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May 11, 2026

A Model of Government Stewardship

Thomas Jefferson had, in his first term as US president, one of the most successful presidencies in US history. Knowing the pricelessness of books, he sanctioned the Library of Congress and helped to build it. He purchased the Louisiana territories for 10 million dollars—a pittance—and doubled the size of the country. He began a course to reduce the US debt, and despite purchasing the Louisiana lands, the…
M. Andrew Holowchak 0
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May 8, 2026

The Contrarian Mind of Zora Neale Hurston

She was the most celebrated Black woman novelist of her generation and died penniless in a Florida welfare home, buried in an unmarked grave. She trained in anthropology at Columbia under Franz Boas and defended voluntary segregation in the pages of the Orlando Sentinel. Zora Neale Hurston spent her life refusing the categories others tried to impose on her. Hurston…
Jose Nino 3
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May 7, 2026

Lessons on Liberty from the States’ Rights Democrats

In the 1940s, the Democratic Party was fractured by a dispute that eventually split the party into factions. On the surface, as described by the New York Times in 1939, the issue concerned the specifics of the New Deal. The moderates or “conservatives” supported limited federal interventions, while the “liberals” were pushing for a much more expansive interventionist program. The…
Wanjiru Njoya 7
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May 6, 2026

The Good President

Walk through the biography or history section of any bookstore and you will likely see many works on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man with a severe handicap who overcame the odds to serve as the nation’s chief executive for more than a dozen years, a president who saved American democracy, as well as capitalism, the leader who, during a major…
Ryan Walters 5
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May 5, 2026

Crying Out in the Wilderness

A review of Joseph Scotchie, Samuel T. Francis and the Revolution from the Middle (Shotwell, 2025) by Jack Trotter In the Old Testament, the prophet Samuel is called three times by God to “listen to the voice of the people.” In these latter days, his namesake, Samuel Francis (1947-2005), is often described as a “prophet,” even by some of those who reviled…
Jack Trotter 3
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May 4, 2026

Contrasting Unionists

A Brief Look at Samuel Mitcham’s The Encyclopedia of Union Generals Once upon a time, the American Civil War was widely regarded as a national epic.  Not a divinely-mandated Unionist crusade against wicked slavedrivers, but something akin to the terrible Trojan War as recounted by Homer. Under this tragic perspective, a special place might be accorded to figures such as…
Jerry Salyer 6
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May 1, 2026

The South Will Always Do It Again

I live in Alabama, and I see what’s happening to the South with my own eyes. Through the Abbeville Institute, I also stay connected with fellow Southern thinkers, so I read about the same things happening elsewhere. We are not experiencing cultural mass hysteria, because what’s happening is real. Institutional erosion, demographic churn, homogenized media, and the steady replacement of…
Tom Daniel 4
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April 30, 2026

Lee Returns to Richmond

Originally published at A Memoir of the Occupation Richmond, Virginia April 15, 1985 It was raining again. Grey clouds scudding the city’s ruins standing in stark silhouette against the colorless sky. Jagged shards of warehouse riding from the ruined James River waterfront; the business and residential districts block after block of fire-blackened brick, the Tredegar Iron Works no more than…
Enoch Cade 6
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April 29, 2026

Reflections on the Alamo and Texas Independence

(Continued from Part I) After the fall of the Alamo in San Antonio on March 6, 1836, a disconsolate but resolved General Sam Houston ordered the torching and evacuation of Gonzales, so as to deny resources to the advancing Mexican forces. He then ordered a strategic withdrawal of his own army, as well as that of Colonel James W. Fannin…
Miles Foltermann 1
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April 28, 2026

Reluctant Secessionist

Secession, grasped in its political sense, is typically defined as a formal withdrawal of one body, qua political state or qua a nascent political state, from another political state of which it is a member. The reason for withdrawal is customarily that what bound the lesser body to the larger political state is no longer binding or that the relationship has become parasitic or toxic. The paradigmatic illustration is the secession of 11…
M. Andrew Holowchak 8
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April 27, 2026

The Lost Cause

Originally published at From the Desk of Jon Harris Upon the Soviet Union’s dismissal of 146 historians from Czech universities, Milan Hübl, among those dismissed, is said to have observed, “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.” Hübl went on to predict that after a “new history” takes the place of the old “the nation…
Jonathan Harris 9
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April 24, 2026

The Sons of Erin and the Sons of Dixie

It’s not unusual for music to preserve historical memory, but it is surprising sometimes where that memory ends up surfacing. One such instance appears in the work of Irish balladeer Derek Warfield, whose songs normally focus on Dublin and Belfast, but in this particular instance, he turns his attention to Dixie. This might seem like a head-scratcher of an unlikely…
Tom Daniel 4
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April 23, 2026

“Its Brave and Worthy Colonel”: The Life of Felix Labatut

The first man to command a large, organized group of black troops during the Civil War did so for the South. No doubt many are unaware of this fact, given the dismissive treatment often given by modern historians to the Regiment of Native Guards, a volunteer home guard unit that existed in New Orleans from May 1861 to April 1862.…
Shane Anderson 2
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April 22, 2026

Here Lie Your Brethren

Reflections on the Alamo and Texas Independence, Part I In March of 1930, the former President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, and his wife Grace had occasion to travel through the State of Texas during a leisurely train trip. During an excursion to San Antonio, they were treated to a private tour of the Alamo. It was here that…
Miles Foltermann 3
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April 21, 2026

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 16
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April 20, 2026

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 3
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April 17, 2026

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 12
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April 16, 2026

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 10
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April 15, 2026

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 7
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April 14, 2026

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 7
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April 13, 2026

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 2
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April 10, 2026

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 11
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April 9, 2026

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 3
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April 8, 2026

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 7
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April 7, 2026

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 1
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April 6, 2026

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 7
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April 3, 2026

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 4
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April 2, 2026

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 19
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April 1, 2026

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 7
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March 31, 2026

Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists

Thomas Jefferson, it is commonly known, was a staunch advocate of religious freedom. He argues for that in detailed notes on religion, his critical comments on the religions of Virginia in Query XVII of Notes on the State of Virginia, and in his Bill for Religious Freedom, drafted in 1776 and passed years later while he was in Paris, inter…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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March 30, 2026

Moses Ezekiel Returns Home

Military pomp and Masonic ceremonies combined to make noteworthy the internment of the late Sir Moses Ezekiel in Arlington National Cemetery on March 30, 1921.   The American sculptor, musician and soldier, died in Rome, Italy, in 1917 but the homecoming was deferred on account of World War 1. Permission was granted by Secretary of War Baker to bury Ezekiel’s mortal…
Lola Sanchez 5
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March 27, 2026

The Hidden Players in the War for Southern Independence

The War Between the States conjures images of Union blue and Confederate gray clashing across rolling farmland and forested ridges. Yet beyond those storied battlefields, another war unfolded in the marble halls and counting houses of Europe. There, empires maneuvered in the shadows, weighing whether to shatter the American experiment forever or stand aside and watch it consume itself. No…
Jose Nino 3
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March 26, 2026

The Contemporary Southern Blues of Jontavious Willis

Are the Blues dead? Are the Blues an exhibit in the mythical Southern Museum of the Past, or are the Blues still a living, breathing creation? A relatively new Southern artist named Jontavious Willis offers a clear answer to that question. He didn’t come up playing through some sort of nostalgia circuit. He learned the Blues the old way—by doing…
Tom Daniel 5
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March 25, 2026

WIRED’s Hit Piece on Secession Left Out Everything That Matters

Originally published at TexianPartisan.com. This morning, WIRED published “Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Thinks Secession Will Solve Anything” by Ryan D. Griffiths, a political science professor at Syracuse University hawking his new book The Disunited States. The article is a greatest-hits compilation of every lazy argument against self-determination — the Russia smear, the India/Pakistan analogy, the Texas v. White citation,…
Daniel Miller 9
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March 24, 2026

American History in Full

Early on one frosty morning in February I found myself driving down a country road in east central North Carolina, looking for the other half of American history. It had rained the night before and snowed hard a few days before that. As I pulled into a gravel parking lot the trees all around stood out sharp against the clear,…
Jason Morgan 16
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March 23, 2026

Cultural Marxism Masquerading as True History

Originally published at Mises.org Ever since people began warning about the threat from Cultural Marxism, the Marxists’ main line of defense has been to deny everything. They claim that their critics are hallucinating and fighting with shadows. The Marxists in control of universities insist that academic freedom is alive and well. No one has been excluded from the academy for…
Wanjiru Njoya 5
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March 20, 2026

The Era of Good Feelings–1920-1970

Originally published at Reckonin.com My synopsis of the history of the Southern people will henceforward be speculative. We may not have sufficient perspective now on the more recent past. There may be important undercurrents that are not noticed yet. I have called the half century after World War I an era of good feelings because, despite “Civil Rights” and other…
Clyde Wilson 2
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March 19, 2026

I Guess I Didn’t Win the Lincoln Prize

Every year, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History awards its Lincoln Prize. They’ll give you $50,000.00 if you write the book that, in their opinion, improves our understanding of Abraham Lincoln and his times more than any other book published that year. Well, I can’t think of anything that could clarify our understanding of Abraham Lincoln and his times…
Kevin Orlin Johnson 9
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March 18, 2026

The Heroic Fr. Mullon

Originally published at MostCertainlyBeane. I’ve lived in the New Orleans area now for 21 years, and I have been to many of the area’s beautiful churches. But I had not been to historic St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church on Camp Street until yesterday. It is the congregation (and burial place) of a personal hero: the Rev. Fr. James Ignatius Mullon…
Rev. Larry Beane 2
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March 17, 2026

From Ulster to Appalachia

Every March, America goes nuts about green, and becomes briefly and theatrically Irish. Rivers turn green. Beer turns greener. Bagpipes appear in places that have not known sheep in living memory. Plastic bowler hats appear, and suddenly everybody sounds like a Frosted Lucky Charms commercial. An impressive number of folks discover that their great-great-great-grandmother’s second cousin once spelled her name…
Tom Daniel 5
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March 16, 2026

The Declaration: Timely and Timeless

Contents and Preface to my forthcoming book: I shall be speaking on this “timely” book at the Abbeville conference in March. Hope to see you there! If you would like to order an autographed copy of this book, which will not be out before the conference, you can contact me at [email protected]  The thesis of this book, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration…
M. Andrew Holowchak 10
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March 13, 2026

