Daniel Webster was one of the most notable Northern statesmen of his day. He was an American lawyer who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress. His list of…
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John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, one year before James Madison, and the boys were neighbors; but Taylor afterwards moved to Caroline County, where he lived…
Recently, I started looking into the connections between musical preferences and personality types. In the early and middle parts of the 20th century, there were some questionable and unfortunate attempts…
“Who’s your people?” Though now somewhat rare, one still hears that question in Dixie, usually uttered from the lips of older or rural Southerners. Much is implied by the question….
Although commonly portrayed as one of the largest mob attacks on blacks by white racists during Reconstruction, the so-called 1874 Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans was really a…
It is maddening to listen to people who attempt “conservative thought” with but a shallow mentality for the concept. True conservative thought comes from the seeds of agrarians and various…
If timid and pacified Southerners needed more proof that we are a defeated and occupied people, then indisputable proof was recently provided by the United States House of Representatives. At…
Many Southerners are familiar with James “Ron” Kennedy and his brother, Walter “Donnie” Kennedy, who are prolific writers and staunch defenders of (what is left of) Southern tradition and heritage….
“To those who are ignorant of the jurisprudence of their country can have no taste for reasoning…” Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born roughly 61 A.D, to…
With the onset of the latest leftist government regime, many Americans are migrating South to escape oppressive taxes and gain other income advantages. Some of you may even be moving…
The date of the latest federal holiday, June 19th, was touted as the one marking the end of slavery in America. While few today would argue with the idea of…
Hit mus’ be now de kingdom comin’, an’ de year ob Jubilo! … (1) “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” has come down to us as the lofty rallying-cry of the French Revolution,…
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and…
The happy land of Caannan may be a Biblical story, but for some of us, it truly was fact. Growing up on the land my ancestors settled in the 1850s…
I have been studying the War Between the States for 53 years. In all those years, the one quotation I have read which summarizes the true reason for the differences…
Some twenty years ago I had planned to write a full-length study of John Pelham—known in the South as the Gallant John Pelham—and the making of myth. The business of…
The “ultimate cause” of the War of Secession was two mutually exclusive understanding of government. The South embraced the view of Aristotle that government was a natural outgrowth of communal…
July 4, “Independence Day,” has become for most Americans little more than another holiday, a day off from work, and a time to barbecue with family and friends. Yet, the…
The solution offered by Mr Vivek Ramaswamy to the destructive ideology of the Woke Social Justice Warriors could not be stranger: The antidote isn’t to fight wokeness directly. It can’t…
The Southern version of Thoreau’s Walden may be considered I’ll Take by Stand, by Twelve Southerners, with its subtitle, The South and the Agrarian Tradition. It was published in 1930…
In past columns I have written about some classic films, some of which have been effectively banned or “cancelled” by our contemporary cultural gatekeepers. The case of the immortal Disney…
Facebook canceled the Abbeville Institute. I was notified on June 10 that the Abbeville Institute Facebook page had been unpublished due to “repeated community standards violations.” Our offenses? We used…
We all, as we go through life, encounter people that who deserve to be remembered. Everyone does, in a sense. But all these people, their good and bad characteristics, are…
While the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has also wreaked havoc throughout the South, there was an even more deadly epidemic that attacked a number of Southern states almost a century…
“The Hispanic community understands the American Dream and have not forgotten what they were promised,” declared Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who fled their native land…
God’s guidance and blessing began in Virginia. But Civil War is where we are today. For those who have had the usual blather from a contemporary public-school education, a little…
As most Americans have learned by now, in their rush to do something politically correct, Congress passed, and the president signed, a bill making “Juneteenth” a federal holiday. Some of…
Sometimes readers will ask me: “Why did you write on that? What were you trying to say?” My response has always been that just about everything I attempt to convey, to…
On June 1, 2021, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) – historic, meritocratic, renowned for rigor and its graduates’ service, and, for decades as color-blind as any institution may reasonably expect…
A review of Rebirthing Lincoln, A Biography (Southern Books, 2021) by Howard Ray White I have always been skeptical of historical mysteries. We know that there have been people who…
“When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about, it is a part of our identity. To tell libellous lies about our ancestors is a…
First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to any major political party in the antebellum period calling…
A review of The Retribution Conspiracy: The Rise of the Confederate Secret Service (Scuppernong Press, 2021) by Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. In a world full of ever arising new…
