughout the South, there was an even more deadly epidemic that attacked a number of Southern states almost a century…
John Marquardt 1
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June 23, 2021

The Latin South

“The Hispanic community understands the American Dream and have not forgotten what they were promised,” declared Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who fled their native land…
Casey Chalk 0
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June 22, 2021

When Did We Have a Civil War, Virginia?

God’s guidance and blessing began in Virginia. But Civil War is where we are today.  For those who have had the usual blather from a contemporary public-school education, a little…
Paul H. Yarbrough 0
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June 21, 2021

The Righteous Cause Myth Strikes Again

As most Americans have learned by now, in their rush to do something politically correct, Congress passed, and the president signed, a bill making “Juneteenth” a federal holiday.  Some of…
Samuel Ashwood 0
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June 18, 2021

Grave Robbers

Grave Robbers are the new norm in Southern city government.
Sarah Sass 0
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June 17, 2021

Defending the West Against the Barbarians

Sometimes readers will ask me: “Why did you write on that? What were you trying to say?” My response has always been that just about everything I attempt to convey, to…
Boyd Cathey 0
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June 16, 2021

The Real VMI: A Little Meritocracy, 1839-2021?

On June 1, 2021, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) – historic, meritocratic, renowned for rigor and its graduates’ service, and, for decades as color-blind as any institution may reasonably expect…
Forrest L. Marion 0
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June 15, 2021

Rebirthing Lincoln

A review of Rebirthing Lincoln, A Biography (Southern Books, 2021) by Howard Ray White I have always been skeptical of historical mysteries.  We know that there have been people who…
Clyde Wilson 0
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June 14, 2021

A Southern Song, A Southern Heritage–Canceled

“When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about, it is a part of our identity.  To tell libellous lies about our ancestors is a…
J.L. Bennett 0
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June 11, 2021

Secession Was Not About Slavery

Original in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society. First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to…
Rod O'Barr 0
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June 10, 2021

The Lincoln Assassination Plot–An Alternate History

A review of The Retribution Conspiracy: The Rise of the Confederate Secret Service (Scuppernong Press, 2021) by Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. In a world full of ever arising new…
James Ronald Kennedy 0
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June 9, 2021

Abraham Lincoln and the Misinterpretation of American History

The Federalist online magazine has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative media. This hit home for me on May…
Boyd Cathey 0
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June 8, 2021

Western Civilization-Post Scriptum

I once wrote an article on the problems arising from what I termed “group condemnation.” I believed that in attempting to warn people of dangers lurking in the culture, those…
Valerie Protopapas 0
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June 7, 2021

Fighting for 5 Miles

As Memorial Day approaches, I am thinking of a man I never met. His name is Charles Willis Kessler; he was a young, second Lieutenant from the small town of…
Averyell A. Kessler 0
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June 4, 2021

A Cascadian Confederacy?

Nearly two weeks ago, five counties in Oregon voted to approve a measure to secede from the state and join its neighbor Idaho. The counties of Malheur, Sherman, Baker, Grant,…
Cole Branham 0
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June 3, 2021

Is Secession Treason?

And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crimeAre pronest to it, and impute themselves…Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1) The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 0
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June 2, 2021

On “Good Uses” for the Confederate Flag

One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among "good uses" for the Confederate battle flag are "diaper, shop rag,…
Rev. Larry Beane 2
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June 1, 2021

Academy of Southern Music

My name is Tom Daniel, and I’m a happy guy.  I’m naturally optimistic, and I love talking about all the good things that come from the South.  I get discouraged…
Tom Daniel 0
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May 31, 2021

Slavery and Agency

Reviewers are unrelenting in their praise for the new Amazon streaming television series The Underground Railroad, a magic realist cinematographic depiction of the eponymous book by Colson Whitehead, which won…
Casey Chalk 0
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May 28, 2021

Time

“How time changes everything.” This quote came from the lips of a fairly surprised man of around 80, my dear great-uncle Carl Ray, as we descended into the valley of…
Travis Holt 0
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May 27, 2021

Faust and the Devil–Teachers, Histrionic Historians

Why bother with opening the schools, if all that you’ll have is the same uneducated blowhards filling the minds of children with the same monstrous mush that is conjured by…
Paul H. Yarbrough 0
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May 26, 2021

The 19th Century Roots of Black Liberation Theology and Critical Race Theory

While Critical Race Theory and Black Liberation Theology are 20th century creations, the cultural and theological roots of these ideas find a clear path back to the mid 1800’s. Black…
James (Jim) Pederson 0
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May 25, 2021

“Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home”

Seventy-six years ago, on May 8, 1945, at 2301 hours, Central European Time, World War II in Europe officially ended. Although the war would continue in the Pacific Theatre for…
Boyd Cathey 0
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May 24, 2021

Bad History Masquerading as an Appeal to Peace and Piety: A Response to Allen Guelzo’s “Why We Must Forget the Lost Cause”

It is a testimony to the prevalence of anti-Southern sentiment that The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the most prominent evangelical parachurch entities, has provided a platform for such sentiments…
Tom Hervey 0
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May 21, 2021

Listening to Miss Eudora

For Christmas, I gave my granddaughter a compilation of Eudora Welty’s novels. She’s an avid reader and tore into the book as soon as she unwrapped it. The short stories,…
Averyell A. Kessler 0
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May 20, 2021