Victory

The regime occupying Washington, D. C., having launched its latest war of conquest, where may a Southerner look for consolation in a world gone insane?  The Psalmist answers: ‘From whence shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth’ (Psalm 121:1, 2). So has it often been in the South, that our people seek…
Walt Garlington 25
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March 12, 2026

The Case for Christian Localism

Originally published at From the Desk of Jon Harris. The reason for favoring the proximate, or local, over the national and international stems from the nature of society itself. Robert Lewis Dabney said that “Government is not the creator but the creature of human society.”1 Instead, society preexists government, and communities make up society. It is on the community level…
Jonathan Harris 5
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March 11, 2026

The Carried Song

If I were a Yankee, I could likely make an outrageous claim and expect it to be believed on the strength of its articulation alone. Yankees, of course, possess the advantage of literacy, and literacy, in modern cultural shorthand, is synonymous with intelligence. As a Southerner, I don’t enjoy that rhetorical luxury. Everything I say must be prefaced, situated, and…
Tom Daniel 8
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March 10, 2026

Confederate Sister Spies

The story of Maria Dolores "Lola" Sánchez reveals a forgotten chapter in American Civil War history, another one that illuminates the substantial yet underappreciated contributions of Hispanic Americans to the Confederate cause. Born in 1844 to Cuban parents who had settled in Florida during the mid 1840s, Lola descended from one of Florida's oldest and most distinguished families of Spanish…
Jose Nino 3
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March 9, 2026

Spencer Roane and the Richmond Junto

The party of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton were swept out of power. The election of 1800 saw the triumph of Jefferson’s Republicans and the complete decimation of the Federalists, a party that would never again control the White House, or either house of Congress, and would cease to exist after the 1816 presidential election. After a contentious battle in the…
Ryan Walters 5
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March 6, 2026

Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt was an American singer-songwriter born in 1944 in Fort Worth, Texas, whose work occupies a quiet but enduring place in Southern music. His songs sit at the crossroads of folk, country, and blues without ever settling comfortably into any of them, largely because he showed little interest in belonging to pre-set categories. Born of Dutch ancestry and…
Tom Daniel 7
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March 5, 2026

Should We Despise Lincoln?

From what has been shown throughout this book, it would seem obvious that we should. No single man in American history has done more to abolish liberty than him. Yet Lincoln was not the real issue; he was one person, powerless unless backed by voters and wealthy interests. If we imagine the political decay instituted by the war and his…
Jeb Smith 15
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March 4, 2026

Kin & Covenant: America’s Clan Culture

The American South has always been a collection of tight-knit communities rooted in family. The earliest settlers were often relatives or from neighboring European villages.  From the very beginning, this was the case almost unilaterally in America. Families immigrated together and moved in unified collectives across desired locales across the colonies. The first families of Virginia were mostly descended from…
Cole Branham 5
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March 3, 2026

How They Canceled the Dunning School

Readers will be aware that the Dunning School was cancelled by the Marxist historian Eric Foner, but it is worth revisiting the details of exactly how Foner achieved this momentous feat. The reference to “Dunning” usually refers to the distinguished historian William A. Dunning, but it is also used more broadly as a label for his PhD students and the…
Wanjiru Njoya 6
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March 2, 2026

The South and the American Empire

A Review of Joseph R. Stromberg, The South and the American Empire: Essays (Shotwell Publishing, 2026) Those familiar with the work of Joseph Stromberg know the mastery Stromberg has over the secondary literature in a diversity of academic fields. In the preface, Clyde Wilson states, “Joseph Stromberg is the consummate scholar for all seasons.  . . . is many essays…
John Devanny 1
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February 27, 2026

Thank You For Your Service

This proposal by an outgoing homosexual Democratic Party Virginia legislator to remove three statues - one of which is of a former governor (two times over!) of the Commonwealth - from the State Capitol grounds, is hardly surprising. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of historical cleansing, but Democrats are certainly worse in terms of Orwellian historical revisionism - and…
Rev. Larry Beane 7
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February 26, 2026

49 Winchester

49 Winchester are a Southern band in the oldest, least marketable sense of the term. They are a group that formed because some guys in the same place played music together before they’d ever heard of tours and contracts. They come from Castlewood, Virginia, in the far southwestern corner of the state, an Appalachian region closer in spirit and history…
Tom Daniel 5
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February 25, 2026

The Merchant Prince of the Rio Grande Who Chose the Confederate Cause

When 200 Union cavalrymen rode toward Laredo on March 18, 1864, their mission seemed straightforward. Destroy 5,000 bales of Confederate cotton stacked at San Agustín Plaza, worth millions of dollars at wartime prices, and cripple the South's economic lifeline to Mexico. What stood between them and their objective was a garrison of just 42 men commanded by a Mexican American…
Jose Nino 6
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February 24, 2026

Quantrill: The Truth at Last

If you have seen the 1976 Clint Eastwood film “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” you may remember that it opens when the hero, a peaceful Missouri farmer, has his home destroyed and his wife killed by Kansas Jayhawkers.  He then joins the Southern guerilla fighters. This was the reality for thousands of Southerners living in western Missouri. An even better film,…
Clyde Wilson 11
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February 23, 2026

The Wrong Conclusions

This article addresses the actions of eleven Southern States in the middle of the 19th Century vis a vis the actions presently taking place in and by a number of States and urban areas including the motives and legality of such actions by both groups involved. This small study is being done in order to address what has become a…
Valerie Protopapas 16
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February 20, 2026

A New Edition of a Southern Classic

According to everyone’s favorite font of leftist wisdom, Wikipedia, “it is not clear which side caused the fires” which consumed Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, 1865. You get a similar answer from AI on Google. However, anyone who cares to read the voluminous eyewitness testimony (from both Southern and Northern sources) will be left in no doubt about who…
Karen Stokes 7
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February 19, 2026

Liars and/or Fools (and Fires)

Democrats have essentially degenerated into liars and/or fools. There is no third choice. If third graders spoke the way Demos do and of the things they advocate, they would be sent back to kindergarten, en masse. Republicans haven’t degenerated to anything-- they are the same nationalists (neo-socialist- seedlings, as are all nationalists) they have always been. However, Republicans now claim…
Paul H. Yarbrough 6
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February 18, 2026

Songs of Lament

There is a particular kind of song that only appears after history has already banged its gavel and rendered its verdict. While some songs are intended to rally the faithful or stiffen resolve, this is not that kind of song. This song arrives later, once the cannons have cooled, the banners have been folded away, and the surviving population has…
Tom Daniel 11
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February 17, 2026

Minnesota Confederates?

Originally published at Reckonin.com Public officials in Minnesota - governor, attorney general, and mayor - are resisting enforcement of legitimate immigration law and encouraging their citizens to physically interfere with federal law enforcement. They have absurdly and perversely used States’ Rights arguments to justify their actions. There has even been ridiculous mention of the 10th Amendment which has been a…
Clyde Wilson 14
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February 16, 2026

The “National Republicans”

Were the American Whigs the natural extension of the Federalists? This is a complicated question and one that creates a simplistic understanding of the American past. It also removes both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison from any complicity in the intellectual origins of the Whig Party. The Federalists as a "national" political faction died in 1815, tarnished by their war…
Brion McClanahan 5
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February 15, 2026

Jefferson’s True Love

On January 1, 1772, Jefferson took as his wife the widow of Bathurst Skelton, Martha Wayles Skelton, at The Forest—the residence of John Wayles, father of Jefferson’s wife. Once married, the two set out for the long ride to Monticello. They drove their carriage in a light snow which became denser as they entered the Virginian countryside of Albemarle County.…
M. Andrew Holowchak 4
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February 13, 2026

It Really Is Blue

Originally published at Reckonin.com If you spend any time at all online, you're aware of the proliferation of artificial intelligence-created content. Tools exist which have made AI now easily accessible, free or cheap to use. This powerful tool is in the hands of the general public with virtually no oversight in place, and as you might imagine, the content being…
Anne Wilson Smith 6
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February 12, 2026

From Cuban Freedom Fighter to Confederate Colonel

When Spanish bullets tore through Ambrosio José Gonzales's thigh in a Cuban plaza in 1850, he became immortalized as the first Cuban to shed blood fighting for independence from Spain. 14 years later, he would command Confederate guns against Union troops at the Battle of Honey Hill, inflicting one of the most lopsided defeats of the Civil War. Born in…
Jose Nino 3
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February 11, 2026

Lincoln’s Mercenaries

A review of William Marvel, Lincoln’s Merenaries: Economic Motivation Among Union Soldiers During the Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2018) As the eminent historian John Lukacs observed, causation and motivation are the two most difficult historical phenomena to prove and explain. In part, this is due to the complexities of human nature; men and women are rarely, if ever,…
John Devanny 8
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February 10, 2026

Bookmen South of Richmond

In October of 1949, Bernard Mannes Baruch walked into the Virginia State Library in Richmond with letters. One hundred fifty-two of them, written in a hand any student of the War would recognize, the neat, right-sloping script of Robert E. Lee. They were addressed to Jefferson Davis between 1862 and 1865, dispatched from field tents and hurried through the lines.…
Chase Steely 4
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February 9, 2026

Harry Byrd, Carter Glass, and Opposition to the New Deal

In the words of one scholar, “the years from Reconstruction to the late 1950s witnessed Virginia’s fall from prominence.” This statement is true in many respects, as the South suffered greatly after the war and Reconstruction, not only in an economic sense but a political one as well. No Southerner could hope to win the presidency or vice presidency in…
Ryan Walters 3
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February 6, 2026

Recovering the True Intent of E Pluribus Unum

"E Pluribus Unum," Latin for "Out of many, one," appears on the Great Seal of the United States and coins. Its roots lie in Virgil's poem Moretum, but in America, it symbolized political unity among the thirteen states during the Revolutionary era, not diversity as the left and PragerU claim. The phrase entered American use in the Great Seal's design…
Garrick Sapp 15
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February 5, 2026

“Our Confederacy”

The socialist-democrat party’s leaders—particularly Rep. Pelosi—have taken to referring to “our democracy.” The term serves as a cudgel against political opponents in the de-civilizers’ attempts to justify or garner support for whatever unethical, unlawful, or unhelpful activities they seek to advance. How many of them—or even ordinary American citizens—realize that in the antebellum period it was not uncommon to encounter…
Forrest L. Marion 24
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February 4, 2026

The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson

A review of Luigi Marco Bassani’s Liberty, State, & Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson (Mercer, 2010). I am always appreciative when I can read the title of some book and it gives me some idea of the content of the book and its thesis. That might seem like a claim, mundane and perhaps even foolish. Are not all titles…
M. Andrew Holowchak 10
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February 3, 2026

