The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 25-29, 2022 Topics: Southern history, Southern literature, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-318
Brion McClanahanJuly 30, 2022
As we progress into old age, our perspectives tend to change. Things that occupied most of our active life--accomplishments and “the bubble reputation” are seen to be less important than family and friends. I suspect that even accumulating money loses some of its flavor as the years move on, although I don’t really know about that. This reflection is provoked…
Clyde WilsonJuly 29, 2022
Palatial Porches and Dying Civilizations I take great pains to ensure that the devilish tempo of modern life never breaches my portico. Life should always be in adante, and I like to imagine that the haint blue of the porch repels the unclean spirits of prestissimo. A fine porch can make you feel like King Solomon, and a fine man…
Lafayette LeeJuly 27, 2022
Several years ago, my wife and I visited a distillery in rural Virginia that made the only whiskey in the Old Dominion that possesses legislative approval to make something called “Virginia Whiskey.” It’s a good product, though it requires the taster to accept the fact that it doesn’t taste much like Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (I’d offer there are hints…
Casey ChalkJuly 26, 2022
I am a descendant of a family of Confederate soldiers, and I have been told I should be embarrassed. A liberal activist told me recently that all Confederates were racist degenerates who deserve nothing except desecration of their statues and memorials. I usually avoid deep discussions of this topic on social media, because the predicted result is that people don’t…
Tom DanielJuly 25, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 11-22, 2022 Topics: Southern Founders, Southern History, Southern Politics, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-317?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanJuly 23, 2022
I sit here, watching the fading sun over the Ozarks hills, not too far from where I was raised. Last night, we had an annual birthday bash for an old family friend, and I got the opportunity to sit and visit with many of the older generation that I grew up around. The most notable, a long visit with a…
Travis HoltJuly 22, 2022
A review of The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals (Regnery History, 2022) by Samuel Mitcham The valor of the Confederate Army is one of the greatest stories in American history. Southerners needed brilliant leaders because they faced such overwhelming odds. They were outnumbered four to one and outgunned a hundred to one. The author’s purpose of the book is to make…
Jeff WolvertonJuly 21, 2022
In yet another attack on American history and heritage, the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. is changing the name of their sports team, which is known as the Colonials. GW Today, the University’s official online news source, reported, “The George Washington University Board of Trustees has decided to discontinue the use of the Colonials moniker based on the recommendation…
Timothy A. DuskinJuly 20, 2022
Aberrant as it has become, when the young Thomas Jefferson spoke or wrote of what he termed, “my country,” he was not referring to the empire of England or what became the United States of America. He was referencing his native State of Virginia. Sixteen years ago, at the suggestion of Clyde Wilson in his book From Union to Empire:…
Joshua DoggrellJuly 19, 2022
From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School. St. George Tucker is a significant member of the Revolutionary generation, the Founding Generation, and he was looked to by Jefferson and Madison as the judge of Jeffersonian democracy, the man who saved the judiciary from false doctrines in his View of the Constitution and his other writings. Tucker’s View was published in…
Clyde WilsonJuly 18, 2022
I. The Diversity of America Parts of this chapter (along with several others) are from “Sectionalism in the United States,” Hound and Horn, VI (July-September, 1933). The link to Davidson’s “Sectionalism” essay provides some context of its genesis—some of which is a smidge uncomfortable. In The Idea of the American South (1979), Michael O’Brien portrays Davidson as a misfit compared…
Chase SteelyJuly 15, 2022
The history of political parties in America is as old as the United States itself and while the seeds of England’s Whig and Tory Parties goes back to 1679, those in America even predated the rise of most such factions in Europe by several decades. However, for half a century many of America’s founding fathers, particularly those in the South,…
John MarquardtJuly 13, 2022
No one acquainted with the poetical literature of the late war can have forgotten the noble contributions to it of Dr. Francis Orray Ticknor, of Columbus, Ga. "The Virginians of the Valley" and "Little Giffin" are alone sufficient to prove that Dr. Ticknor was a genuine poet, and he has left behind him ( for alas! he died two years…
Paul Hamilton HayneJuly 11, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 4-8, 2022 Topics: Lincoln, Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-316?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanJuly 9, 2022