Make History History Again

In the 1986 comedy film Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield’s character, Thornton Mellon, a wealthy, middle-aged father, decided to attend college with his young son. Never serious about the endeavor,…
Ryan Walters 0
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May 19, 2021

The Attack on Marco Bassani

Originally posted at LewRockwell.com You may remember a meme circulating widely after the U.S. presidential election last November with a picture of Kamala Harris and the following comment: “She will…
Jo Ann Cavallo 0
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Review Posts
May 18, 2021

A Primer on Secession

A review of  Secession, State & Liberty, (Transaction, 1998) edited with an introduction by David Gordon. If there is a single book you should read on the subject of secession,…
Terry Hulsey 0
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May 17, 2021

The Professor and the Proposition

As the “Exceptional Nation” totters and pratfalls further toward perdition, some on what is commonly, if not entirely accurately, known as the “Right” are calling for the various factions to…
Enoch Cade 0
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May 14, 2021

The Statues Should Stay Up

During the ongoing debate regarding the removal of the monuments honoring Confederate Generals, those in support of the statues often say in defense, “The statues are part of America’s history;…
Prioleau Alexander 0
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May 13, 2021

Angers Away

Over half a century before the Imperial German Navy launched its new and deadly method of undersea warfare against the Allied navies and merchant shipping in World War One, the…
John Marquardt 0
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May 12, 2021

Robert E. Lee: The Educator

Continued from Part 3.  “And of all the officers or men whom I ever knew he came (save one other alone) the nearest in likeness to that classical ideal Chevalier Bayard…And…
Earl Starbuck 0
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May 11, 2021

Carry Me Back to Old Virginny

In the early 1870s, a young pre-law student at Howard College was inspired by classmate and future wife, Mamie Friend. James Alan Bland would listen to the homesick sentiments of…
James W. Whitehead V 0
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May 10, 2021

Did Slavery End on June 19th?

After the end of the War Between the States, the Union army established the District of Texas under the command of Major General Gordon Granger. The Emancipation Proclamation had been…
Timothy A. Duskin 0
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May 7, 2021

Conservative as “Defender of Liberty”

In 1960, the great Southern political philosopher Richard Weaver penned an essay titled “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground.” Most people considered Weaver to be a “conservative,” and he accepted…
Brion McClanahan 0
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May 6, 2021

Wokeism is Like Kudzu

Wokeism is a bit like kudzu. It’s not indigenous to the South, but once it starts growing… brother you better believe it will be hard to contain. And soon enough,…
Casey Chalk 0
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May 5, 2021

Robert E. Lee: The Soldier

Continued from Part 2. “He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring…a Christian without hypocrisy…He…
Earl Starbuck 0
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May 4, 2021

Southern Orthodoxy

A review of Preachers with Power: Four Stalwarts of the South (Banner of Truth, 1992) by Douglas F. Kelly I first became aware of Douglas F. Kelly through some videos…
Karen Stokes 0
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May 3, 2021

The Disappearance of Southern Conservatism

Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon, and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost—it seems—on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,”…
Boyd Cathey 0
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April 30, 2021

Contemplation in an Evil Time

Written in the Year 2021 Hampton, our stalwart Wade,             As wily as Odysseus in warAs full of rage for truth in time of fraud             As any celebrated Greek,He saw his…
James Everett Kibler 0
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April 29, 2021

Twitter Historians Distort History, Again.

Marjorie Taylor Greene forced the political left into an apoplectic rage two weeks ago when they discovered she intended to form an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”…
Brion McClanahan 0
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April 28, 2021

Robert E. Lee: The Father

Continued from Part I. “He was a superb specimen of manly grace and elegance…There was about him a stately dignity, calm poise, absolute self-possession, entire absence of self-consciousness, and gracious…
Earl Starbuck 0
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April 27, 2021

Daybreak in Dixie

Daybreak in Dixie:  Poems of the Confederacy by Linda Lee. Privately published, 2019. For those of us who value the history of our Southern people, these are the worst of…
Clyde Wilson 0
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April 26, 2021

Reconstruction is America’s Longest War

On April 14, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden announced that, beginning May 1, the United States would begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. The project to extract the Yankee Empire from…
Jason Morgan 0
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April 23, 2021

The Knight of Melrose

Ah! My Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?For now I see the true old times are dead…        Tennyson, from Idylls of the King…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 0
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April 22, 2021

Robert E. Lee: The Believer

In the Year of Our Lord 2021, it is fashionable for American Christians to despise the antebellum South. Many Christian leaders, Evangelical and otherwise, have defended or even applauded the…
Earl Starbuck 0
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April 21, 2021

Robert E. Lee: Educator and Conciliator

Robert E. Lee considered reconciliation and education to be his highest duties after the War. While many other Confederate leaders left the United States, Lee remained in Virginia and worked…
Philip Leigh 0
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April 20, 2021

Abundant Acreage Available

Like many traditional-minded people of this era, I have become disenchanted with products of the modern movie industry which are mostly either filth, silliness, or formulaic pablum. To my fortunate…
Anne Wilson Smith 0
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April 19, 2021

Equality is NOT America’s Founding Principle

Our “conservative” punditry go forth daily in what seems increasingly to be an already lost battle against the agenda of the left and its progressivist minions in and outside the…
Boyd Cathey 0
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April 16, 2021

Remembering John C. Calhoun

The spring of 1850 is an ominous perpetrator. Notwithstanding the crisis our country faced during those trying years leading to the so-called compromise of 1850, March 31st marks the death…
Brad Pond 0
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April 15, 2021

The Postwar Lee at Washington College

Robert E. Lee's tenure as President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) should be regarded as one of the most important events in American educational history, and it…
Philip Leigh 0
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April 14, 2021

Foxes in the Henhouse

During the past half century, there has been an ever-increasing tide of derogatory comments about the South in general and the Confederacy in particular.  In more recent years, what began…
John Marquardt 0
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Review Posts
April 13, 2021

Separate but Equal?