The Federalist online magazine has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative media. This hit home for me on May…
I once wrote an article on the problems arising from what I termed “group condemnation.” I believed that in attempting to warn people of dangers lurking in the culture, those…
As Memorial Day approaches, I am thinking of a man I never met. His name is Charles Willis Kessler; he was a young, second Lieutenant from the small town of…
Nearly two weeks ago, five counties in Oregon voted to approve a measure to secede from the state and join its neighbor Idaho. The counties of Malheur, Sherman, Baker, Grant,…
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crimeAre pronest to it, and impute themselves…Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1) The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled…
One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among “good uses” for the Confederate battle flag are “diaper, shop rag,…
My name is Tom Daniel, and I’m a happy guy. I’m naturally optimistic, and I love talking about all the good things that come from the South. I get discouraged…
Reviewers are unrelenting in their praise for the new Amazon streaming television series The Underground Railroad, a magic realist cinematographic depiction of the eponymous book by Colson Whitehead, which won…
Why bother with opening the schools, if all that you’ll have is the same uneducated blowhards filling the minds of children with the same monstrous mush that is conjured by…
While Critical Race Theory and Black Liberation Theology are 20th century creations, the cultural and theological roots of these ideas find a clear path back to the mid 1800’s. Black…
Seventy-six years ago, on May 8, 1945, at 2301 hours, Central European Time, World War II in Europe officially ended. Although the war would continue in the Pacific Theatre for…
It is a testimony to the prevalence of anti-Southern sentiment that The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the most prominent evangelical parachurch entities, has provided a platform for such sentiments…
For Christmas, I gave my granddaughter a compilation of Eudora Welty’s novels. She’s an avid reader and tore into the book as soon as she unwrapped it. The short stories,…
In the 1986 comedy film Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield’s character, Thornton Mellon, a wealthy, middle-aged father, decided to attend college with his young son. Never serious about the endeavor,…
Originally posted at LewRockwell.com You may remember a meme circulating widely after the U.S. presidential election last November with a picture of Kamala Harris and the following comment: “She will…
As the “Exceptional Nation” totters and pratfalls further toward perdition, some on what is commonly, if not entirely accurately, known as the “Right” are calling for the various factions to…
During the ongoing debate regarding the removal of the monuments honoring Confederate Generals, those in support of the statues often say in defense, “The statues are part of America’s history;…
Over half a century before the Imperial German Navy launched its new and deadly method of undersea warfare against the Allied navies and merchant shipping in World War One, the…
Continued from Part 3. “And of all the officers or men whom I ever knew he came (save one other alone) the nearest in likeness to that classical ideal Chevalier Bayard…And…
In the early 1870s, a young pre-law student at Howard College was inspired by classmate and future wife, Mamie Friend. James Alan Bland would listen to the homesick sentiments of…
After the end of the War Between the States, the Union army established the District of Texas under the command of Major General Gordon Granger. The Emancipation Proclamation had been…
In 1960, the great Southern political philosopher Richard Weaver penned an essay titled “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground.” Most people considered Weaver to be a “conservative,” and he accepted…
Wokeism is a bit like kudzu. It’s not indigenous to the South, but once it starts growing… brother you better believe it will be hard to contain. And soon enough,…
Continued from Part 2. “He [Lee] was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring…a Christian without…
A review of Preachers with Power: Four Stalwarts of the South (Banner of Truth, 1992) by Douglas F. Kelly I first became aware of Douglas F. Kelly through some videos…
Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon, and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost—it seems—on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,”…
Written in the Year 2021 Hampton, our stalwart Wade, As wily as Odysseus in warAs full of rage for truth in time of fraud As any celebrated Greek,He saw his…
Marjorie Taylor Greene forced the political left into an apoplectic rage two weeks ago when they discovered she intended to form an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”…
Continued from Part I. “He [Lee] was a superb specimen of manly grace and elegance…There was about him a stately dignity, calm poise, absolute self-possession, entire absence of self-consciousness, and…
Daybreak in Dixie: Poems of the Confederacy by Linda Lee. Privately published, 2019. For those of us who value the history of our Southern people, these are the worst of…
On April 14, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden announced that, beginning May 1, the United States would begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. The project to extract the Yankee Empire from…
Ah! My Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?For now I see the true old times are dead… Tennyson, from Idylls of the King…