“In 1938 appeared the clearest and most courageous of the Agrarian documents, Donald Davidson’s Attack on Leviathan.” – Richard M. Weaver Russell Kirk tells the story of discovering Davidson’s book in 1938 as a sophomore at Michigan State in the introduction for its reprint in 1991. Kirk writes, “The book was so good that I assumed all intelligent Americans, or…
Chase SteelyJuly 8, 2022
From the 2004 Abbeville Institute Summer School On April 10th, 1606, King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) granted letters of patent to Sir Thomas Gates and others, thereby establishing two companies for the settlement of colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America, which was then called Virginia in honour of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. The…
John GrahamJuly 7, 2022
To anyone devoted to the political revitalization of Western Civilization, and a re-founding of the Anglo-American tradition within this context, Michael Anton has no doubt been a breath of fresh air of late. He is an articulate thinker, a brilliant polemicist, and, by all accounts, a decent man—crucial assets for anyone devoted to the uphill climb of the “paleoconservative” cause.…
Robert E. SalyerJuly 6, 2022
Perhaps the biggest falsehood ever pedaled about Abraham Lincoln is that he was devoted to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Exactly the opposite is true; he repudiated every one of the main principles of the Declaration with his words and, more importantly, his actions. In our time the odd and ahistorical writings of Harry Jaffa and his “Straussian”…
Thomas DiLorenzoJuly 5, 2022
Did Thomas Jefferson father any children with Sally Hemings? The historical profession argues, yes. But the evidence does not support this conclusion as Professor M. Andrew Holowchak explains in this video. https://youtu.be/GweMqp4zdjw
abbeinstituteJuly 4, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 27-July 1, 2022 Topics: Reconstruction, Southern History, Confederate Symbols https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-315?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanJuly 2, 2022
'Yates Standridge, who recently escaped from the state convict farm, where he was serving what practically amounts to a life sentence for murder, declared that he never will return to the penitentiary, according to residents of the sparsley settled hills of Newton County, where Standridge makes his home. These hill people say Standridge recently spent two weeks in that section…
Travis HoltJuly 1, 2022
When the assault on Southern heritage with the destruction of monuments, symbols and heroes began, I wrote a letter to the President of the Civil War Trust as a member of that group attempting to determine the course the Trust would take in this matter. Sadly, the gentleman did not even have the courtesy to respond even in a form…
Valerie ProtopapasJune 30, 2022
The Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie is as good as it is frustrating. The movie might serve as a good introduction for those who don't know much about Elvis (which, sadly, is becoming most people). I say it might because it is more than likely that viewers will come away knowing more about Col. Tom Parker, Elvis' manager, than Elvis himself.…
Aaron N. ColemanJune 29, 2022
Pete Hegseth has a book out, Battle for the American Mind, which among other promotions and revelations has taken on the chore (however “Johnny-come-lately”) of denigrating the general process of education in this country. First, and foremost I would say, hooray for Mr, Hegseth. And to his efforts, I say, good hunting, Sir. And when you finally tree this coon,…
Paul H. YarbroughJune 28, 2022
On June 24, 2022, Mr. William J. Martin, Director of the Valentine Museum in Richmond, gave notice that the damaged, desecrated, and vandalized statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis – on loan from the Black History & Cultural Center of Virginia - would be displayed by the museum within its core exhibit. The purpose stated by the Valentine is for…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.June 27, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 20-24, 2022 Topics: Nullification, Supreme Court, Southern Politics, Reconstruction, 14th Amendment https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-314
Brion McClanahanJune 25, 2022
From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School This morning we’re talking about the two greatest losers in American history. “Loser’s History” is the only history that needs to be told. With the winners, you know everything about it, even if you don’t care to know it; just turn on the History Channel. My suggestion is to never watch the History…
Marco BassaniJune 22, 2022
The reason your bank was closed yesterday: cultural appropriation and virtue signaling On February 25, 2021, Senator Edward J. Markey (D – Mass) introduced a bill which would become public law on June 17, 2021 under President Joe Biden. It was entitled the “Juneteenth National Independence Day Act”. The Democrat-led initiative was co-sponsored by 60 senators, 40 of whom were…
Lola SanchezJune 21, 2022
Below is a footnote-free version of the Preface from my U. S. Grant's Failed Presidency (2019). Ulysses Grant's presidency deserves a fresh analysis because modern historians and biographers have praised him too much. Initially, their "rehabilitation" of his previously mixed reputation concentrated on his military performance during the Civil War, but more lately it has included his presidency. In 1948,…