A Review of Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation (W.W. Norton, 2019) by Steve Luxenberg In 21st-Century America, there are precious few…
Joshua Doggrell 0
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April 12, 2021

The “First Shot” Revisited

We have been told that the first shot fired in the "Civil War” was fired by the Confederacy at Fort Sumter in response to the Lincoln government’s attempt to rearm…
Valerie Protopapas 1
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April 9, 2021

The Yankees Take Up the White Man’s Burden

Take up the White Man’s burden –    Ye dare not stoop to less –Nor call too loud on Freedom    To cloak your weariness;By all ye cry or whisper,    By all…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 0
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April 8, 2021

Woke Capitalism Guns for the South

Major League Baseball on 2 April announced that both the All Star Game and the draft would no longer be held in Atlanta as retribution for Georgia’s recent election laws.…
Casey Chalk 0
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April 7, 2021

Only A House Divided Within Itself Will Stand

On the Ingraham Angle recently, guest, Craig Shirley offered an opinion that should cheer the people who have read (best seller) The South Was Right.  Even those who haven’t read…
Paul H. Yarbrough 0
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Review Posts
April 6, 2021

Robert E. Lee and Me

A review of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin's Press, 2021) by Ty Seidule A number of good historians…
Gene Kizer, Jr. 0
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April 5, 2021

A Defense of Lee

Three years ago, Woke General Ty Seidule of West Point addressed the students and faculty at Washington and Lee University on the life and character of Robert E. Lee. He…
Abbeville Institute 0
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April 2, 2021

Searching for a Literary Market in Southern Cities

“Take but degree away, untune that string,And hark! what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy”—Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida One of William Gilmore Simms’ abiding concerns was the almost complete…
Jack Trotter 0
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April 1, 2021

Dixie Ball

It’s strange to think that until 1962 — when the Houston’s Colt .45’s enjoyed their inaugural season as an expansion team — the only baseball teams in the South were…
Casey Chalk 0
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March 31, 2021

Gomer Pyle and the Music of Southern Poverty

Sometimes, you need to go halfway around the world in order to make a point, especially if the point to be made is not a simple one.  This is one…
Tom Daniel 0
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March 30, 2021

John C. Calhoun: American

No American is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. A recent biography has labeled him the American "heretic," and it has become fashionable to blame every political problem in American…
Brion McClanahan 0
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March 29, 2021

Beginning with History

Any fool can write history, and many do.  Please do not assume that I mean by this statement to vaunt the “expert” and slight the amateur.  In writing history the…
Clyde Wilson 0
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March 26, 2021

Southern Reflections on Being Neighborly

A white house sits on the outskirts of a small town in upstate South Carolina. It is modest in both size and appearance, and rather old, and in front of…
Tom Hervey 0
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March 25, 2021

Our Other Man in Charleston

Published in 2016, the book Our Man in Charleston tells the story of Robert Bunch (1820-1881), the British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, who is described in the subtitle as…
Karen Stokes 0
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March 24, 2021

Dixie, Quo Vadis?

Many today feel that true Southerners living in the eleven States of the former Confederacy are, in many ways, once again fighting for their very existence and face the dismal…
John Marquardt 0
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Review Posts
March 23, 2021

Secession’s Magic Numbers, Part II

A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. A review of Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy (W.W. Norton, 1993) by…
Terry Hulsey 0
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March 22, 2021

Robert E. Lee and (Woke General) Please Like Me

Ty Seidule's mea culpa memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me, has generated the predictable supporters: mainstream media outlets, leftist dominated history departments, and neoconservative "intellectuals." This says more about Seidule…
Philip Leigh 0
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March 19, 2021

I Listen

I read this piece to the Jackson Writers Guild a year ago. Since then, we’ve not been able to meet. Here it is again. A southern writer can collect more…
Averyell A. Kessler 0
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March 18, 2021

Honoring Calhoun

Editor's Note: This speech was delivered before the Senate on March 12, 1910, at the dedication of John C. Calhoun's statue in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. Address…
Henry Cabot Lodge 0
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March 17, 2021

Firetrail

For some time now I have had a passion for classic films, in particular those films that portray sympathetically and with historical accuracy the Southland, and, more particularly, events of…
Boyd Cathey 0
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Review Posts
March 16, 2021

The Greatest of All Leathernecks

A review of The Greatest of All Leathernecks (LSU Press, 2019) by Joseph Simon. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in eastern North Carolina along the Atlantic shore…
Rev. Benjamin Glaser 0
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March 15, 2021

Crimes Against Humanity

It is time to consider the crimes committed against Southern prisoners of war by their federal captors. In 1903, Adj. Gen. F. C. Ainsworth estimated that more than 30,000 Union…
Valerie Protopapas 0
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March 12, 2021

The Termite Infestation of American History

As part of its campaign to pander to the important and urgent needs of African-Americans with extremely divisive yet ultimately performative identity politics, the Biden-Harris administration has announced that it…
James Rutledge Roesch 0
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March 11, 2021