Front Porches

When people talk about the history of American music, they almost always picture a stage, with a spotlight and a performer separated from an audience by footlights and distance. We imagine these grand, almost sacred spaces designed for reverence and applause. Of course, those places definitely matter, but they come late in the story. Southern music did not begin on…
Tom Daniel 7
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February 2, 2026

Two Secessionists

Most Americans continue to believe that Southerners invented secession (and nullification) as a defensive tactic to preserve slavery, and by "most Americans" I include so-called "conservatives" like Francis Sempa at The American Spectator and Hayden Daniel at The Federalist. According to this narrative, secession and nullification were little more than treasonous and petulant responses to justifiable federal laws. Both Sempa…
Brion McClanahan 17
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January 30, 2026

The Mystery of the Beale Treasure

In 1885, there was published in Lynchburg by James B. Ward a small manuscript, titled The Beale Papers, Containing Authentic Statements Regarding the Treasure Buried in 1819 and 1821 near Bufords, in Bedford County, Virginia, and Which Has Never Been Recovered. The pamphlet, which sold for 50 cents, contained three ciphertexts. A ciphertext is a matter of encrypting or encoding…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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January 29, 2026

How a Spanish Officer Became the South’s Most Celebrated Filibuster

Narciso López de Urriola entered the world on November 2, 1797, in Caracas, Venezuela, born to a family of prosperous Basque merchants who enjoyed considerable colonial privilege. His relatives navigated the turbulent Venezuelan Wars of Independence by pledging allegiance to the Spanish crown. History would deliver a bitter irony when this young man, who would eventually epitomize Caribbean liberation movements,…
Jose Nino 3
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January 28, 2026

Dolly Parton and Southern Endurance

Greatness. In Southern music, “greatness” is rarely the result of innovation alone. More often, it emerges from endurance—specifically, the capacity to move through cultural, commercial, and institutional pressure without surrendering. The South has produced countless musicians whose work crossed boundaries of region, genre, race, and class, but far fewer who managed to do so while retaining control over their voice,…
Tom Daniel 10
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January 27, 2026

Why Forrest Encouraged an End to Racial Conflict

There is no better place to begin understanding the party politics of the post-reconstruction South than with the Fourth of July celebrations organized by the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers in Memphis, Tennessee, 1875. The Pole-Bearers were a “fraternal society,” or mutual aid society, for the welfare and defense of black people. In attendance at this event were various former Confederate…
Wanjiru Njoya 8
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January 26, 2026

Remarks Intended for a Gathering of Descendants of Confederate Soldiers on the 219th Birthday of General Robert E. Lee

The piece was originally published at A Memoir of the Occupation. (In the old days, my grandfather said, the birthday of General Lee was commemorated with solemn ceremonials and a speech. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, of which I am a member, maintains this tradition. Were it ever my honor to do so, I’d deliver a speech along the lines…
Enoch Cade 10
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January 23, 2026

Southern Conservatism vs. Ideology

American conservatism and Southern conservatism are different. This statement may seem a little confusing since the South is part of America and, besides a brief period in the 1860s, has never existed separately from the United States. However, the society which developed south of Mason and Dixon’s line has a history and tradition stretching far back into the colonial days…
A.A. Wayne 6
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January 22, 2026

Conflicting Visions of America

Originally published at the Alabama Gazette. “The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions may be wrong but they are…
John M. Taylor 7
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January 21, 2026

The New South, 1877-1919

Originally published at Reckonin.com Historians have found as a useful periodisation “the New South,” beginning with the withdrawal of the last federal occupation troops and the end of Reconstruction and ending with World War I and the election as President Woodrow Wilson, Southern-born and bred, although not very Southern in most of his thinking. Speaking broadly of this period we…
Clyde Wilson 4
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January 20, 2026

I Don’t Want Christmas to End

I Don’t Want Christmas to End, the 2021 Christmas album by Zach Williams, doesn’t feel as much seasonal as it feels Southern. Recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Zach Williams’ first full-length holiday record does a lot more than borrow the iconography of classic American music as it absorbs the essence of the iconic studio that shaped American…
Tom Daniel 2
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January 19, 2026

Remembering Robert E. Lee

When Yale history professor David Blight wrote Race and Reunion in 2001, he argued that his attempt to discuss how Americans “remembered” the Civil War offered a new interpretation of the conflict. He termed it “memory studies.” Blight thought that Southerners—and for a time Northerners as well—remembered it wrong, and they did so consciously: Reconciliation joined arms with white supremacy…
Brion McClanahan 12
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January 16, 2026

Regional Roots in a Global Age

In the twenty-first century, global interconnectedness has become the dominant paradigm of social, economic, and political life. Cosmopolitan ideals, such as global citizenship, transnational governance, and the celebration of universal human rights, have been championed as markers of progress and modernity. Yet, this enthusiasm for a borderless world often comes at the expense of local and regional identities, which are…
Clifford A. Bates, Jr. 2
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January 15, 2026

The Long Battle Against the South Enters 2026

There have rarely been long-lasting Eras of Good Feelings in the United States.  Clashes between the various cultures existing within the union have more often than not been the norm – clashes over tariffs, wars, abortion, slavery, monetary policy, over the very nature of the union itself. Those clashes are not by any means absent as a new year is…
Walt Garlington 6
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January 14, 2026

A Venezuelan on Southern Soil

In the tangled web of modern geopolitics, where Venezuela and the United States circle each other with increasing hostility, a forgotten chapter whispers of a time when a Venezuelan patriot walked the American South soil not as an adversary but as an admirer, a student, and ultimately a brother in revolution. His name was Francisco de Miranda, and his story…
Jose Nino 5
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January 13, 2026

Calhoun’s Doctrine of the Concurrent Majority

Originally published at Mises.org In the absence of effective checks on government power, all governments tend towards tyranny. This explains why John C. Calhoun defended the constitutional principle of limited government, emphasizing the importance of restraining the power of the majority. Calhoun argued that the aim of a constitution is not merely to confer power, but also to restrain it,…
Wanjiru Njoya 7
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January 12, 2026

Economic Problems of the Southeast

Originally published at Folkchain.org The remains of the Dutch-owned American ENKA plant cover the land in Lowland, Tennessee, like a steel skeleton picked clean. The smokestacks rise red against the sky, two of them, maybe a hundred fifty feet high. The parking lot has cracked enough to let a little wilderness in, an archipelago of grass and weeds pushing up…
Chase Steely 7
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January 9, 2026

Uncomfortable Truths for the Righteous Cause Myth

The following are uncomfortable truths for "Righteous Cause Mythologists:" 1. Africans created, organized, and supplied the international slave trade without any European involvement or direction, and Northers profited heavily from the institution. 2. Southerners established most of the early abolition societies in the United States. 3. "Jim Crow" segregation developed in Connecticut and was pervasive in New England in the…
Brion McClanahan 11
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January 8, 2026

What Ambrose Bierce Said About “Confederaphobia”

Ambrose G. Bierce was born in Ohio in 1842. When the War Between the States came in 1861, he enlisted as a Union soldier in the 9th Indiana Infantry. He fought in numerous battles, including Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Shiloh. He suffered a severe brain injury at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain which caused him to resign from the army,…
Timothy A. Duskin 4
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January 7, 2026

The Mysterious Relationship Between Thomas Jefferson and Black Mathematician Benjamin Banneker

Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), the son of freed slaves, was a natural scientist and mathematician. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, little is known of the exact course of his life. He appears to have been mostly self-educated. His early years of manhood were spent mostly on his 100-acre tobacco farm, owned by his parents, freed slaves. He was, however, a tinkerer…
M. Andrew Holowchak 0
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January 6, 2026

An Open Letter to the University of the South

The University of the South appears poised to remove many, if not all, Confederate names and images from its campus and memory because they may smack of Southern treason/secession and slavery. Such removal is a poorly conceived idea. First, secession (i.e., "independence") is probably the one, true and great gift that America has offered Mankind. Second, slavery is an American,…
W.E. Shofner 4
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January 5, 2026

The Foreign Policy Wisdom America Ignored from John C. Calhoun

Few American statesmen traveled a more remarkable foreign policy journey than South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). The young War Hawk who promised to conquer Canada in four weeks became the elder statesman warning that conquest would destroy the republic itself. Such a foreign policy transformation would seem foreign to present-day public officials, who are completely enthralled by the…
Jose Nino 3
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December 30, 2025

What Does it Mean to be “Southern”?

What does it mean to be “Southern”? This question has vexed Americans since the founding. Every American knew that sectional differences existed. George Mason, for example, worried that the “Eastern States” would plunder the agricultural States further south. He drafted an amendment that would have prevented “navigation laws,” i.e. protective tariffs, for that reason. Gouverneur Morris openly suggested that if…
Brion McClanahan 10
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December 29, 2025

An Ode to the Magnificent Memory of CSA General Robert E. Lee

A noble son of Old Virginia, of which she ought to be always purely proud and say she knew, Was the ever honorable cavalier by the notable name of Robert E. Lee who decided to, Resist Northern tyranny, by fighting/or states' rights, native land. and to ably assure and see, That the Southern people might remain free, if only the…
Joseph A. Settanni 2
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December 24, 2025

Eggnog Nationalism

Originally published at Folk Chain of Memory. Winter often brought reprieve in the wars of the past, but not in the Eggnog War. Unlike the fashionable moral ambiguities peddled by our gender-ambiguous storytellers, this war permits no compromise. Here we find no fashionable shades of gray. We’re not flipping houses. The Eggnog Question divides as clearly as foundations, rock against…
Chase Steely 6
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December 23, 2025

Liberty and the Plow: Defending Our Rights Against Federal Overreach

Originally published at Medium.com By Agricola, a Freeholder of the Republic “Liberty is preserved not by distant power, but by limits placed upon it.” As a third generation agrarian in the Western United States, I inherit not only the soil worked by my family but also the principles they instilled in me — chief among them, the sanctity of private…
Darcy Lammers 2
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December 22, 2025

A Vaudeville of Devils

This piece was originally published at A Memoir of the Occupation. (Wars in the age of mass democracy are waged over ideas, a wise man once said (maybe Collingwood, though I can’t find the quote). So, yes: I’m happy to grant that slavery was a cause of the War Between the States. Or, rather, the portrait of slavery conjured by…
Enoch Cade 4
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December 19, 2025