Philip LeighJune 20, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 13-17-2022 Topics: Slavery, Moonshine, the War, Reconstruction, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-313?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanJune 18, 2022
We live in a regime with an industrial output of lies about Southern history, so we should let our forebears speak for themselves whenever we can. I have been reporting on little known Southern books and here is another. Randolph Shotwell in the 1880s put together some materials for his an account of his extraordinary life, using his diaries, letters…
Clyde WilsonJune 17, 2022
As I grow older my appreciation for the wisdom of my parents increases. As the United States descend daily further into madness, I find myself torn between being glad they aren’t here to be angered and tormented by the tragedy, wickedness, and vicious idiocy of the times, and a strong desire to profit from their counsel and advice. They were…
Earl StarbuckJune 16, 2022
Moonshine, though often associated with Appalachia, is also an integral part of the Ozarks culture. Growing up in the hills of Newton County, Arkansas, I lived a privileged life. I got to know a good amount of my ancestors, and hear their stories and experiences. Though most of them were straight laced, hard-working and proud folks, I would occasionally hear…
Travis HoltJune 15, 2022
Black slaves toiling in the fields of large plantations, gentlemen in frock coats and ladies in hoop skirts relaxing on the verandas of large mansions . . . all set in places named Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland and Mississippi. Most would imagine this to be a picture of the antebellum American South, but they would be mistaken, as it would…
John MarquardtJune 14, 2022
Tommie D. Boudreau, chairwoman of the African American Heritage Committee of the Galveston Historical Foundation in Galveston, Texas, recently stated that the Juneteenth national commemoration “gives an accurate picture of United States history because so much has not been shared. African Americans are the only immigrants that were forced to come to America – or the colonies. This gives people…
Timothy A. DuskinJune 13, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute June 6-10, 2022 Topics: The War, Abraham Lincoln, Confederate Constitution, Southern Film, Slavery, Southern Humor https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-312
Brion McClanahanJune 11, 2022
On March 7, 1862, Lincoln sent to congress and congress passed a joint resolution offering pecuniary aid to any State that would initiate gradual emancipation. However, no funding had been passed, only a declaration of intent. The offer fell on deaf ears in all the slave States, including those still in the Union. This prompted Lincoln to call a meeting…
Rod O'BarrJune 10, 2022
“If there is to be a separation , then God bless them both, & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.” Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John C. Breckenridge, Aug. 12, 1803, regarding the New England secession movement “No state . . can lawfully get out of the union .…
Thomas DiLorenzoJune 7, 2022
From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School I come from a somewhat different mold and my thought processes on these issues have changed a bit over the last couple of years. I have written on American jurisprudence and I have detected what I would deem to be ominous trends in American case law, and also in international law. I also…
Marshall DeRosaJune 6, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 30-June 3, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Jefferson Davis, War for Southern Independence, Cancel Culture, John C. Calhoun https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-311?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanJune 4, 2022
Most people don't know anything about Jefferson Davis other than he was the President of the Confederate States of America. His great-great grandson, Bertram Hayes-Davis, explains why Davis should be highly regarded among all Americans today. https://youtu.be/RAKw8U_PBAc
Abbeville InstituteJune 3, 2022
In March of 1928, W.E.B. DuBois published a short essay attacking the character of Robert E. Lee in a publication created by DuBois called The Crisis. This magazine was also the official publication of the NAACP, which was also co-founded by DuBois, and (according to their November 1910 premier issue) had the expressed goal of setting forth “those facts and…
Michael MartinJune 2, 2022
Going back to Jefferson, you can say that Jefferson’s vision of radical Federalism was of a libertarian Federalism, based on the rights of local self-government circumscribing and limiting their agent, the Federal government, whose referent is not a single people, but the peoples of the various States. It’s strange that in the writings from the Founding period, the plural of…
Marco BassaniJune 1, 2022
Mako Honda recently told the Washington Post that she and her husband Ryan Finley live on “the worst street corner… across the U.S.” You might speculate that the couple live somewhere in Los Angeles, which retains the notoriety of having the three most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States. Or perhaps they live somewhere in inner-city Chicago like West Garfield…