Yankees 38, VMI 3

The Virginia Military Institute, ever the underdog. . . . For longtime VMI football fans, the above score may be all-too-painfully reminiscent. I recall the first time I heard of…
Forrest L. Marion 0
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March 10, 2021

Now Is The Best Time To Be Southern

These past several years, we Americans have been living in an accelerating anti-cultural vortex. Day by day the Yankee juggernaut gains steam. Once content with carpetbombing Hanoi and Baghdad, the…
Jason Morgan 0
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March 9, 2021

A Yankee Who Understood Southerners

“Dear me, what’s the good of being a Southerner?” asks one of the characters on the very first page of Henry James’ nineteenth-century novel The Bostonians. Though this question may…
Casey Chalk 0
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March 8, 2021

German POWs and Civil Rights

I have written here before about my beloved hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama.  Forgive me if you’ve read this before, but Tuskegee was unique among small rural Southern towns because of…
Tom Daniel 0
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March 5, 2021

A Look Into Our Future

Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked? Ecclesiastes 7: 13 Scott Howard, in his book The Trans-gender Industrial Complex, says on pages 164-5:…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 0
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March 4, 2021

Power School Wisdom

During last week’s ice storm misery, I thought a lot about my southern upbringing and the good things I’ve received from my small, poor state with a jagged past and…
Averyell A. Kessler 0
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March 3, 2021

The Lord Gives

It was a late night in Boone County, Arkansas when me and my newly married wife attended a party not far from our home in Lead Hill. The ol' boy…
Travis Holt 0
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March 2, 2021

Total War in Georgia

In June 1863, Fitzgerald Ross, a British military man who was collecting information about the war in America, paid a visit to Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the Confederacy.…
Karen Stokes 0
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March 1, 2021

Racism and Reputation

Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.”  Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing…
Rev. Larry Beane 0
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February 26, 2021

Don’t Watch This Film

“The Burning of Atlanta,” 82 minutes. Produced and directed by Christopher Forbes.  2020. I have written a great deal on the Abbeville Institute site in the past  on the portrayal of…
Clyde Wilson 0
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February 25, 2021

The Big Monochrome Picture

The principal character in Joyce Maynard’s 1992 novel “To Die For” said that if you look too closely at a black and white photograph, all you see are a series…
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February 24, 2021

The Death of the Museum of the Confederacy

In May of 2008, I became embroiled in a situation that had developed with the former Museum of the Confederacy. Having received an e-mail sent to the membership from Director…
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February 23, 2021

Secession’s Magic Numbers, Part One

A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard;…
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February 22, 2021

Judicial Review? No. Nullification

“Acts of congress, to be binding, must be made pursuant to the constitution; otherwise they are not laws, but a mere nullity.” -St. George Tucker “There is no danger I…
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February 19, 2021

You Lie Down With Dogs, You Get Up With Fleas

Sometime back in the early sixties—climaxed in 1964 with Barry Goldwater’s efforts—the South with its conservative measure, almost En Masse wanted (and needed) a place to go other than the…
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February 18, 2021

Industrialization and the Survival of the Peculiar Institution

Coming out of the American Revolution, the nation faced a slave problem that most today could scarcely imagine and that was unemployment. The Slave labor force had grown from reproduction…
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February 17, 2021

A Night to Remember

The diary of Emma LeConte is one of the best known documents chronicling the sack and destruction of Columbia, South Carolina. On February 17, 1865, the city surrendered to the…
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February 16, 2021

Cajun Music

If these were normal times, we’d all be unpacking our Mardi Gras gear right about now.  Purple, yellow, and green would be everywhere, and I would be writing about how…
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February 15, 2021

For Dove and Flag: Grandpa Connelly’s Mules

I hope Grandfather fed them wellFrom out his meager store of cornOr fodder pulled by Mother'Neath a blazing autumn sun--So hot sometimes she saidThat she and sister sickenedTo the vomit…
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February 12, 2021

Fast Money

On a late November evening in 1970, I rolled into the “Big Easy” on an L&N freight with my pockets jingling. Hitching a ride to Canal Street - and letting…
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February 11, 2021

A Fig for the Constitution

“A fig for the Constitution” if it does not protect our most basic rights was John Randolph’s nineteenth century estimation of the value of the Constitution. In 2021 his words…
James Ronald Kennedy 0
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February 10, 2021

An Independent Investigation of Racism at VMI?

As one pastor in his sixties mentioned recently, “I would have thought VMI to be one of the last bastions,” meaning, of course, among those institutions most committed to preserving…
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February 9, 2021

The Last “Insurrection” According to the Political Establishment

The Washington establishment, led by a senile 78-year-old man who can barely speak in complete sentences and seems permanently fighting mad, is hell- bent on labeling virtually all Americans who…
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February 8, 2021

Hillbilly Thomists

What would you give in exchange for your soul? Bluegrass greats Bill Monroe and Doc Watson asked that question in one of their most memorable live recordings. It’s also the…
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February 5, 2021

Reforming the Southern Man

I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress…
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February 4, 2021

Defining Southern Conservatism

Southern conservatism is considered an enigma when juxtaposed against the bipartisan political configuration having been imposed upon us since the beginning of the American experiment. The candor of its echoed…
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February 3, 2021

What Can Be Done?