The Matrix, MAGA, and the Southern Tradition

As with many technological developments in American history, such as the internet itself, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being introduced with little occasion for the populace to be informed as to its potential impact or any opportunity for them to weigh in with their concerns.  Such is life in the Republic of Technology, aka The Machine.  Rather, the entire debate is…
Mike Goodloe 9
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December 18, 2025

The Forgotten Voyagers

In the shadowed corners of American history lies a story rarely told, a narrative of colonists who crossed an ocean twice to forge communities in the swamps and plains of the Deep South. These were the Isleños, a people whose very name whispers of distant shores and forgotten tongues. The Spanish word for "Islander" would come to identify an entire…
Jose Nino 3
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December 17, 2025

Not Gone–Just Blowing with the Wind

In the movie Gone with the Wind, just after the credits were presented there was a forward line as follows: “There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the old south. Here in this pretty land gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last to be seen of knights and their ladies fair; of master and of…
Paul H. Yarbrough 7
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December 16, 2025

Same Old, Same Old

A review of Against the Machine: on the Unmaking of Humanity (Thesis, 2025) by Paul Kingsnorth In an interview included in the press handout for Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth is asked why he wrote this book now.  Good question. “The rise and triumph of the Machine,” he says, “is becoming increasingly obvious in the 2020s, so the moment seems…
Kirkpatrick Sale 2
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December 15, 2025

Modern Yankees Use the Historical Propaganda Model Created by the Soviet Communists

It is verboten in most places across the United States to say anything favorable about Southerner leaders who either personally embodied or fought to defend – with pen, sword, or by political means – authentic Southern tradition.  The institutions of the Left (media, academy, Hollywood) and the Right (talk radio, governments of Red States and counties/parishes, Fox News) seem to…
Walt Garlington 7
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December 12, 2025

Crossing the Rubicon

Originally published at the Alabama Gazette. Crossing the Rubicon, a common phrase used to describe a point of no return, is typically traced back to Julius Caesar’s crossing of the river Rubicon in January 49 BC, initiating the Roman Civil War. An analogy can be drawn between the actions of Caesar and those of Lincoln in his call for 75,000…
John M. Taylor 6
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December 11, 2025

A Few Southern Reflections

Originally published at Reckonin.com. Before the War for Southern Independence the main theme of American government was republican virtue and honour. The defeat of the Confederacy established a new main theme - making money. That was the most important result of the War. Compare Lee and Grant. Or the real characters of Jeff Davis and the corporate lawyer and tricky…
Clyde Wilson 10
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December 10, 2025

The Confederates Who Chose Brazil

They sailed into Brazil more through memory than fact now, not as tourists or traders but as refugees from a vanquished republic. Between 1865 and 1875, an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 former Confederates left the wreckage of the American South and started over in the Empire of Brazil. Their exodus counted among the largest political departures of United States citizens…
Jose Nino 6
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December 9, 2025

History Is Not a Science

Originally published at Mises.org. The court historians, who insist that they have the only “correct” view of history, like to claim that theirs is the only true version of history because it is based on primary sources. But they fail to distinguish between what the primary sources state, and their own interpretation of the significance to be attached to those…
Wanjiru Njoya 5
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December 8, 2025

The Conspiracy No One is Talking About

Originally published at From the Desk of Jon Harris. I recently recorded a podcast on John Taylor of Caroline’s important but often neglected book New Views of the Constitution (1823). I initially believed that the most compelling way to introduce this work to modern audiences would be to highlight how Taylor, writing from a federalist perspective, disagreed with Joseph Story’s…
Jonathan Harris 7
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December 5, 2025

Jefferson and the Indians

Jefferson’s views on Indians were characterized by ambivalence. Jefferson both loved and hated Native Americans at times because he de profundis animi (from the depths of his soul) loved Native Americans. That is not posited as a thesis, for it should be obvious to anyone who examines Jefferson’s presidential writings on Native Americans, but as an observation. Jefferson was, through…
M. Andrew Holowchak 15
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December 4, 2025

Weaver’s Lessons for the Modern Right

First published at The Daily Economy. The modern American right could stand to gain from the insight of Richard M. Weaver. Weaver, a twentieth-century conservative of the Southern tradition, perceived the dangers of radical ideologies as well as the extent to which American thinking offered the viable alternative. Amid the disagreements and controversies of our present moment, today’s various libertarians,…
Justin Madura 5
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December 3, 2025

Commander-in-Chief and Journalistic “Wisdom”

I feel saddened (actually just mystified) at the accepted notion that the president is elected as commander-in-chief of the country. Somehow the sages of journalism have interpreted, as a result of some extracurricular activities of various presidents over the years, that because the term CIC is present in Article 2 and since the president’s duties fall under this same article,…
Paul H. Yarbrough 6
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December 2, 2025

Rethinking the Southern Tradition

Nullification is in the news, but not because the American right considers it to be a viable response to federal overreach. Mainstream conservatives have decided that classifying their leftist opponents as “neo-Confederates” interested in nullification will win political points at the next election. Victor Davis Hanson makes this a central theme of his ongoing attack on the Democratic Party. You…
Abbeville Institute 17
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December 1, 2025

A Short History of the South, Part 4

Originally published at Reckonin.com “Reconstruction,” 1865-1877 Through most of the 20th century, American historians of every stripe (except Communists) agreed that “Reconstruction” was an ugly period in our history - a regime of corruption, tyranny, bad leadership, and dangerous deviation from American principles. Honest historians found a vast treasury of evidence for this interpretation that is available but now ignored.…
Clyde Wilson 6
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November 26, 2025

Abe’s Civil War Narrative Meets its Waterloo

 A review of Defending Dixie’s Land: What every American should know about the South and the Civil War (Shotwell, 2025) by Isaac C. Bishop/Jeb Smith To read a new book which is not only difficult to put down but compels one to urge others to read, is a rarity these days.  Indeed, so rare that one is inclined to think…
Marcus Papadopoulos 15
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November 25, 2025

The Paradox of Freedom

A Review of Paradox of Freedom: A History of Black Slaveholders in America (Scuppernong Press, 2025) by Larry McCluney I recently completed Larry Allen McCluney, Jr.’s book, The Paradox of Freedom: A History of Black Slaveholders in America. This rarely discussed subject deserves more attention, and I am glad McCluney is giving it the attention it needs. An Instructor of…
Jeb Smith 2
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November 24, 2025

Framing a Legend

“Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. ~Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Religion,” 1776 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 5 OF FRAMING A LEGEND:…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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November 21, 2025

Fighting Globalism with the Power of Dance

Appalachia was dying. It had been the most self-sufficient region of the country in 1840, but the eighty years that followed saw the culture of Appalachia come under a series of unrelenting attacks. The first blow came during the Civil War. Far from the homogenous block of Union sympathizers that liberal academics have made the region out to be since…
Benjamin Grist 3
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November 20, 2025

How Establishment Historians Conflate Facts and Ideology

Establishment historians often conflate historical facts with the establishment-friendly inferences which they derive from those facts. They then report their conclusions as merely “the historical facts,” which they solemnly declare to be “based on primary sources”. They insist that nobody can reasonably disagree with them, because they are merely reporting the facts. This article will focus on two examples, the…
Wanjiru Njoya 10
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November 19, 2025

The Day After in the Old Dominion

Virginia’s contribution to the blue wave this fall saw the usual round of Republican hand wringing and finger pointing. President Donald Trump blamed the defeats in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City on the absence of his name on the ballot, as well as voter frustration with the government shutdown. Concerning the governor’s race in Virginia, several pundits blame…
John Devanny 7
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November 18, 2025

A Low Country Bar-B-Q

It all started on my sister Robin’s front porch in Goochland one evening last summer. Cousin Jody and Miss Donna had come up to see one of their grandsons, who is at the University of Virginia. I had been invited over for supper that evening for a visit, and we were reminiscing about the “cousin’s house parties” that we all…
H.V. Traywick, Jr. 6
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November 17, 2025

A 14th Amendment Mindset

Brion McClanahan presents "A 14th Amendment MIndset" at the October 2025 Abbeville Institute conference on the 14th Amendment in Columbus, GA. Purchase all the lectures from the conference HERE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_ZDyuKg5BE
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November 13, 2025

Time Will Tell

Time Will Tell: Collected Poems of David Middleton (2025) The publication of David Middleton’s collected verse, from 1973 to the present year, in 362 pages, is a hallmark event in Southern culture.  It is also a significant event in American literature. But you will not see much attention to either of these facts. The great literary journals founded by great…
Clyde Wilson 2
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November 12, 2025

The Secession Alternative for Red Counties in Virginia

For Virginia, the Mother of States and Statesmen, things are looking bleak.  Even during the darkest moments of the War between the States, Virginians had the Army of Northern Virginia, led by the remarkable General Lee, along with Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and others, to give them hope that their difficulties would give way to better times.  Together they were,…
Walt Garlington 11
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November 11, 2025

A Lil Church

"Christian music is everywhere--whether you realize it or not." That headline was not produced by a Christian publication. The Wall Street Journal ran it on November 8, 2025. According to the article, popular Christian music is the fastest growing genre in the entertainment industry. In other words, Christian music has gone mainstream. A couple of weeks ago, I attended the…
Brion McClanahan 2
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November 10, 2025

Robert E. Lee’s Refusal to Commit Treason

Originally published at the Alabama Gazette. In a rare case of self-inflicted torture, I watched some of Maine Senator Angus King’s questioning of Pete Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Defense (now War). Various topics were covered, including the renaming of bases. King falsely accused Robert E. Lee of committing treason by resigning from the U.S. Army and siding with his State…
John M. Taylor 16
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November 7, 2025

Thomas Jefferson Visits the Natural Bridge

(A story told, for no good reason, wholly in the present tense.) On August 18, 1767, Thomas Jefferson makes his way to the Natural Bridge. The trip is arduous, for the route is arduous and anfractuous. He stays first at Steele’s Tavern and then at PaAxton’s Tavern in Glasgow, where Paxton and his sons likely take Jefferson to find the…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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November 6, 2025

A Short History of the South, Part 3

Originally published at Reckonin.com The War for Southern Independence, 1861-1865  Americans generally miss the point in considering the great war of 1861-1865. The simple fact is that it was an unprovoked war of invasion, conquest, and exploitation of some Americans by a minority party in control of the federal machine. The invasion does not fit any of the requirements of…
Clyde Wilson 4
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November 5, 2025

Refusing to be Forgotten

A review of Refusing to be Forgotten: Southern Conservatism and the Political Thought of M. E. Bradford (New York, 2023) by Marcin Gajek Marcin Gajek’s Refusing to be Forgotten (Vol. 56 in Peter Lang’s Studies in Politics, Security and Society) is a scholarly work in three lengthy chapters that provides a rigorous and welcome evaluation of M. E. Bradford, an American…
Clifford A. Bates, Jr. 5
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November 4, 2025

How Chicago Politics Sparked the Civil War

This post was originally published at ChroniclesMagazine.org. A review of A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War (Scribner, 2024) by David S. Brown The key to understanding the U.S. Civil War is the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed individual U.S. states to decide on the legality…
William J. Watkins 4
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November 3, 2025

The Expansion of Slavery or States’ Rights?