Casey ChalkMay 30, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 23-27, 2022 Topics: United States Constitution, Federalism, Southern Tradition, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-310?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMay 28, 2022
Katy Pavlich commented on the Five recently that President Biden needed to do something about the southern border problem as it was his responsibility as Commander-in-chief. Now, Ms. Pavlich, in my opinion, is one of the more clued-up and sager among the groups or individuals who are trotted out as either regulars or contributors on Fox. As a rule, she…
Paul H. YarbroughMay 27, 2022
Although most modern biographies attribute the corruption in Grant’s Administration to venal advisors who took advantage of the President’s innocent naivety, those biographers tend to ignore early examples of Grant’s own dubious conduct through which he set low ethical standards for others in his Administration to follow. One incident was the sale of his “I Street” residence in Washington…
Philip LeighMay 26, 2022
It’s hell, sittin’ here. I grew up in the hills of Newton County, Arkansas, the place that my direct line had hacked out and settled in the 1850s, when the first white settlers moved in. Being a native Ozarker has its advantages and disadvantages. When I married and moved one county north, it almost seemed like sacrilege. The next phase…
Travis HoltMay 24, 2022
From the 2003 Abbeville Institute Summer School. I’m going to be talking about the Anti-Federalists. The first question we might ask is: “Who were the Anti-Federalists and why did they take the position they took?” Today, historians are never happy just to study the writings, speeches, correspondence, and other documents produced by the protagonists of an era or a battle.…
Marco BassaniMay 23, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 16-20, 2022 Topics: Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, the War, Nationalism, Southern Politics https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-309?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMay 21, 2022
On a recent visit to Abbeville, South Carolina I visited the Burt-Stark House, one of the main historic attractions of the town and the prime reason for my visit there. Followers of the Abbeville Institute website who also have an interest in Jefferson Davis may know that Abbeville claims it as the site of Davis’ last war council on May…
Thomas HubertMay 20, 2022
Alfred Emanuel Smith (1873 – 1944) was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democrat Party’s candidate for president in 1928. Smith grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan and resided in that neighborhood for his entire life and though he remained personally incorrupt, as with many other New York City…
Valerie ProtopapasMay 19, 2022
A Review of Blacks in Gray Uniforms (Arcadia, 2018) by Phillip Thomas Tucker South Carolina Confederate history is my area of research, so I was interested to come across the book Blacks in Gray Uniforms, which gives information on some black Confederate soldiers from the Palmetto State, and I wanted to bring it to the attention of the readers of…
Karen StokesMay 18, 2022
While teaching at the University of Virginia, William Faulkner once remarked: “'I like Virginia and I like Virginians because Virginians are all snobs, and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob he has little left to meddle with you, and so it's very pleasant here." Perhaps Faulkner should have spent more time in…
Casey ChalkMay 16, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 9-13 2022 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Northern Studies, Slavery, Secession, Civil War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-308/s-O6QI3ZTYJt5?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMay 14, 2022
The best of the many Confederate memoirs, in my opinion, are those of General Richard Taylor (Destruction and Reconstruction) and Admiral Raphael Semmes (Memoirs of Service Afloat and Ashore). There are also many excellent women’s diaries and memoirs, perhaps a subject for another occasion. Taylor and Semmes were men in high places, intelligent and experienced, keen judges of character, and…
Clyde WilsonMay 13, 2022
Delivered at the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Park for the Confederate Memorial Day remembrance held April 30, 2022. Thank you for taking time today to consider the deeds and lessons of our long-dead ancestors. When Confederate commemoration began, it was a memorial to people who were known to those living. Today, it is unlikely that there is a person here…
Martin O'TooleMay 12, 2022
In a penitent act of fiscal flagellation, Harvard University recently reported that it was establishing a hundred million dollar “Legacy of Slavery Fund” in an effort to atone for its century and half history of using enslaved people. In the report, it was cited that from its founding in 1636 until 1783, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared slavery to…
John MarquardtMay 10, 2022
It has been over a century and a half since Lincoln’s assassination did much to deify his image and place him as the centerpiece of the American Pantheon. Such behavior is hardly unexpected; as the leader of his country during America’s deadliest war, a war directed towards enacting unprecedented changes in the structure of government and American society, Lincoln’s partisans…