The year 2020 was brutal for the friends of the South.  Monuments and statues of Southerners, not just Confederates, disappeared from the urban areas of the Southand beyond.  The lockdowns…
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February 2, 2021

Followin’ the Cotton

(Mrs. Holley was the third generation of a Southern family in California.  She wrote this on being able to return permanently to the South.) The cotton fields grow row after…
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February 1, 2021

President Without A Party

A review of President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU Press, 2020) by Christopher Leahy “His Accidency.” That’s the nickname given to John Tyler, earned, as it…
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January 29, 2021

From Eternity into Time

From Eternity into Time Mighty the Wizard Who found me at sunrise Sleeping, and woke me And learn’d me Magic! Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 0
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January 28, 2021

The Bad Theology of America’s “Original Sin”

Slavery, we are repeatedly told, is America’s “original sin.”  But unlike the effects of Biblical original sin, there is no possible atonement.  The Left and its racial Grievance Factory will…
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January 27, 2021

Rock ‘n Roll has a Southern Accent

Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history.  There is no doubt that American culture, for good and bad, has had an enormous impact on…
Tom Daniel 0
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January 26, 2021

The Abraham Lincoln Problem

America has a Lincoln problem. Professor Tom DiLorenzo explains why our nearly deification of "Honest Abe" presents a fundamental problem for our understanding of both the American past and the…
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January 25, 2021

The Wind

I find myself sitting on the bank of a lake, not far from where I grew up. Being in an extremely rural and poor area of Arkansas, we hang on…
Travis Holt 0
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January 22, 2021

The New Face of “Liberation”

It is a sad thing that it should fall to a junior representative from New York to tell the truth about the South’s position in national politics and culture. Ms.…
Tom Hervey 0
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January 21, 2021

American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God

The old saying: “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” certainly applies to me. I’m an ethnic Southerner who was raised in the north – but who, for…
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January 20, 2021

Conservatism and the Southern Tradition

A review of Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (All Points Books, 2018) by Sir Roger Scruton. There is no such thing as conservatism, according to Sir Roger Scruton’s…
Duncan Killen 1
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January 19, 2021

A Good Reason to Honor Robert E. Lee

Yesterday’s melee in Washington provides good reason to honor Robert E. Lee because he demonstrated how he maintained dignity in defeat while convincing many resentful Southerners to reconcile with their…
Philip Leigh 0
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January 18, 2021

Whatever Happened to History?

According to a recent poll, 72 per cent of Americans think that we are now in the “worst” period of American history.  Polls are dubious things and the great historian…
Clyde Wilson 0
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January 15, 2021

The Yankee Quarantine of Southern Blacks

Legendary financier J. P. Morgan once said: “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” His meaning is that our public explanation…
Philip Leigh 0
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January 14, 2021

Pretenses

You might call it propaganda, state lies, fraud, illusions or delusions. I prefer pretenses which afford the peddler thereof and the hapless fool who buys into them just the degree…
Robert Peters 0
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January 13, 2021

The Tarnished Tarheel

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 phantasmagorical image of slave life in the South has long been regarded as one of the sparks that ignited the War Between the States.  However, a…
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January 12, 2021

Deep Water

A review of Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain (LSU Press, 2019) by Thomas Ruys Smith In Deep Water: the Mississippi River in the Age…
Jason Stewart 0
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January 11, 2021

A Southern Critique of Radical Chic

“The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence,” observed Southern Gothic author and native Georgian Flannery O’Connor. But what about those weaknesses that don’t? Well, then…
Casey Chalk 0
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January 8, 2021

A (Maryland) Southern Hero

Early in the civil war President Lincoln had Federal Troops occupy the State of Maryland.  Though the power vested only with the US Congress, Mr. Lincoln also took it upon…
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January 7, 2021

VMI Test Case for the Country

In May of this year, George Floyd died; seven months later, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) removed its statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from its prominent position at the…
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January 6, 2021

Meditations on a Couple of Old Postcards

I saw a pile of household goods on the side of the road a couple of days ago, as I was picking up a friend to take him to the…
Cliff Page 0
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January 5, 2021

Trimming Ourselves to Fit the World

“Black identity-mongers…are creating a phoney history and phoney traditions as escapes from very real problems of drugs, violence and social degeneration in the ghettos of the 1990s.” So wrote black…
Joshua Doggrell 0
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January 4, 2021

What 2020 Means for Southerners

During the past couple of months, from shortly after the presidential election until now, seven installments in the MY CORNER series have been picked up and (re)published, and while most…
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December 28, 2020

Who Owns America Now?

From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5G4NWbkjJA&feature=youtu.be
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December 24, 2020

The Postbellum South as an Exploited Colony

From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiiqzceHS6I&feature=youtu.be
Philip Leigh 0
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December 23, 2020

Agrarianism, Republicanism, and Laissez Faire

From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcuQ9wavo0w&feature=youtu.be
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December 22, 2020

Who Owns America? Populism, Political Economy, and Corporate Personality

From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB2W7qsoZr0&feature=youtu.be
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December 21, 2020

I’ll Take My Stand: Farming, Poetry, and Resistance

From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on "Who Owns America?" October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP5v7_4jM58&feature=youtu.be
Jason Sorens 0
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December 18, 2020

The Blundering Generations and the Crisis of Legitimacy

Crises of legitimacy are rarely resolved without some resort to violence. The European experience in the seventeenth century is generously populated with examples: The English Civil War, Le Fronde I…
John Devanny 0
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December 17, 2020

Virginia and Alabama

Lexington, Virginia January 2002 Driving up, then down the mountain hairpins into Lexington,By daylight, moonlight, headlight (only one),I smell the moist ancient earth rising up to greet meThis January evening…
Thomas Hubert 0
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December 16, 2020

The South in Retreat

Editor's Note: This lecture was delivered at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Carey Roberts explores the relationship between the Old Whig faction in the South--e.g. Alexander H.…
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December 15, 2020

A Grandfather’s Love

Most all of us who were fortunate enough to know our Grandfather has experienced his love. It may be expressed in many ways, whether it be a spoken ‘Well done’…
Travis Holt 0
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December 14, 2020

A Red and Blue Divorce?