In my various interactions with promoters of the winners’ version of the Civil War, I often hear that the South and the Confederacy desired to expand slavery into the western territories, to reignite the slave trade, and generally to create a republic built upon slave labor; and that they left the Union to protect slavery and its extension into the…
Jeb Smith 10
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October 31, 2025

The Graveyard Crossroads of Grady

Grady, Alabama, was never more than a dot on the map, a rural settlement where the fields pressed in close and the pines rose taller than the houses. It lay twenty or so miles south of Montgomery, past the sprawl of the city and into a quieter country of red clay and sandy roads. The WSFA Tall Tower looms over…
Tom Daniel 2
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October 30, 2025

How John Taylor of Caroline Unmasked the Tyranny of Special Privileges

This piece was originally published at fee.org Taylor’s arguments are as relevant today as they were in the 1820s. John Taylor (1753–1824) of Caroline County, Virginia, is not often remembered as a key figure in the early American Republic, but for champions of liberty, perhaps he ought to be. While Taylor’s life included stints as a lawyer, Revolutionary War officer,…
Justin Madura 0
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October 29, 2025

Defending Dixie’s Land

Are you interested in knowing the actual history of your country, or are you content with the propagandized version the winners of wars conjure up to feed school children? When it comes to the story and tradition of the U.S. South, and especially the events surrounding the Civil War (1861–1865), you may need to brace yourself. What you think you…
Abbeville Institute 1
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October 28, 2025

Northern Noticing

The vindictive attacks on the South and her history are nothing new. For generations, Southerners have been chastised and ostracized by mainstream politics, media, and academia. For just as long, many Northerners have been convinced of Yankee lies and propaganda concerning the War for Southern Independence, its causes, and “Proposition Nation-Righteous Cause” puffery. This extended itself into all subsequent history…
Cole Branham 4
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October 27, 2025

Tennessee Johnson

Tennessee Johnson, DVD, directed by William Dieterle (1942; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, 2020). In the golden age of Hollywood, biographical dramas were a big draw at the box office. One that was not, however, was Tennessee Johnson, based on the life of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. These movies took some liberties with the…
Timothy A. Duskin 3
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October 24, 2025

Ain’t That America?

Just when it looked like things might be taking a more positive turn for Dixie with the restoration of the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington Cemetery, along come other events to remind us that hatred of the South has not waned much at all. Woke Leftist artists have created vile ‘re-imaginings’ out of once beautiful artwork honoring Southern heroes, mostly because…
Walt Garlington 13
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October 23, 2025

How Progressives Broke the Constitution and Praised Themselves For It

Originally published at Mises.org. In his article “Is the Constitution Broken beyond Repair?” David Gordon draws attention to a phenomenon that is often overlooked, namely, the great rejoicing among some constitutional lawyers over the fact that “to establish the new Constitution, Lincoln overthrew the first one… he replaced the old, immoral Constitution with a new one based on equality.” This…
Wanjiru Njoya 8
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October 22, 2025

Three Hundred Twenty-Two Pages: Jesse Stuart at Vanderbilt

Originally published at FolkChain.org. In early summer 1931, Jesse Stuart stood in the Greenup National Bank with empty pockets and a failed tobacco crop behind him. That spring he and his brother James had raised tobacco on a round knoll in W-Hollow, hoping to earn college money. Heavy rains came. The leaves went pale, then brown, then soft, then nothing.…
Chase Steely 10
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October 21, 2025

A Short History of the South, Part 2

Originally published at Reckonin.com We can only paint in very broad strokes a period that was marked by a vast expansion of the South and the U.S. in territory, population, economy, and culture. The Era of Expansion is an apt name. A major aspect of this period is the westward movement. New States admitted to the Union: 1790s: TN and…
Clyde Wilson 8
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October 20, 2025

Building Upon a Southern Ethnos Through True Faith

Delivered at the 3rd annual conference of the The Philip Ludwell III Orthodox Fellowship. The theme of our gathering today seems a hefty one, so I’m gonna take a stab at connecting the dots between some of those points and my particular focus, while always keeping in mind the Fellowship’s guiding mission as described by co-founder Clark Carlton: “to facilitate…
Dissident Mama 4
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October 17, 2025

The Humble Optimism of Robert E. Lee

There is much that has been and still can be said of General Lee’s character. It is probably to the benefit of all modern readers that we explore and attempt to understand Lee, as our own era has more frequently been concerned with deconstructing the past rather than holding up honorable men to emulate and admire. Following a brief perusal…
Justin Madura 13
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October 16, 2025

A Short History of the South, Part 1

Originally published at Reckonin.com Introduction There is a vast and often contradictory literature describing and explaining the South. Various theories have been put forth to describe Southern distinctiveness. We might note that the greater part of this literature is written by outsiders who have found the South to be a problem—either the South was evil or it had by some…
Clyde Wilson 5
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October 15, 2025

Confronting Stupidity: Bill O’Reilly vs. Nathan Bedford Forrest

I have read Chapter 5 of Mr. Bill O’Reilly and his co-author’s book, Confronting Evil: The Worst of the Worst. This chapter deals with Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Congratulations, gentlemen! You got almost every important fact wrong. First, the personal data. Forrest (who was called “Bedford”) was married, but he had only two children, although the authors were kind…
Samuel W. Mitcham 17
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October 14, 2025

A Tribute to Robert E. Lee

On this day (Oct. 12) marks the anniversary of the death of General Robert E. Lee CSA, Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He graduated from West Point without a single demerit. He fought with high distinction & courage in The Mexican-American War. He served his nation as West Point Superintendent. Many of his cadets would go on to…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh 8
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October 13, 2025

Black Slaveholders: O, the Irony

A review of Larry A. McCluney, Jr., Paradox of Freedom: A History of Black Slaveholders in America (Scuppernong Press, 2025) While working several years ago, a Black friend informed me that she was taking her family to a reunion at a plantation in the Cane River area of Northwest Louisiana.  As a longtime resident of north Louisiana, I understood something…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy 11
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October 10, 2025

Thomas and Randolph

Unsurprising it would be to find that many persons, decently familiar with Thomas Jefferson (and that includes Early American historians), were unaware that he had a brother. Biographers sometimes passingly mention Randolph early in a Jeffersonian biography inasmuch as Thomas, as the older brother, was saddled with the task of choosing between a tract of land on the Rivanna River…
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October 9, 2025

Why Murray Rothbard Supported the Southern Democrats

In paying tribute to the “genius, integrity, and courage” of Murray Rothbard, Clyde Wilson observed that “Murray is no longer with us in the flesh, but the fireball of his mind and spirit will be giving us light and energy deep into the 21st century.” This light shines forth from letters recently unearthed in a Pennsylvania warehouse by Daniel J.…
Wanjiru Njoya 6
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October 8, 2025

VMI’s “Struggle Session”

Nearly five years ago I entitled the first of several commentaries on my alma mater, “VMI Test Case for the Country.” The school was handed the gloriously soft-ballish opportunity to reject the neomarxist revolution ramped-up by George Floyd’s death. Based upon lies, deceptions, and historical ignorance, the movement reared its ugly head more brazenly than ever before in our country.…
Forrest L. Marion 18
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October 7, 2025

The Gift of Gab

Review of Randall Ivey, The Gift of Gab (Green Altar Books, 2024) Randall Ivey’s most recent collection of short stories is a welcome addition to his growing list of titles, and since four of the stories in The Gift of Gab were first published on the Abbeville website, many readers will already be familiar with his unique and wonderfully comic,…
Jack Trotter 1
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October 6, 2025

A Conservative Mindset

Radicalism has always been more popular than conservatism. Radicalism has the added side benefit of immediate gratification and a narrow focus born of heat. Conservatism on the other hand is seen as a vice in a day of tribulation. It is a detriment to the mind hardwired toward action, and immediate at that. Conservatism it has been said is poor…
Rev. Benjamin Glaser 3
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October 3, 2025

“Half the Truth is often a great Lie.”

Originally published at Reckonin.com After reading Clyde Wilson’s latest articles, “Hitler’s New Fans” and “The South and the ‘Alt-Right’” (and the comments), I must ride towards the sound of the guns! As a revisionist and as a “paleo-libertarian,” my view of the “Alt-Right” was that despite its vices it was a vital and youthful revolt against a “Gerontocratic Obsolete Party”/“Stupid…
James Rutledge Roesch 12
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October 2, 2025

Sam Francis and the Revolution from the Middle

Sam Francis is virtually unknown in American conservatism today. That wasn't always the case. Joseph Scotchie discusses his new book, Samuel T. Francis and the Revolution from the Middle. Get the book: https://a.co/d/0BVmube https://youtu.be/knU6B9M8KnU?si=6tuYs9yCUC6cFEfS    
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October 1, 2025

The Sorrow Singer

In the South, a funeral isn’t just a formality. It’s a moment when music becomes memory, and memory becomes something you can hum for the rest of your life. —Tom Daniel My memory puts on a coat of gray, A keening tweed that moans just like a choir, A dirge-like gabardine that knows the way Of tears, a worsted wool,…
Maura H. Harrison 6
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September 30, 2025

The Southern Conservative View of Equality

Originally published at Mises.org. “You just can’t attack Lincoln and get away with it—you just can’t.” Hearing these words, spoken in front of a portrait of Lincoln at the Rockford Institute in 1989, is my first memory of Mel Bradford. That remark, delivered in an accent characteristic of the Texas-Oklahoma border that was his home country, reflected the wounds of…
Wanjiru Njoya 4
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September 29, 2025

“A ferocious hate of the Southern white man”

Is Israel Jefferson’s 1873 Account of Jefferson’s Paternity of Sally Hemings’ Children Worthful or Worthless? It is commonplace for many Jeffersonian scholars, uncritically accepting Jefferson’s paternity of all of Sally Hemings’ children, to speak of slave Israel Gillette’s 1873 comments on Jefferson’s paternity as being corroborative or confirmatory evidence for that paternity—e.g., the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s account of Gillette’s published…
M. Andrew Holowchak 12
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September 26, 2025

American Foundings and the Future of Constitutionalism

Dr. Carey Roberts presents the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization’s (AHI)18th Annual David Aldrich Nelson Lecture in Constitutional Jurisprudence on Constitution Day, September 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SEQr6y43WA
Carey Roberts 0
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September 25, 2025

Lincoln’s Confusion Over Slavery and States’ Rights

“There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done.” -Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address There is…
Jeb Smith 16
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September 24, 2025

Virginia First–A Review

Editor's Note: This review was originally published at the Independent Institute. We would like to thank Dr. Coclanis for his thorough and critical review of Virginia First: The 1607 Project The overhyped and tendentiously argued “1619 Project” (hereinafter 1619) was rolled out in vainglorious fashion by The New York Times in August 2019 (nytimes.com). Since the release of the first…
Peter A. Coclanis 1
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September 23, 2025

Hear, Hear for Shotwell!