In the Year of Our Lord 2021, it is fashionable for American Christians to despise the antebellum South. Many Christian leaders, Evangelical and otherwise, have defended or even applauded the…
Robert E. Lee considered reconciliation and education to be his highest duties after the War. While many other Confederate leaders left the United States, Lee remained in Virginia and worked…
Like many traditional-minded people of this era, I have become disenchanted with products of the modern movie industry which are mostly either filth, silliness, or formulaic pablum. To my fortunate…
Our “conservative” punditry go forth daily in what seems increasingly to be an already lost battle against the agenda of the left and its progressivist minions in and outside the…
The spring of 1850 is an ominous perpetrator. Notwithstanding the crisis our country faced during those trying years leading to the so-called compromise of 1850, March 31st marks the death…
Robert E. Lee’s tenure as President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) should be regarded as one of the most important events in American educational history, and it…
During the past half century, there has been an ever-increasing tide of derogatory comments about the South in general and the Confederacy in particular. In more recent years, what began…
We have been told that the first shot fired in the “Civil War” was fired by the Confederacy at Fort Sumter in response to the Lincoln government’s attempt to rearm…
Take up the White Man’s burden – Ye dare not stoop to less –Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness;By all ye cry or whisper, By all…
Major League Baseball on 2 April announced that both the All Star Game and the draft would no longer be held in Atlanta as retribution for Georgia’s recent election laws….
On the Ingraham Angle recently, guest, Craig Shirley offered an opinion that should cheer the people who have read (best seller) The South Was Right. Even those who haven’t read…
Three years ago, Woke General Ty Seidule of West Point addressed the students and faculty at Washington and Lee University on the life and character of Robert E. Lee. He…
“Take but degree away, untune that string,And hark! what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy”—Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida One of William Gilmore Simms’ abiding concerns was the almost complete…
It’s strange to think that until 1962 — when the Houston’s Colt .45’s enjoyed their inaugural season as an expansion team — the only baseball teams in the South were…
Sometimes, you need to go halfway around the world in order to make a point, especially if the point to be made is not a simple one. This is one…
No American is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. A recent biography has labeled him the American “heretic,” and it has become fashionable to blame every political problem in American…
Any fool can write history, and many do. Please do not assume that I mean by this statement to vaunt the “expert” and slight the amateur. In writing history the…
A white house sits on the outskirts of a small town in upstate South Carolina. It is modest in both size and appearance, and rather old, and in front of…
Published in 2016, the book Our Man in Charleston tells the story of Robert Bunch (1820-1881), the British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, who is described in the subtitle as…
Many today feel that true Southerners living in the eleven States of the former Confederacy are, in many ways, once again fighting for their very existence and face the dismal…
Ty Seidule’s mea culpa memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me, has generated the predictable supporters: mainstream media outlets, leftist dominated history departments, and neoconservative “intellectuals.” This says more about Seidule…
Editor’s Note: This speech was delivered before the Senate on March 12, 1910, at the dedication of John C. Calhoun’s statue in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. Address…
It is time to consider the crimes committed against Southern prisoners of war by their federal captors. In 1903, Adj. Gen. F. C. Ainsworth estimated that more than 30,000 Union…
As part of its campaign to pander to the important and urgent needs of African-Americans with extremely divisive yet ultimately performative identity politics,[1] the Biden-Harris administration has announced that it…
The Virginia Military Institute, ever the underdog. . . . For longtime VMI football fans, the above score may be all-too-painfully reminiscent. I recall the first time I heard of…
These past several years, we Americans have been living in an accelerating anti-cultural vortex. Day by day the Yankee juggernaut gains steam. Once content with carpetbombing Hanoi and Baghdad, the…
“Dear me, what’s the good of being a Southerner?” asks one of the characters on the very first page of Henry James’ nineteenth-century novel The Bostonians. Though this question may…
I have written here before about my beloved hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama. Forgive me if you’ve read this before, but Tuskegee was unique among small rural Southern towns because of…
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked? Ecclesiastes 7: 13 Scott Howard, in his book The Trans-gender Industrial Complex, says on pages 164-5:…
During last week’s ice storm misery, I thought a lot about my southern upbringing and the good things I’ve received from my small, poor state with a jagged past and…
It was a late night in Boone County, Arkansas when me and my newly married wife attended a party not far from our home in Lead Hill. The ol’ boy…
In June 1863, Fitzgerald Ross, a British military man who was collecting information about the war in America, paid a visit to Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the Confederacy….
Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.” Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing…
“The Burning of Atlanta,” 82 minutes. Produced and directed by Christopher Forbes. 2020. I have written a great deal on the Abbeville Institute site in the past on the portrayal of…
The principal character in Joyce Maynard’s 1992 novel “To Die For” said that if you look too closely at a black and white photograph, all you see are a series…
In May of 2008, I became embroiled in a situation that had developed with the former Museum of the Confederacy. Having received an e-mail sent to the membership from Director…
A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard;…
“Acts of congress, to be binding, must be made pursuant to the constitution; otherwise they are not laws, but a mere nullity.” -St. George Tucker “There is no danger I…
Sometime back in the early sixties—climaxed in 1964 with Barry Goldwater’s efforts—the South with its conservative measure, almost En Masse wanted (and needed) a place to go other than the…
Coming out of the American Revolution, the nation faced a slave problem that most today could scarcely imagine and that was unemployment. The Slave labor force had grown from reproduction…
The diary of Emma LeConte is one of the best known documents chronicling the sack and destruction of Columbia, South Carolina. On February 17, 1865, the city surrendered to the…
If these were normal times, we’d all be unpacking our Mardi Gras gear right about now. Purple, yellow, and green would be everywhere, and I would be writing about how…
I hope Grandfather fed them wellFrom out his meager store of cornOr fodder pulled by Mother‘Neath a blazing autumn sun–So hot sometimes she saidThat she and sister sickenedTo the vomit…
On a late November evening in 1970, I rolled into the “Big Easy” on an L&N freight with my pockets jingling. Hitching a ride to Canal Street – and letting…
“A fig for the Constitution” if it does not protect our most basic rights was John Randolph’s nineteenth century estimation of the value of the Constitution. In 2021 his words…
As one pastor in his sixties mentioned recently, “I would have thought VMI [Virginia Military Institute] to be one of the last bastions,” meaning, of course, among those institutions most…
The Washington establishment, led by a senile 78-year-old man who can barely speak in complete sentences and seems permanently fighting mad, is hell- bent on labeling virtually all Americans who…
What would you give in exchange for your soul? Bluegrass greats Bill Monroe and Doc Watson asked that question in one of their most memorable live recordings. It’s also the…
I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress…
Southern conservatism is considered an enigma when juxtaposed against the bipartisan political configuration having been imposed upon us since the beginning of the American experiment. The candor of its echoed…
The year 2020 was brutal for the friends of the South. Monuments and statues of Southerners, not just Confederates, disappeared from the urban areas of the Southand beyond. The lockdowns…
(Mrs. Holley was the third generation of a Southern family in California. She wrote this on being able to return permanently to the South.) The cotton fields grow row after…
A review of President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU Press, 2020) by Christopher Leahy “His Accidency.” That’s the nickname given to John Tyler, earned, as it…
From Eternity into Time Mighty the Wizard Who found me at sunrise Sleeping, and woke me And learn’d me Magic! Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the…
Slavery, we are repeatedly told, is America’s “original sin.” But unlike the effects of Biblical original sin, there is no possible atonement. The Left and its racial Grievance Factory will…
Rock ‘n Roll may be the most significant cultural export in American history. There is no doubt that American culture, for good and bad, has had an enormous impact on…
America has a Lincoln problem. Professor Tom DiLorenzo explains why our nearly deification of “Honest Abe” presents a fundamental problem for our understanding of both the American past and the…
It is a sad thing that it should fall to a junior representative from New York to tell the truth about the South’s position in national politics and culture. Ms….