The red and the blue—states that is-- are as different as the colorless black and white landscapes absent from the color spectrum. The concept of separate states for separate cultures…
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December 11, 2020

The Elephant in the Room

There are very few human symbols that find absolute approval or, in the alternative, disapproval. Symbols are called that because they represent something far larger than themselves. An unknown symbol…
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December 10, 2020

Identity Politics and the Southern Gentleman

Earlier this year, shortly after the sad and unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I witnessed an especially peculiar example of one of the many thousands (perhaps millions?) of…
Casey Chalk 0
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December 9, 2020

Hillfolk History

All-too-often, seemingly buried in the myriad dates and statistics of history, lies the human experience that should do more to make up that history in the first place. These eyewitness…
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December 8, 2020

James Henley Thornwell and the Metaphysical Confederacy

A review of The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Second Edition; Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999) by James Farmer The role of religion…
Zachary Garris 0
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December 7, 2020

The War in the Pacific

The dramatic events leading up to the secession of the Southern States, the tragedy of the War Between the States and the ensuing final act of the South’s Reconstruction period…
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December 4, 2020

Appalachian Music and the Phonograph

In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art.  For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed…
Tom Daniel 0
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December 3, 2020

The Gettysburg Fairy Tale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zksz7mOggqI&feature=youtu.be The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the most iconic speech in American history. Students are required to memorize it, and it has become as important to American political culture as…
Brion McClanahan 0
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December 2, 2020

Mr. Lincoln’s “Lost Speech”

"May 29, 1856 "Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamon, came upon the platform amid deafening applause. He enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement. He was here ready to fuse with…
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December 1, 2020

Edmund Kirby Smith

A review of General Edmund Kirby Smith C.S.A. (LSU Press, 1992 (1954) by Joseph H. Parks This biography is a must read for any student of the War for Southern…
Wes Franklin 0
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November 30, 2020

Less Than Five Miles

The life of a man is something that runs deep in all history. Before the war on gender roles, man and woman had a clear, defined boundary that all recognized…
Travis Holt 0
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November 27, 2020

How to Listen to Jazz

When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head?  What do you hear?  You probably hear piano, brass, saxophone, or all of the above.  But…
Tom Daniel 0
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November 26, 2020

“Fight for Old Dixie!”

This Thanksgiving, the second of three NFL games will feature one of the oldest (albeit moribund) rivalries in professional football history: the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Football Team, previously…
Casey Chalk 0
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November 25, 2020

The New South

Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies. Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and…
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November 24, 2020

The South Was Right! (Again)

The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. New Edition for the 21st century.  Shotwell Publishing, 2020. In 1991 the Kennedy brothers first published The South Was Right!, a…
Clyde Wilson 0
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November 23, 2020

Who Owns America Today?

The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery.  Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized,…
John Devanny 0
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November 20, 2020

Secession: The Point of the Spear

Secession: The point of the spear aimed at the heart of the American Leviathan – or so I once thought. Certainly secession has been a live idea in Europe for…
Terry Hulsey 0
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November 19, 2020

The Great Lie and the Real Controversy

The following address was delivered as part of a symposium at the 150th anniversary of the burning of Winnsboro, S.C., in February 2015, sponsored by the Winnsboro Historical Society. It…
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November 18, 2020

The Future of Fox News and the Future of America

It happened on Saturday morning, November 14, 2020, at around 8:15 EST. I had switched over to briefly catch some national news on the Fox News Channel. All of a…
Boyd Cathey 0
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November 17, 2020

John Brown’s Body

A Review of The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (Uncommon Books, 1993) by Otto Scott. The Leftist political violence that has engulfed the disintegrating American nation for…
Neil Kumar 0
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November 16, 2020

The Grand Alliance, a.k.a. The Deep State

The pattern for modern American politics was set by Lincoln and his cronies in the 1850s—1870s, although it took an immense war against other Americans to make it stick.  The…
Clyde Wilson 0
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November 13, 2020

Slavery and Emancipation 101

The roots of the myth that slavery was primarily a white Southern institution were planted three decades prior to the War Between the States by the abolitionists in New York…
John Marquardt 0
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November 12, 2020

We’ll Take Our Stand

It is not often enough, but I do set aside blocks of time to express gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on me in my…
Joshua Doggrell 0
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November 11, 2020

The Southern Remnant

‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere…
James Rutledge Roesch 0
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November 10, 2020

The False Cause Narrative

While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of "extralegal" conduct by anti-statue…
Philip Leigh 0
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November 9, 2020

Is Separation the Answer?