When I was a young lad in graduate school, Clyde Wilson asked me and another graduate student to his office for a chat about American history. We didn't know what to expect, but he wanted to ask us a few questions. We walked in, Clyde pivoted around from his typewriter (he didn't have a computer in his office for the…
Brion McClanahan 9
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September 22, 2025

South Carolina was Not an Oligarchy

In the heated political rhetoric of the mid-19th century, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) famously lambasted South Carolina's government in his 1856 speech "The Crime Against Kansas," portraying it as an oligarchy where political power was confined to an elite few, specifically requiring legislators to own "a settled freehold estate and ten negroes." This claim, however, was a deliberate distortion of…
Abbeville Institute 2
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September 19, 2025

Emancipation as a War Measure

Although not an “abolitionist” in the strict sense, Abraham Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery. Lincoln’s view was common within the Republican Party. Abolitionists were generally despised in both North and South--many would be considered radical even by today’s abysmal moral standards. Abolitionists, e.g., Wendell Phillips and Lysander Spooner routinely criticized Lincoln for his tepid anti-slavery views. Lincoln’s focus was…
John M. Taylor 4
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September 18, 2025

Reunion with the Dead

Hey, there!  Hey!  I remember you!  You Will McMillan, ain’t you?  That’s right.  Me and you went to Compton High together.  But you probably don’t remember me.  We wasn’t close or nothing.  Knew each other to say hey when passing, but that’s about all.  You was a brain.  Always had your face in a book.  Always reading and studying.  Not…
Randall Ivey 2
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September 17, 2025

Calhoun, Reagan, and States’ Rights

Not long ago, California governor Gavin Newsom condemned President Trump's nationalization of California's National Guard units, characterizing it as an attempt “to usurp state authority and resources.”  Newsom went on to accuse Trump of “inflaming fear in the community, inciting fear and violence, and endangering state sovereignty.”  While nationalist-leaning conservatives are quick to compare the governor to Jefferson Davis, the…
Jerry Salyer 3
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September 16, 2025

Why Did Jefferson Write the Notes on the State of Virginia?

Thomas Jefferson in his 1821 never-finished autobiography, writes of the motivation for and the history behind his only book Notes on Virginia: Before I had left America, that is to say in the year 1781. I had received a letter from M. de Marbois, of the French legation in Philadelphia, informing me he had been instructed by his government to…
M. Andrew Holowchak 0
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September 15, 2025

Reply to MAGA: MAHAHAHA!

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Mark 8:36 On July 23, 2023 Donald Trump addressed the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Summit in Washington, D.C., delivering his AI action plan including these words (here starting about 21:35): We also have to have a single federal standard not 50 different states…
Mike Goodloe 13
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September 12, 2025

Louisiana Landscapes in True Detective

Modern cinema has rarely surprised in recent years. However, there are some exceptions that still save the reputation of contemporary productions and tv series. In my opinion, the first season of True Detective can certainly be considered a near-masterpiece. The creator of the series is Nic Pizzolatto, a New Orleans-born (1975) writer and film producer. I will try not to…
Karol Mazur 1
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September 11, 2025

The South and the “Alt-Right”

Originally posted at Reckonin.com My last post (Hitler’s New Fans) has received a fair amount of comment, mostly negative. Some have questioned why I addressed the subject? Because I thought someone needed to take notice of an unfortunate trend. I have no quarrel with the Alternative Right as long as it is attacking the evil Yankee Empire. But to bring…
Clyde Wilson 10
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September 10, 2025

Irrelevant Congresses and Caesar-Presidents

The powers of the federal executive have been growing steadily in the United States since Lincoln’s War, which destroyed the limited, coordinating government that had existed in DC up to his time in office and replaced it with a powerful, centralized entity that could stomp upon the States with impunity.  Proof of this may be seen in the numbers of…
Walt Garlington 5
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September 9, 2025

When They Repealed the 13th Amendment

There is probably nothing as unrecognized and consequently misunderstood as the concept of slavery, at least as to the presentation by modernity media and so-called historical presenters. Slavery has been around since the beginning of man’s history and has been a force in commerce as well as crime throughout the known and explored world. If H.G. Wells’s somewhat well-structured Outline…
Paul H. Yarbrough 11
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September 8, 2025

A Great Southern Poet of the 20th Century

“My mother had five sweet normal wholesome children; then I was born.” The poet Archibald Rutledge smiled when he said this, but he was indeed a precocious child, and so not really “normal.” When he was only three years old, he told his mother that he had “made a poem.” I saw a little rattlesnake too young to make his…
Karen Stokes 3
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September 5, 2025

Thomas Jefferson’s West Point

Thomas Jefferson has been depicted by many scholars as a pacifist, and a “conciliatorian”: that is, person adverse to conflict to solve problems and issues. He was a strict supporter of limited government and a militia, not a standing army, to defend and protect the country and to preserve liberty for the people. Yet he also birthed West Point Military…
George Gori 3
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September 4, 2025

Hitler’s New Fans?

Originally published at Reckonin.com. It is natural and good that we revise our interpretations of past history now and then in the light of new evidence and the emergence of new perspectives on human affairs. But there seems to be going on at the moment a revisionism about World War II that is somewhat distorted in judging good and evil.…
Clyde Wilson 19
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September 3, 2025

The Drawl and the Song

At a recent Abbeville Conference, I tackled a subject that’s been hiding in plain sight all along - the Southern accent. I’ve lived in Alabama almost my whole life, so I’m definitely familiar with the Southern accent. Now it’s true that my wife and I lived in Iowa for three years, but we actually kind of liked it up there.…
Tom Daniel 8
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September 2, 2025

Real American Conservatism

For the past week, Dinesh D’Souza has engaged in an ongoing debate on social media concerning the meaning of American conservatism and the influence of the South in American history. D’Souza—like Victor Davis Hanson, Harry Jaffa, Larry Arnn, Allen Guelzo, and a host of other mainstream conservatives—argue that while Robert E. Lee has admirable traits, the South cannot be integrated…
Brion McClanahan 11
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August 29, 2025

Notable Trees in Alabama

This piece was originally published in 1931 in the Montgomery Advertiser. God willed that even trees should have an individuality. In the world's history, there is the "Charter Oak" and there was the “Washington Elm,” and in Athens, Ga., a tree has a deed to its own plot of ground. Most of us have heard of the “Cedars of Lebanon,”…
Peter A. Brannon 1
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August 28, 2025

Lafayette at Monticello

President James Monroe in 1824 invited the Marquis de Lafayette, an enormous French figure in the American and French Revolutions, to visit the United States after decades abroad in France. Lafayette agreed to visit and the visit would last over a year, from August 15, 1824, to September 3, 1825. Jefferson invited the great Frenchman to pay him a visit.…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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August 27, 2025

Remembering Hipolit Oladowski and others

One of the most interesting research interests for me is exploring the connections between Poles and the American South. Research-wise, this is undoubtedly a niche area and, despite everything, under-researched, primarily due to the difficulty in accessing sources: letters, notes, and diaries. This niche topic of Polish-American history, however, seems so fascinating that it constitutes a treasure trove of mysteries.…
Karol Mazur 2
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August 26, 2025

The Double Standards of Court Historians in War and Reconstruction

Originally published at Mises.org In his book Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, the Marxist historian Eric Foner advances a revisionist history of the Reconstruction Era. In his preface, he explains why revisionist history is important: Revising interpretations of the past is intrinsic to the study of history… Since the early 1960s, a profound alteration of the place of blacks within…
Wanjiru Njoya 8
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August 25, 2025

State Sovereignty?

The United States of America, bases its legal argument of national union, and national sovereignty over the individual states; on the  premise that the individual states were never individually sovereign nations unto themselves, and that they united to form a sovereign nation or federal state. However,  investigation reveals that the individual states were indeed founded as (thirteen) fully separate sovereign nations,…
Brian McCandliss 5
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August 22, 2025

Would States’ Rights Solve our Issues?

I have been a big advocate for decentralized power, which in our American context has been connected to “states' rights;” the most prominent period and example being the American Civil War, where the Southern states resisted centralized federal control and both fought for and applied to their Constitution a strong decentralized states' rights policy. A decentralized Union where sovereignty lay…
Jeb Smith 19
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August 21, 2025

Debunking Lies and Half-Truths–The Confederate Flag

THEY SAY: “The flag we now call the Confederate battle flag was one of many battle flags used by the Confederate forces during the Civil War.  It largely disappeared after the war and was not commonly seen again until the 1950s, when white supremacists resurrected it as a clear symbol of their opposition to integration and the Civil Rights Movement. …
Lola Sanchez 6
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August 20, 2025

Oh Donald, Where Art Thou?