The old saying: “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God” certainly applies to me. I’m an ethnic Southerner who was raised in the north – but who, for…
Yesterday’s melee in Washington provides good reason to honor Robert E. Lee because he demonstrated how he maintained dignity in defeat while convincing many resentful Southerners to reconcile with their…
According to a recent poll, 72 per cent of Americans think that we are now in the “worst” period of American history. Polls are dubious things and the great historian…
Legendary financier J. P. Morgan once said: “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” His meaning is that our public explanation…
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 phantasmagorical image of slave life in the South has long been regarded as one of the sparks that ignited the War Between the States. However, a…
“The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence,” observed Southern Gothic author and native Georgian Flannery O’Connor. But what about those weaknesses that don’t? Well, then…
Early in the civil war President Lincoln had Federal Troops occupy the State of Maryland. Though the power vested only with the US Congress, Mr. Lincoln also took it upon…
In May of this year, George Floyd died; seven months later, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) removed its statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from its prominent position at the…
I saw a pile of household goods on the side of the road a couple of days ago, as I was picking up a friend to take him to the…
“Black identity-mongers…are creating a phoney history and phoney traditions as escapes from very real problems of drugs, violence and social degeneration in the ghettos of the 1990s.” So wrote black…
During the past couple of months, from shortly after the presidential election until now, seven installments in the MY CORNER series have been picked up and (re)published, and while most…
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
Crises of legitimacy are rarely resolved without some resort to violence. The European experience in the seventeenth century is generously populated with examples: The English Civil War, Le Fronde I…
Lexington, Virginia January 2002 Driving up, then down the mountain hairpins into Lexington,By daylight, moonlight, headlight (only one),I smell the moist ancient earth rising up to greet meThis January evening…
Editor’s Note: This lecture was delivered at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Carey Roberts explores the relationship between the Old Whig faction in the South–e.g. Alexander H….
Most all of us who were fortunate enough to know our Grandfather has experienced his love. It may be expressed in many ways, whether it be a spoken ‘Well done’…
The red and the blue—states that is– are as different as the colorless black and white landscapes absent from the color spectrum. The concept of separate states for separate cultures…
There are very few human symbols that find absolute approval or, in the alternative, disapproval. Symbols are called that because they represent something far larger than themselves. An unknown symbol…
Earlier this year, shortly after the sad and unfortunate death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I witnessed an especially peculiar example of one of the many thousands (perhaps millions?) of…
All-too-often, seemingly buried in the myriad dates and statistics of history, lies the human experience that should do more to make up that history in the first place. These eyewitness…
The dramatic events leading up to the secession of the Southern States, the tragedy of the War Between the States and the ensuing final act of the South’s Reconstruction period…
In the late 19th century, Romantic composers were driven by nationalism as a means to advance their art. For example, Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov made their composed…
The Gettysburg Address is perhaps the most iconic speech in American history. Students are required to memorize it, and it has become as important to American political culture as the…
“May 29, 1856 “Abraham Lincoln, of Sangamon, came upon the platform amid deafening applause. He enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement. He was here ready to fuse with…
The life of a man is something that runs deep in all history. Before the war on gender roles, man and woman had a clear, defined boundary that all recognized…
When you hear the word “jazz,” what type of music pops into your head? What do you hear? You probably hear piano, brass, saxophone, or all of the above. But…
This Thanksgiving, the second of three NFL games will feature one of the oldest (albeit moribund) rivalries in professional football history: the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Football Team, previously…
Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies.[1] Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and…
The South Was Right! by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy. New Edition for the 21st century. Shotwell Publishing, 2020. In 1991 the Kennedy brothers first published The South Was Right!, a…
The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery. Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized,…
Secession: The point of the spear aimed at the heart of the American Leviathan – or so I once thought. Certainly secession has been a live idea in Europe for…
The following address was delivered as part of a symposium at the 150th anniversary of the burning of Winnsboro, S.C., in February 2015, sponsored by the Winnsboro Historical Society. It…
It happened on Saturday morning, November 14, 2020, at around 8:15 EST. I had switched over to briefly catch some national news on the Fox News Channel. All of a…
The pattern for modern American politics was set by Lincoln and his cronies in the 1850s—1870s, although it took an immense war against other Americans to make it stick. The…
The roots of the myth that slavery was primarily a white Southern institution were planted three decades prior to the War Between the States by the abolitionists in New York…