Shaan ShandhuMay 9, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute May 2-6, 2022 Topics: Southern Politics, Southern Conservatism, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-307/s-RQm1hRyONDA?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMay 7, 2022
A review of Arm in Arm (Mercer, 2022) by Catharine Savage Brosman Our conscious civilisation begins with Homer and is firmly anchored in Virgil, Dante, the French troubadours, and the Viking bards. Its deepest expressions are in verse. William Faulkner may have had something like this in mind when he lamented that he was “only a failed poet.” That is…
Clyde WilsonMay 6, 2022
Delivered by Oscar Underwood of Alabama in the House of Representatives May, 1902. Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, on Saturday last, when this bill came from the Senate, it was proposed that it should be taken up at once and considered by the House without, going through the usual channels of consideration. I insisted that lie-fore action was taken by the…
Oscar UnderwoodMay 5, 2022
Speech delivered by Senator A.O. Bacon of Georgia, December, 1902. Mr. President: Of course, I think the amendment offered by the Senator from Ohio , which has now been accepted, makes this section less objectionable. I might agree, however, with what the Senator from Wisconsin stated yesterday, that with this amendment the section is of not very much practical operation.…
A.O. BaconMay 4, 2022
A recent article in the politically conservative National Review about Ulysses Grant’s presidency by historian Allen Guelzo is merely another example of unjustified claims that he was a virtuous champion of black civil rights. To be sure, Grant promoted Southern black suffrage but that was because he knew they were nearly certain to vote for him and his Republican Party.…
Philip LeighMay 3, 2022
This piece was originally published at Chronicles Magazine and is reprinted here by permission. The following speech critical of the conservative establishment is one that I did not give at The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, S.C., whither I was invited by its organizer Gene d’Agostino, as a speaker for the evening of April 14. After espying copies of my book…
Paul GottfriedMay 2, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 25-29, 2022 Topics: Southern Tradition, Confederate History, Articles of Confederation, Southern Family https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-306?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanApril 30, 2022
I'm going to talk about the way the Articles of Confederation functioned, how people acted under the Articles, and the three reasons why I think the Articles were dissolved. The signers of the Articles of Confederation were not happy with what was finally implemented. Indeed, once the Articles were sent to the States, it took nearly four years before they…
Carey RobertsApril 29, 2022
Neither side in the War for Southern Independence produced a finer or more morally upright man than Richard Montgomery Gano. He was the descendent of a distinguished military/evangelical family. His great-grandfather, John Allen Gano, was born in New Jersey and became a Baptist preacher. He joined the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, where he was known as “the fighting…
Samuel W. MitchamApril 28, 2022
The Washington Post’s Ian Shapira and his social justice allies in Richmond and Lexington, Virginia, must be worried, big-time. For nearly two years running, their Axis-Against-VMI has enjoyed remarkable success: forcing an honorable VMI superintendent to resign; removing Lt. Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson’s statue, and his name from Jackson Arch; renaming buildings and recontextualizing the past; inserting divisive ideology into courses;…
Forrest L. MarionApril 26, 2022
Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama. Most Americans believe the War and Southern history are synonymous, so much so that to many, the War has come to define the South. If you are reading this post and have followed the Abbeville Institute for any length of time, you know that our mission to "explore what is true and valuable…
Brion McClanahanApril 25, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute April 18-22, 2022 Topics: Southern Politics, Southern Tradition, Secession, Southern Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-305?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanApril 23, 2022
William Gilmore Simms, Part 2 The Green Corn Dance Come hither, hither, old and young--the gentle and the strong, And gather in the green corn dance, and mingle with the song-- The summer comes, the summer cheers, and with a spirit gay, We bless the smiling boon she bears, and thus her gifts repay. Eagle from the mountain, Proudly descend!…
Clyde WilsonApril 22, 2022
In 1935 Lyon Gardiner Tyler – descendant of 10th President John Tyler – wrote: “The old Union was a union of consent; the present Union is one of force. For many years after the war, the South was held as a subject province, and any privileges it now enjoys are mere concessions from its conquerors, not rights inherited from the…
Valerie ProtopapasApril 21, 2022