A while back I wrote that I would really believe in Donald Trump when I saw the Arlington reconciliation monument go back up. Almost hard to believe, but it looks like it’s happening. It seems also that immigration is being seriously addressed, and I am happy about that too! Although I fear it is far too late to repair the…
Clyde Wilson 2
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August 19, 2025

Transforming the Union

Lincoln claimed the North was fighting to preserve the Union. However, fighting to preserve a voluntary Union is a contradiction since force is antithetical to voluntary consent. Alexander Hamilton noted: “To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised…Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only…
John M. Taylor 7
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August 18, 2025

Debunking Kevin Levin’s Distorted Assault on the Reconciliation Memorial

Kevin Levin's recent Substack screed, "Stop Referring to the Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery as a 'Reconciliation Monument,'" is a masterclass in selective historical cherry-picking, ideological bias, and outright fabrication. Levin, a self-styled Civil War memory expert whose work has been accused of perpetuating an anti-Southern narrative that borders on hostility, peddles the absurd notion that the Arlington Confederate…
Abbeville Institute 6
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August 15, 2025

The Genius of Thomas Jefferson

The question “Was Thomas Jefferson a genius?” might seem awkward to anyone who has spent any time studying Jefferson, for it admits an obvious answer: He was. I have consistently maintained that he was one of the most gifted thinkers of his day—“gifted” because of his Edison-like penchant for and persistency at hard study and hard work. He had an…
M. Andrew Holowchak 6
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August 14, 2025

The Religion of Americanism

Mr. Joe Haines recently wrote an excellent essay for the Abbeville Institute detailing President Lincoln’s destruction of the voluntary union of free States and his creation of a new, indissoluble, and unitary nation from the wreckage.  We hope folks will read it if they haven’t already. It is a well-constructed essay in its historical and political aspects, and yet there…
Walt Garlington 6
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August 13, 2025

Who was Albert Pike?

During the past week the federal government announced that two removed Confederate memorials will be returned. The bigger one is Arlington's "Reconciliation Monument" erected in 1914 and removed in 2023. In 2027 it will be returned on a fifty-year loan from Virginia where it has been stored since 2023. The second one is a statue of Albert Pike erected in…
Philip Leigh 5
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August 12, 2025

The Gettysburg Redress

I am not a "Lincoln Scholar." And I will fight any man who accuses me of being one. Not that being a Lincoln Scholar isn't good business. Thanks to these folks, who recycle the Lincoln myths like a perpetual motion machine, Lincoln is surpassed by only Jesus Christ in our national pantheon of deities. Challenging the Lincoln myth is viewed…
Joe Haines 17
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August 11, 2025

Blood in the Branches

This is a true story where music, memory, and mass murder meet beneath the Southern sky. I’ve said before that my family tree may have tangled roots, but this time, it’s got blood in the branches. I want to tell you a story that winds through the bare winter trees of Stokes County, North Carolina… a story that runs like…
Tom Daniel 2
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August 8, 2025

Debunking Myths: The True Story Behind Charlottesville’s Lee Statue

Originally published as an essay on X by the "Jefferson Davis" account. In the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, activists and some "historians" propagated a series of claims about the city's Robert E. Lee statue, framing it as a symbol of white supremacy, Jim Crow, and racial intimidation. These narratives often distorted historical facts,…
Abbeville Institute 4
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August 7, 2025

Victory at Arlington

On Tuesday, August 5, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared that the Arlington "Reconciliation Monument" was going home. By 2027, the beautiful sculpture dedicated to turning "swords into plowshares" and healing the wounds of war will be placed back in the cemetery. It should never have been removed. Last time I checked, Arlington is a cemetery, and as per…
Brion McClanahan 13
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August 6, 2025

The Sabbath and Slavery

No topic of importance in the Old South may be handled rightly without dealing with the Peculiar Institution, slavery. The holy Sabbath was no exception. Embedded in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment (according to Protestant enumeration) – to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy – called for a weekly day of public worship and rest from secular…
Forrest L. Marion 4
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August 5, 2025

Lincoln’s Counterfeiters

Review of Lincoln’s Counterfeiters: The Wisconsin Gang that Funded the Union and Started the Chicago Mob (History Press, 2025) by Andrea Nolen. In the late 19th century and through the 20th there was a widespread impression that the Democratic Party operated corrupt big city machines and the Republican politicians were respectably sober and honest. ​This author makes clear, chapter and…
Clyde Wilson 1
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August 4, 2025

Legends of Southern Radio

Imagine a world where radio wasn’t just background noise, but was a powerful force across an entire region of the country. I want to look into the dusty dials and glowing tubes of early Southern radio, and explore all about some of the stations that didn’t just play music, but changed culture, identity, and race relations in the American South…
Tom Daniel 4
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August 1, 2025

The Kingfish

“Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.” With that slogan Huey Pierce Long Jr. promised to dynamite America’s caste system and pave the rubble with schools, hospitals, and paved highways. To his enemies he was a bayou Mussolini; to his followers he was the first man in living memory who kept the lights on in forgotten parishes. Strip…
John Slaughter 9
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July 31, 2025

Are you a Confederate but Don’t Know It?

Most of the political problems in this country won’t be settled until more folks realize the South was right. I know that goes against the P.C. edicts, but the fact is that on the subject of the constitutional republic, the Confederate leaders were right and the Northern Republicans were wrong. Many people today even argue the Confederate positions without realizing…
Charley Reese 10
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July 30, 2025

Havin’ A Large Time

Reporter Bill King discusses his decade of work covering the Southern music scene from 1976-1986. We're havin' a large time. You can pick up his book, Large Time: On the Southern Music Beat, 1976-1986, and enjoy more detailed stories. https://youtu.be/cxMqZTfhqSM The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily the views of the Abbeville Institute.
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July 29, 2025

Music and the Soul

Originally published at Reckonin.com Most of the music we hear in modern life is of the pre-recorded sort, mass produced by corporations. One might argue that the large-scale production and distribution of music has some upsides - we can experience a wider variety of musical styles, and the work of the most talented artists can be appreciated by everyone regardless…
Anne Wilson Smith 2
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July 28, 2025

Jefferson on Constitutions

Political institutions not exact systems as are geometrical “systems” such as Euclidean geometry and its alternatives, Lobachevskian (hyperbolic) and Riemannian (elliptical) geometries. Hence, the principles of any constitution cannot be taken, as they often are, as axiomata as they are in geometries. They are, however, philosophically based: both on the nature of humans and the best life for humans, given…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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July 25, 2025

This Night is My Departing Night for Here No Longer May I Stay: The Celtic South

Originally published at A Memoir of the Occupation. At the summit of ancient Irish literature stands Táin Bó Cúailnge, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley. It is the story of Queen Medh of Connacht and Cúchulainn, mightiest of the Knights of the Red Branch sworn to the service of King Conchobar of Ulster, and the war they fought over the…
Enoch Cade 2
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July 24, 2025

Understanding the Doctrine of State’s Rights

Originally published at Mises.org One hundred sixty years after the war for Southern independence, great confusion is still caused by the claim that the South fought for their independence and for “states’ rights.” What does the doctrine of “states’ rights” mean in this context? The dictionary definition is easily understood: “the rights and powers held by individual US states rather…
Wanjiru Njoya 7
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July 23, 2025

Southern Food and Family

You might be Southern if you think a salad means something held together by Cool Whip. In the South, we don’t just eat meals. We remember. We gather. We keep our people’s memories alive one bite at a time. As a big man that loves to eat, I’m concerned that we don’t talk nearly enough about Southern food. Every Abbeville…
Tom Daniel 8
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July 22, 2025

The Darkening of the American Mind

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Isaiah 5:20 Tucker Carlson recently conducted an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative of the 14th congressional district of Georgia, in the context of the bombing by United States forces of…
Mike Goodloe 10
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July 21, 2025

The Long Gray Line

“The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray (my emphasis), would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.” Douglas MacArthur. General Douglas MacArthur gave his final speech (amazingly extemporaneous) to the Corps of Cadets at West point…
Paul H. Yarbrough 12
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July 18, 2025

“Angry White Southern Men”?

In June, the Washington Post published an extended article on an ongoing dispute in Edenton, North Carolina, over a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier erected in 1902 to honor the 47 war dead of Chowan County. Every weekend, the article explained, pro-statue and anti-statute locals offer their respective cases in favor of either keeping the statue in its prominent…
Casey Chalk 13
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July 17, 2025

Did Lee Whip His Slaves?

Notwithstanding currently popular interpretations, there is no convincing evidence that Robert E. Lee ever whipped slaves. The argument that he ordered the flogging of three runaways in 1859 took on a new life after Elizabeth Brown Pryor published Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters in 2007. Contrary to her implications, she provides no…
Philip Leigh 9
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July 16, 2025

Icon

A review of Icon (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2017) by Georgia Briggs Today, my friends, we owe a debt of gratitude to the wonderful Matushka Emma Cazabonne for recommending I read a relatively new novel by a talented young Southern author. (Thanks, Emma!) The book is a new take on an old story, or, rather, an old and persistent threat to civilizational states,…
Perrin Lovett 0
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July 15, 2025

Flying Dixie’s Flag on the 4th of July

It is unsurprising to see the United States flag flying on the 4th of July.  It is the day of the colonies’/States’ separation from Great Britain, and the beginning of their existence as countries on an equal footing with the others of the world. And yet something is missing.  The Southern cultural element that should be present in Louisiana and…
Walt Garlington 6
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July 14, 2025

Music and Mourning: Funeral Traditions of the South

Southern funerals. There’s nothing like them anywhere in the world. They are a unique blend of faith, reverence, tradition, and music, and Southern funerals and burials have been tremendously shaped by song. Whether it’s the keening moan of a gospel choir, the slow march of a brass band, or a lone fiddle crying out over a pine box, music has…
Tom Daniel 5
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July 11, 2025

It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Humidity (And Also the Heat)

Back when I was a boy, summers in the South were hot, sure—but they were respectable about it. The heat came on slow, like a gentleman tipping his hat, and gave you a chance to get your chores done before it got truly miserable. You’d break a sweat by noon, but nothing a tall glass of sweet tea and a…
Bubba "Don't Call Me Junior" McGraw 4
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July 10, 2025

The “Egghead” Got it Right

The Democratic Party nominated Adlai Stevenson for President of the United States twice, once in 1952 and again in 1956. He is often described as a sacrificial lamb, cannon fodder for Dwight Eisenhower in a contest of David and Goliath, except in this case, Goliath won. Stevenson never fared well with the press and could not capture the popular imagination…
Brion McClanahan 6
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July 9, 2025

Joint Salvation

South Carolina author Perrin Lovett’s recent Christian novel Judging Athena (Shotwell Publishing) has attracted international attention. Below, Lovett is interviewed about the book. This interview/review was originally published at LiteraryTitan.com Judging Athena follows a humble and kindhearted research assistant who meets a curator at an art gallery, and what begins as a chance encounter over a necklace for a young…
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July 8, 2025

Oswald Spengler and the Confederacy

The Southern land bled a rhythm no industrial algorithm can measure, its tempo measured through cotton fields and porch sermons, chivalry rising from the soil like heat. Spengler didn’t merely observe. It was divination, reading omens in the shadow of collapsing empires. The Confederacy became for him a form, sculpted not from policy or party but from blood memory and…
Constantin von Hoffmeister 3
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July 7, 2025

Jefferson’s Declaration

On June 9, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five men—Virginian Thomas Jefferson, New Englander John Adams, Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin, New Yorker Robert Livingston, and New Englander Roger Sherman—to draft a declaration of American independence. The motivation for the document—the one given to the committee by the Congress—is certainly conveyed in the opening salvo of Jefferson’s draft: to…
M. Andrew Holowchak 2
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July 4, 2025

What are We Celebrating on July 4?