It is not often enough, but I do set aside blocks of time to express gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on me in my…
‘There has always been this fallacious belief: “It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.” Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere…
While watching a seventy-minute interview with Professor Adam Domby about his book, The False Cause, I was surprised at the number of errors, biased interpretations and even endorsement of “extralegal” conduct by anti-statue…
As of Friday, November 6, the votes are still being counted in at least six states. The large pro-Trump margins that seemed to prevail late election night have now disappeared…
Like any other economic exchange, the slave trade developed with a supplier, a consumer, and a trader or merchant that brought the two together. African kingdoms that had access to…
In Washington, D.C., while serving as Secretary of War in the 1850s, Jefferson Davis met Ambrose Dudley Mann, a native of Virginia who was the Assistant Secretary of State (and…
‘The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new…
Will Rogers had a quip for just about any situation, but he loved to talk politics. Rogers was born on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. His father was a Confederate…
“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is…
As some business owners and residents on King Street described it, “Charleston was raped” on the night of May 30, 2020, as mobs looted and burned the Holy City, turning…
There’s a popular meme floating around the internet that has a middle-aged, pot-bellied, suburban male standing by a charcoal fire with the caption below reading, “I just want to grill…
When asked why he was a Catholic, Southern author Walker Percy liked to provocatively respond, “What else is there?” Savannah-born writer Flannery O’Connor, a Catholic or Irish heritage, once asserted…
The political chaos that has accompanied President Trump’s first term will not abate anytime soon. From the Russian Collusion hoax to rioting in the streets to the public policy responses…
Through the centuries since Jamestown was founded, the South has held certain values, virtues, and ideals in high esteem: Courage, duty, humility, integrity, courtesy, chivalry, gallantry, self-control, reverence, selflessness, strength,…
The Southern Tradition is not something easily defined in a few words. Its specific formulation comes from the work of Richard Weaver as he interpreted the thought of the Nashville…
The United States acquired a vast area of the Southwest with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (May 30, 1848), which included all or part of the following states: Arizona, California,…
The story I’m about to tell is one of the many coming from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Hardscrabble existence was a way of life with our pioneers, and it…
Far too many pundits and commentators live and die by polls. It seems that each day some on-air talking head or online spinmeister reveals breathlessly increasingly bad results for President…
In an editorial published a little over a year after the Civil War ended, a Georgia newspaper writer expressed regret that the South had not accepted “the aid of the…
Some people come from the “the land down under”. I come from the land “where old times are not forgotten”. As historians we must recommit to helping our youth understand…
What separated the Jeffersonian understanding of government embraced by the South from the philosophy of Lincoln and the people of the North? For if Lincoln had believed as Jefferson, the…
There’s something pernicious with the New York Times’ 1619 Project and its inversion of early Virginia colonial history. The colony of Jamestown isn’t a story of bravery and resilience in…
In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” the central governmental agency in his fictitious country of Oceania is the antonymic Ministry of Truth, a body charged with the duty of erasing actual…
The 2020 presidential election took a decided turn as it moved into the final six weeks when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, passed away, opening up…
The Supreme Court once again is the headline of the news. Judge Ginsburg died leaving eight judges for the nine-seat court. The so-called media, as usual, portrays SCOTUS as the…
Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to…
For the majority of my life I have had an intense interest in the history of the War Between the States. This interest germinated as a result of two very…
Coming from a small, truly united community, I have many places that are dear to me that I often visit. One of these is a small city, located in the…
Antebellum California secession is a little known topic, but the Southern portion of the State nearly broke free from Northern California in the years just before the outbreak of war…
Sampson County is a large, mostly rural county in southeastern North Carolina. Like most non-metropolitan areas of the state, it tends to be conservative, in fact, a long-time bastion of…
This morning a good friend sent me an article from The Imaginative Conservative (easily one of the best “blogs”) that outlined Robert Nisbet’s ten conditions of revolution. The piece is…
From The Land We Love, V, no. I (May 1868), 25-34, edited by Joseph S. Stromberg. Combinations for the prosecution of industrial pursuits are the characteristic of our age. They…
Reminiscences and Ramblings of a Novice Wing-Shooter It was the First of September, 2019 and there I sat, in the pre-dawn twilight, half asleep and fighting the near irresistible temptation,…
Not long after I moved my family to Bangkok, Thailand — where we lived for three years — I happened to be walking through a park with an environmental specialist…
Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own. One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941. Miller was born in 1891…
“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for,…