Mr. President--I fully concur with the gentleman from Montgomery, in the propriety of immediately passing the resolution now under consideration. All the powers of the State of Alabama should be pledged to aid in resisting any attempt to coerce a seceding State back into the Union. Sir, the Southern States recognize the right of secession. It constitutes the very essence…
Lewis M. StoneApril 20, 2022
From the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School. So, what I have to say is gonna be, I think, somewhat maybe tedious. I've tried to boil down stuff I've been working on for years, many chapters of a book project, and sometimes when you boil things down, it's not like distilling rose petals. You don't get the fine essence, what you…
Thomas FlemingApril 19, 2022
There is a vast political swell among some ill-informed conservatives that the great mid-term elections will come and a tide of goodness (spelled R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N) will sweep over the grand land, often puerilely referred to as “American exceptionalism,” for everyone. Everyone but conservatives, however. Yes, that’s what I meant. Conservatives are republicans. Republicans are Republicans. They aren’t goodness or even good. They…
Paul H. YarbroughApril 18, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 11-15, 2022 Topics: the War, Secession, Slavery, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-304?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanApril 17, 2022
There are disagreements on the subject, but I wholeheartedly believe that Bardstown, Kentucky is “where bourbon was born.” Many of the first bourbons, however, were variations on old rye whiskey recipes brought to the Bardstown area by settlers from Maryland. Among them were people named Dant, Mattingly, Medley, Wathen, Pottinger, Miles, Willett and Beam, all families associated with the earliest…
J.L. BennettApril 15, 2022
In the mid-1760s, violent criminal activity began to spread throughout the sparsely populated interior of the colony of South Carolina. Residents in these areas, alarmed at what was occurring, pled with the government for assistance. None would be forthcoming. Instead, individuals residing in the area turned toward the idea of communal, ritual punishment to stem the tide of criminal activity.…
Nicole WilliamsApril 13, 2022
A line from Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” In the case of the great American conflict of 1861, the name by which it has become generally known is, of course, the "Civil War." This term was, however, only occasionally used during the war, such as Lincoln’s reference in his 1863 Gettysburg Address that the country was “engaged in a…
John MarquardtApril 12, 2022
Part 6 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell “Live asses will kick at dead lions.” Admiral Raphael Semmes In the long run of history, the story of…
Clyde WilsonApril 11, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 4-8, 2022 Topics: Secession, Union, Woke History, Slavery, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-303/s-qYnlgLQYJE8?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanApril 9, 2022
French politician and author Jean-Nicholas Démeunier, in 1786, published his Essai sur les États-Unis. Prior to its publication, the essay, intended for Encyclopédie Méthodique, was in the words of Jefferson’s secretary William Short in a letter to William Nelson (25 Oct. 1786), “as false as might be expected from a man who had made the Abbe Raynal his model, and…
M. Andrew HolowchakApril 8, 2022
To begin with, it is hornbook law* that the signatories to any contract or compact, are all accorded the same rights; that is, no signatory of such an agreement has more—or fewer—rights than any other signatory. Neither does this fact have to be stated in the document; it is understood. If the Party of the First Part is permitted to…
Valerie ProtopapasApril 7, 2022
I've learned a good deal about Poe's paternal and maternal backgrounds; I had never really pursued that; the biographies don't. But I found that Poe's grandfather had immigrated to America in about 1750 from Drung, County Cavan, Ireland. To put that on the board for you, that's about 75 miles Northwest of Dublin, so it’s sort of in the center…
James Everett KiblerApril 6, 2022
Part 5 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Early in Reconstruction the staunch Unionist William Sharkey was appointed governor of Mississippi by Andrew Johnson. Sharkey said that he believed that half the African American population of the state had perished in the war. This may not be…
Clyde WilsonApril 5, 2022
‘Union’ neither denotes nor explicates a form of government. It is a word estranged in both the commonplace and the legal arts. There is no constraint to the daily rumble of social or personal definition. Any two or more people can form a 'union', even without using the word. At law ‘union’ is not a term of art. Rather it…
Vito MussomeliApril 4, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 21 - April 1, 2022 Topics: American History, Neo-Abolitionism, the War, Woke Culture, Slavery, New South, Reconstruction https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-302/s-gLn42tchtze?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanApril 2, 2022
On March 15, John T. “Til” Hazel Jr. died in Broad Run, Fauquier County, Virginia. There’s no reason why you should necessarily know the name, though if you have spent any time in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., you have witnessed first-hand his tremendous influence. Joel Garreau in his 1992 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier…