On July 4, Americans will have a day of celebration with cookouts, parades, and fireworks.  Yet how many really understand just what we are celebrating?  Why is there a Pride Month but not an American Patriotism Month? What was actually the purpose of the Declaration of Independence?  What specifically did it state?  Why do our unalienable freedoms that were enshrined…
Carole Hornsby Haynes 13
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July 3, 2025

The New York Draft Riots

The June 2025 Los Angeles riots have initiated constitutional questions about State vs. Federal authority. Per Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, it is up to the Governor or legislature of a State to request federal assistance; otherwise, the general government can enforce federal laws but generally has no authority to interfere with State affairs. Furthermore, the 1878…
John M. Taylor 5
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July 2, 2025

Gettysburg

One personal annual tradition I have is to watch the classic war film Gettysburg.  I have been a Civil War buff for longer than I can remember, so long that I don’t remember when my interest started.  One of the first books I remember reading was Mary Williamson’s Confederate Trilogy for Young Readers, published by the (sadly) now defunct Sprinkle…
Samuel Ashwood 6
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July 1, 2025

The Disappearing South

There is a peculiar stillness in the late afternoon air of the South, a pause that speaks not only to the settling heat but to a deeper, more troubling quiet. It is the silence of a culture slowly slipping beyond reach, not through violence or sudden upheaval, but rather by the gentle erosion wrought by time, change, and migration. As…
Gabriel Ward 17
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June 30, 2025

Immigration and State Sovereignty

On a recent episode of The War Room (here) with Stephen K. Bannon the following exchange between Bannon and Mike Davis of the Article III Project took place.  Davis is a constitutional lawyer and a very active and successful supporter of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, as is Bannon.  The segment reference runs from 16:25 to 17:50 (transcript taken…
Mike Goodloe 2
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June 27, 2025

Where are Your People Buried?

“Where y’all from” once meant “where are your people buried?” Buried, in turn, implies place, a postage-stamp of sod or swamp or forest, a landscape secured by name, by generations, by labor and blood and memory. That, as we know, is unacceptable for a polity predicated the free flow of capital and labor. “Local attachment,” much less “familial,” interferes with…
Enoch Cade 3
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June 26, 2025

Realism and Hope: Overcoming the Distorted Past in the Works of Faulkner

Introduction In 1942, William Faulkner brought an end to the peak of his writing career when he published the short story cycle Go Down, Moses. His peak began thirteen years earlier in 1928 when he began writing The Sound and the Fury, the novel which earned him a place among the top writers of the time. Renowned Faulkner critic André…
John Walker 2
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June 25, 2025

Institutionalized Wokism as the Norm in Jeffersonian Scholarship

Abbeville Institute Press recently (2025) published my book--Sally Hemings, Race, and Song-and-Dance Historiography: The Corruption of Jefferson Scholarship by Institutional Wokeism. The book has 24 short, easily digestible essays—inasmuch as my writings can be construed as easily digestible!—in  three sections. I proffer some comments on why I wrote the book. In the introduction I define “wokeism” roughly as “being awake…
M. Andrew Holowchak 7
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June 24, 2025

Reconciliation in Frontier Film

Several weeks ago, I read The Cavalry Trilogy by Michael F. Blake. This short book covers the history of three John Ford Westerns, each starring John Wayne as a cavalry officer in the 1870s and 1880s. All three Westerns, Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950) feature beautiful shots of the southwestern desert, cavalry…
Vaugh Sullivan 3
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June 23, 2025

George Wallace Reconsidered

This piece was originally published at The Old South Repository. “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Those six words, burned into every high-school textbook, reduce George C. Wallace to a cartoon villain. They hide the inconvenient reality that the same man paved Alabama’s roads, built her community colleges, raised teacher salaries, and, in the twilight of his career, asked forgiveness…
John Slaughter 10
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June 20, 2025

“I Cannot Live Without Books”

“I cannot live without books,” Jefferson confides in a letter to John Adams (10 June 1815). The statement today is well-known and readily available on coffee mugs, book bags, and tee-shirts, for anyone willing to pay an inflated price. What is seldom recognized is that the statement is part of a larger sentence, which continues concessively, “but fewer will suffice…
M. Andrew Holowchak 3
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June 19, 2025

Immigration and the States

As with most departures from prescribed constitutional procedure the immigration process has over the years resulted in disaster after disaster.  The current flare-up in this area is no exception.  Several states which have long claimed to be “sanctuaries” for undocumented persons residing within the boundaries of the United States have indicated that they will not cooperate with the Trump administrations’s…
Mike Goodloe 7
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June 18, 2025

Trump the Nominalist

In Dixieland, ‘nominalism’ is a dirty word.  This is because, as Richard Weaver noticed, it is an act of aggression against creatures and things of all kinds in the world, removing any notion of a fixed meaning and nature from them and imposing new ones on a whim.  Nominalism is ‘the notion that nature has no essential independence or meaning.’ …
Walt Garlington 11
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June 17, 2025

The Republican War Machine Never Dies

The escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has Americans debating the future of a "conservative" American foreign policy. President Trump campaigned on a promise to keep the United States out of World War III while creating a solution to international problems in Ukraine and the Middle East. He blustered that Europe should be forced to pay for the upkeep of…
Brion McClanahan 8
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June 16, 2025

Government, of the People…That’s a Riot!

The unrest and riots in California have been underwritten by the clods of political planning such as California’s own governor, the useless idiot Gavin Newsom, who blows hard with demands that Donald Trump arrest him. Newsom, of course, wants confrontation for political gains from the glory hallelujah Democratic party. Arm in arm with the girly-screamer Mayor Karen Bass they could…
Paul H. Yarbrough 11
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June 13, 2025

Secession: The Inalienable Right of a Free People to Leave a Tyrannical Union

In the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” When that consent is withdrawn—when the government becomes the destroyer, rather than the protector, of life, liberty, and property—then the people retain the right, indeed the duty, to dissolve the political bands which have connected them…
Joe Wolverton 14
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June 12, 2025

A Stately Symposium

Thomas Jefferson received a singular letter, he wrote in his Autobiography, on July 20, 1789. The writer, Champion de Cicé, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was the chairman of a committee for the construction of a constitution for a new French government and he asked Jefferson to be present concerning their deliberations on a constitution. Jefferson excused himself. His role, he…
M. Andrew Holowchak 1
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June 11, 2025

James Kibler and Southern Literature

James E. Kibler, Beyond the Stone: Poems of Tribute and Remembrance. Shotwell Publishing, 2025. The publication of James Kibler’s second book of verse is more than just another book. It is an event in Southern culture, a hallmark in Kibler’s career as a consummate man of letters. A consummate man of letters describes a writer who does outstanding work in…
Clyde Wilson 1
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June 10, 2025

A Woman Rice Planter’s Story of Love and Faith

Elizabeth Allston Pringle was one of the most famous Southern authors of the early twentieth century, best known for her books A Woman Rice Planter, published in 1913, and Chronicles of Chicora Wood, published posthumously in 1922. Born in 1845, she was the daughter of Robert F. W. Allston, a gentleman rice planter of Georgetown District, South Carolina. In 1870…
Karen Stokes 2
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June 9, 2025

The Southern Cause: What Led to Secession

Originally published at Mises.org It is correct, analytically and logically, to distinguish secession from war. Many states secede peacefully, and it does not logically follow that secession must occasion war. The Southern states of America seceded peacefully, and Lincoln’s subsequent war which followed four months after secession was entirely unnecessary. Hence, Murray Rothbard wrote in his memo to the Volker…
Wanjiru Njoya 8
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June 6, 2025

The World the Slaveholders Made

A Review of Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made (Vintage Books, 1971). European history is replete with examples of anti-capitalist sentiment on the political right. Nineteenth-century opponents of the market economy and bourgeois mores in Great Britain and on the Continent squarely blamed the decline of tradition, community, and natural hierarchy on the Industrial Revolution. The reduction of…
Grant Havers 2
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June 5, 2025

A Slimy Turn of Events at Monticello

When Dan Jordan left the presidency of Monticello in 2008, the job was gifted to Leslie Greene Bowman (MA, history, University of Delaware). Prior to Monticello, Bowman oversaw Winterthur, a historic house in northern Delaware. During her tenure at Monticello, Bowman created a new visitor center, opened the upstairs of Monticello which was long closed to visitors due to its…
M. Andrew Holowchak 3
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June 4, 2025

A Southern Solution to the Plastic Waste Problem

I. Problems Caused by Plastics Increasing Rapidly Plastic has brought beneficial improvements to many areas of life, from health care to household appliances.  However, the negative effects of its ubiquitousness around the world are also making themselves known. The amount of plastic produced each year has grown from 20 million tons (Mt) in 1966 to 460 Mt in 2019.  This…
Walt Garlington 2
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June 3, 2025

The Real Significance of June in American History

If you follow any American progressive corporate media account, you know that June is “Pride Month,” a ritual celebration of the “LGBTQ+” community for the secular Puritans. They selected June because of the “Stonewall Uprising”—no, not that “Stonewall”—a series of protests that popped up following a New York City police gay bar raid in June 1969. This distracts from the…
Brion McClanahan 4
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June 2, 2025

Hurrah for Political Chaos!

Originally published at Reckonin.com It is not easy to find out what is going on in Washington these days. That is partly due to Donald Trump’s style - many initiatives and gambits, loudly and provocatively presented. Some of these, like the tariff business, are obviously maneuvering for position; others are serious. This is wonderful and Trump is doing great service…
Clyde Wilson 21
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Patrick HenryBlog
May 30, 2025

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 5
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May 29, 2025

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 3
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May 28, 2025

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 3
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May 27, 2025

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 6
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May 26, 2025

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 8
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May 23, 2025

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. 10
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