Recently an acquaintance of mine remarked that the Confederate statue in her hometown should be removed from its present place of honour and relocated to the Confederate cemetery which is…
Reading an article in the latest Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis I was shocked by the outrageous comparison of Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson…
A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons. First, the Confederate states had no…
What if there were 15.3 million dead American soldiers? Imagine it. Legions of the unburied down rows of summer corn, strewn along riverbanks, and discarded on roadsides. And imagine if…
The tiny hamlet of Lake Hill in New York State’s Catskill Mountains was my mother’s hometown, and her ancestors there, the Howlands, could trace their family history to its roots…
The City Council of Lexington, Virginia has renamed the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. The new name is Oak Grove Cemetery. The reasons stated were the usual ones. Jackson was a racist…
These violent times in which we live are in some ways unparalleled. For Southerners we have seen monuments memorializing and honoring our past heroes and history—monuments and symbols which have…
“The blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ bad,” according to “Negro Blues,” penned in 1913. There’s no question about the “feelin’ bad” part. The genre is defined by…
Kwanzaa is an invented tradition. Billed as a kind of “black Christmas”—you can even buy Kwanzaa greeting cards at the store and mail them with Kwanzaa stamps—the odd holiday was…
A recent article in Hillsdale College’s newsletter “Imprimis” compared Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in wanting to “divide the country.” On a lessor…
On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War…
A frequent argument against Confederate monuments is a “sound bite” of a quote from General Robert E. Lee in 1869 in some variation to “I think it wiser not to…
Growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks, I early on found out I had a love for history; the history of my people. It was passed down to me in short…
Have any of you all heard about the film, “General Orders No. 9” ? It’s a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert…
Eight-tenths of a mile down a dead-end Arkansas gravel road, at that dead end, past two neglected old cattle guards and in the back pasture is not where you’d expect…
And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions…
Edmund Ruffin, the consummate Fire-Eater, was far greater than the sum of his parts; as Avery Craven, the finest of his biographers, expressed, “as the greatest agriculturist in a rural…
I have written previously about the very real dangers of what is called “cancel culture.” Indeed, what we have—what we see and experience today in the United States—is a massive…
Identity Politics is changing our language in order to advance its agenda. One example is “people of color.” Hemingway would have convulsed at such a laborious construction. Does its nearly…
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are constantly under attack from those on the left and the mainstream historical establishment for leading the charge of promoting the “lost cause…
I’ve never written of this episode in the history of Marion County, Fla., but then, I don’t think anyone else has either. However, so much time has passed, with most…
I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They…
“Madam, don’t bring your sons up to detest the United States Government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons Americans.” -Lee…
During the War of Northern Aggression not every Southerner was on board for the Cause. Not every Yankee was opposed to the Cause. The numbers, apparently, from the action of…
A series by Clyde Wilson MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR (1798-1859) of Texas moved from his native Georgia to the Texas Republic in 1835. He took a conspicuous part in the Texas…
A Yankee is a creature without a civilization. Having no people, no breeding, no past, he roams the earth by instinct, tearing down the civilizations built by others who, unlike…
A Review of Matt: Warriors & Wagon Trains During the Civil War (Amazon, 2019) by James Michael Pasley. Ordinarily, I don’t endorse novels. As a general rule, I don’t even…
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion…
Today we are besieged with raucous cries on both America’s streets and its social media platforms, as well as by all too many in the halls of government, to bring…
A Series by Clyde Wilson THEODORE O’HARA (1820-1867) of Kentucky. “The Bivouac of the Dead” is often thought of as related to The War of 1861-1865. Like the “Star-Spangled Banner”…
Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), known as “The Father of Black History,” was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, the son of former slaves. He received his doctorate from Harvard, rose…
Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us…All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that…
Northern secession was openly in the political brew again. Eleven (11) years before, Jefferson had cautioned New England’s desire to secede while accepting their sovereignty to choose as they wished….
A Series by Clyde Wilson EDGAR ALLAN POE, Part 2 Sonnet – To Science Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.Why preyest…
I have written here before about the history and mechanics of Sacred Harp singing, shape-notes, and Singing Schools. James Kibler has delivered some truly excellent talks about Singing Billy Walker…
I don’t have time to detail everything the piece in question gets wrong, because it’s a lot. I’m sure this will be fodder for Abbeville posts for a long time,…
How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me….
‘Only such men could tell what once could be, Hear what we hear, see what we see.’ Donald Davidson, “Late Answer: A Civil War Seminar” The wind is…
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