As of Friday, November 6, the votes are still being counted in at least six states. The large pro-Trump margins that seemed to prevail late election night have now disappeared…
Boyd Cathey 0
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November 6, 2020

New England Slavers in Colonial America

Like any other economic exchange, the slave trade developed with a supplier, a consumer, and a trader or merchant that brought the two together. African kingdoms that had access to…
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November 5, 2020

A [r]epublican in Exile

In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and…
Karen Stokes 0
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November 4, 2020

The Power of the Powerless

‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new…
James Rutledge Roesch 0
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November 3, 2020

A Fool and His Money are Soon Elected

Will Rogers had a quip for just about any situation, but he loved to talk politics. Rogers was born on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. His father was a Confederate…
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November 2, 2020

It Began With A Lie

“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is…
Valerie Protopapas 0
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October 30, 2020

The Calhoun Monument Deserved Legal and Historical Protection

As some business owners and residents on King Street described it, “Charleston was raped” on the night of May 30, 2020, as mobs looted and burned the Holy City, turning…
Stewart O. Jones 0
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October 29, 2020

Dumping Dixie Beer

There’s a popular meme floating around the internet that has a middle-aged, pot-bellied, suburban male standing by a charcoal fire with the caption below reading, “I just want to grill…
Christopher J. Carter 0
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October 28, 2020

The Southern (Catholic) Tradition

When asked why he was a Catholic, Southern author Walker Percy liked to provocatively respond, “What else is there?” Savannah-born writer Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic or Irish heritage, once asserted…
Casey Chalk 0
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October 27, 2020

A Neo-Confederate Prediction of Post-Election America

The political chaos that has accompanied President Trump’s first term will not abate anytime soon. From the Russian Collusion hoax to rioting in the streets to the public policy responses…
Marshall DeRosa 0
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October 26, 2020

Zorro and the Southern Tradition

Through the centuries since Jamestown was founded, the South has held certain values, virtues, and ideals in high esteem: Courage, duty, humility, integrity, courtesy, chivalry, gallantry, self-control, reverence, selflessness, strength,…
Earl Starbuck 0
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October 23, 2020

Clarence Jordan and the Southern Tradition

The Southern Tradition is not something easily defined in a few words.  Its specific formulation comes from the work of Richard Weaver as he interpreted the thought of the Nashville…
Mike Goodloe 0
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October 22, 2020

How Arizona Seceded From the Union

The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California,…
Steve Lee 0
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October 21, 2020

Hank Williams Was Their Prophet and Tradition Was Their King

The story I’m about to tell is one of the many coming from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Hardscrabble existence was a way of life with our pioneers, and it…
Travis Holt 0
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October 20, 2020

Secession Becomes Thinkable

A review of American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup (Encounter Books, 2020) by F.H. Buckley When asked whether a state can constitutionally secede from the United States, Supreme…
Donald Livingston 0
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October 19, 2020

The Polls, Donald Trump, and Secession

Far too many pundits and commentators live and die by polls. It seems that each day some on-air talking head or online spinmeister reveals breathlessly increasingly bad results for President…
Boyd Cathey 0
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October 16, 2020

Black Confederates in Reconstruction Newspapers

In an editorial published a little over a year after the Civil War ended, a Georgia newspaper writer expressed regret that the South had not accepted "the aid of the…
Shane Anderson 0
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October 15, 2020

Removing Guilt and Shame from the Study of Slavery

Some people come from the “the land down under”.  I come from the land “where old times are not forgotten”.  As historians we must recommit to helping our youth understand…
Barbara Marthal 0
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October 14, 2020

A Simple Explanation

What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the…
Valerie Protopapas 0
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October 13, 2020

The End of Reconciliation

There’s something pernicious with the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its inversion of early Virginia colonial history. The colony of Jamestown isn’t a story of bravery and resilience in…
Casey Chalk 0
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October 12, 2020

1619 Plus 2020 Equals 1984

In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” the central governmental agency in his fictitious country of Oceania is the antonymic Ministry of Truth, a body charged with the duty of erasing actual…
John Marquardt 0
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October 9, 2020

When Yankees Pack the Court

The 2020 presidential election took a decided turn as it moved into the final six weeks when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, passed away, opening up…
Ryan Walters 0
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October 8, 2020

Lawyers and the Lawless Law of the Land

The Supreme Court once again is the headline of the news. Judge Ginsburg died leaving eight judges for the nine-seat court. The so-called media, as usual, portrays SCOTUS as the…
Paul H. Yarbrough 0
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October 7, 2020

Gaslighting Dixie’s Stateless People

Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to…
James Ronald Kennedy 0
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October 6, 2020

Flowering Wisdom

A Review of Chained Tree, Chained Owls, Poems (Green Altar Books, 2020) by Catharine Savage Brosman. This is Catharine Savage Brosman’s twelfth book of poems, and the praise for her…
Jason Sorens 0
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October 5, 2020

Monument Avenue 1890-2020

For the majority of my life I have had an intense interest in the history of the War Between the States. This interest germinated as a result of two very…
Patrick Seay 0
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October 2, 2020

The Eyes of Our Fathers

Coming from a small, truly united community, I have many places that are dear to me that I often visit. One of these is a small city, located in the…
Travis Holt 0
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October 1, 2020

California Secession…in 1858?

Antebellum California secession is a little known topic, but the Southern portion of the State nearly broke free from Northern California in the years just before the outbreak of war…
Justin Pederson 0
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September 30, 2020

Sampson County and the Defense of Western Civilization

Sampson County is a large, mostly rural county in southeastern North Carolina. Like most non-metropolitan areas of the state, it tends to be conservative, in fact, a long-time bastion of…
Boyd Cathey 0
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September 29, 2020

The Real Reason for Confederate Monuments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08VtxFZlXKc&feature=youtu.be
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September 28, 2020

Authority vs. Power

This morning a good friend sent me an article from The Imaginative Conservative (easily one of the best “blogs”) that outlined Robert Nisbet’s ten conditions of revolution. The piece is…
Aaron Gleason 0
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September 25, 2020

Industrial Combinations

From The Land We Love, V, no. I (May 1868), 25-34, edited by Joseph S. Stromberg. Combinations for the prosecution of industrial pursuits are the characteristic of our age. They…
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September 24, 2020

The Guns of September

Reminiscences and Ramblings of a Novice Wing-Shooter It was the First of September, 2019 and there I sat, in the pre-dawn twilight, half asleep and fighting the near irresistible temptation,…
Travis Archie 0
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September 23, 2020

Jayber Crow

Not long after I moved my family to Bangkok, Thailand — where we lived for three years — I happened to be walking through a park with an environmental specialist…
Casey Chalk 0
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September 22, 2020

Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare

Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own.   One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941.  Miller was born in 1891…
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September 21, 2020

Thirty Pieces of Silver

“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for,…
Travis Holt 0
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September 18, 2020

Was Secession Treason?

Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is…
Earl Starbuck 0
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September 17, 2020

Marxists, Conservatives, and Neocons

Reading an article in the latest Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis I was shocked by the outrageous comparison of Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson…
Carole Hornsby Haynes 0
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September 16, 2020

They Were Not Traitors

A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons. First, the Confederate states had no…
Philip Leigh 0
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September 15, 2020

A Land Without Heroes

What if there were 15.3 million dead American soldiers? Imagine it. Legions of the unburied down rows of summer corn, strewn along riverbanks, and discarded on roadsides. And imagine if…
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September 14, 2020

As Luck Would Have It

The tiny hamlet of Lake Hill in New York State’s Catskill Mountains was my mother’s hometown, and her ancestors there, the Howlands, could trace their family history to its roots…
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September 11, 2020

Standing Like a Stone Wall

The City Council of Lexington, Virginia has renamed the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. The new name is Oak Grove Cemetery. The reasons stated were the usual ones. Jackson was a racist…
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September 10, 2020

Cancel Culture Comes South

These violent times in which we live are in some ways unparalleled. For Southerners we have seen monuments memorializing and honoring our past heroes and history—monuments and symbols which have…
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September 9, 2020

Damn Right You Should Listen to the Blues

“The blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ bad,” according to “Negro Blues,” penned in 1913. There’s no question about the “feelin’ bad” part. The genre is defined by…
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Review Posts
September 8, 2020

“You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me”

A review of Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (University of California Press, 2014) by Nadine Hubbs If I had been told a short while ago that I would soon read…
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September 7, 2020

The Kwanzaafication of America

Kwanzaa is an invented tradition. Billed as a kind of “black Christmas”—you can even buy Kwanzaa greeting cards at the store and mail them with Kwanzaa stamps—the odd holiday was…
Jason Morgan 0
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September 4, 2020

Brain Dead Neocons

A recent article in Hillsdale College’s newsletter “Imprimis” compared Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in wanting to “divide the country.”  On a lessor…
Wes Franklin 0
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September 3, 2020

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee

On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War…
Neil Kumar 0
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September 2, 2020

What Lee Said About Monuments in 1869

A frequent argument against Confederate monuments is a “sound bite” of a quote from General Robert E. Lee in 1869 in some variation to “I think it wiser not to…
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September 1, 2020

Requiem For A Quiet Man

Growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks, I early on found out I had a love for history; the history of my people. It was passed down to me in short…
Travis Holt 0
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August 31, 2020

General Orders No. 9

Have any of you all heard about the film, "General Orders No. 9" ? It's a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert…
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August 28, 2020

A Monument Worthy of a Hero

Eight-tenths of a mile down a dead-end Arkansas gravel road, at that dead end, past two neglected old cattle guards and in the back pasture is not where you’d expect…
Travis Archie 0
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August 27, 2020

Of Apostates and Scapegoats

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 0
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August 26, 2020

The Fire Eater

Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural…
Neil Kumar 0
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Review Posts
August 25, 2020

New Confederate Territory

A review of Cleburne: A Graphic Novel (Rampart Press, 2008) by Justin S. Murphy and others. The graphic novel is a major feature of literature in these times.  Southerners can…
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August 24, 2020

Cancel Culture Comes to Wake Forest, North Carolina

Photo by Martin Fried I have written previously about the very real dangers of what is called “cancel culture.” Indeed, what we have—what we see and experience today in the…
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August 21, 2020

Idiotic Idioms

Identity Politics is changing our language in order to advance its agenda. One example is “people of color.” Hemingway would have convulsed at such a laborious construction. Does its nearly…
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August 20, 2020

The Shaping of Modern American History

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are constantly under attack from those on the left and the mainstream historical establishment for leading the charge of promoting the “lost cause…
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August 19, 2020

The Fire That Failed

I’ve never written of this episode in the history of Marion County, Fla., but then, I don’t think anyone else has either.  However, so much time has passed, with most…
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August 18, 2020

The Simple Things

I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They…
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