Casey ChalkApril 1, 2022
From our 2008 Summer School, Northern Anti-Slavery Rhetoric In some respects, the title of this lecture, “Post 1960’s Neo-Abolitionist Historiography,” is a lie. I’m actually going to start earlier than the 1960’s, but I promise you we’re not going to lengthen it out any more than that. A lot of this is going to be a cautionary tale for…
John DevannyMarch 31, 2022
Part 4 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Many Americans doubtless tend to assume a rosy view of emancipation, of brave boys in blue rushing into the arms of newly freed slaves to celebrate the day of Jubilee while handing out Hershey bars to children. Nothing could be further…
Clyde WilsonMarch 29, 2022
In April 1861, a public meeting was held in New Orleans, Louisiana to discuss Governor Thomas O. Moore's call for volunteers to defend the South against the invading Union army as the War Between the States was just beginning. This particular meeting did not consist of white men, however. It was led and attended by what the newspapers called the…
Shane AndersonMarch 28, 2022
Originally published in 1898 in The Ridpath Library of Universal Literature, Vol. XXII by John Clark Ridpath THOMPSON, John Reuben, an American journalist and poet, born at Richmond, Va., October 23, 1823; died in New York, April 30, 1872. He was graduated at the University of Virginia in l845, studied law, and in 1847 became editor of the Southern Literary…
John Clark RidpathMarch 25, 2022
A review of The Dreadful Frauds: Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics, (Shotwell Publishing, 2022) by Philip Leigh In one hundred pages, author Philip Leigh has given us a scathing indictment of Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, and the corrupting influences of both on America’s two hundred and fifty year meritocracy. It exposes the power politics of the Victimhood Olympics…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.March 24, 2022
At the writing of this article, the ongoing struggle between Ukraine and Russia has most people’s attention. While prayerfully hoping for a peaceful settlement of this conflict, it is difficult to overlook the actual hypocrisy of the Federal government and U. S. media as they deal with the reported issues such as “saving the union,” “secession,” and “war crimes.” It…
Walter D. (Donnie) KennedyMarch 23, 2022
Part 3 in Clyde Wilson's series "African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective." Read Part 1 and Part 2. In 1798 Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Taylor: “It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance.” He added…
Clyde WilsonMarch 22, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 14-18, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Slavery, Lincoln, the War, Segregation, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-301?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMarch 19, 2022
In most minds today, the word segregation and the term “Jim Crow” immediately evoke a picture of the American South at the start of the Twentieth Century. It is, however, a false image that has been carefully crafted over the years to mask the actual genesis of the legal separation of black and white races in public facilities. This is…
John MarquardtMarch 18, 2022
The advent of my coming and going to another world was not through a portal handcrafted from a felled silver-barked tree of old, but the factory-made casket of my Father. My people bury in several places–my Father, a stone’s throw from Sarah Cannon, right down the street from where Tate was roused to write his Ode. He died at 61…
Chase SteelyMarch 17, 2022
Part 2 in Clyde Wilson's series, African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective. Part 1 can be read here. Life was tough for everyone in the America of the 1600s and 1700s. The 1800s saw some improvement which led people to entertain the idea of enlightenment and progress in living conditions. Southerners were as much conscious of and happy about a…
Clyde WilsonMarch 15, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 7-11, 2022 Topics: Southern Tradition, Robert E. Lee, Slavery, Abraham Lincoln, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-300?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMarch 12, 2022
I presume I am not the only person who thinks regularly about the strange reality of living in a part of what traditionally was the South, that is no longer really the South, like my native Northern Virginia. I think my idiosyncrasy explains why whenever I travel to a place that fits that description, I am infinitely curious about the…
Casey ChalkMarch 11, 2022
Our culture’s indifference to the past---which easily shades over into hostility and rejection---furnishes the most telling proof of that culture’s bankruptcy. ---Christopher Lasch The purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present. ---Cicero The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn. ---Cicero Introduction The slavery that…
Clyde WilsonMarch 10, 2022
Anyone who knows me knows I am obsessed with time and place. As far as time goes, I’m mainly concerned with what happened before me - those who came before and their lives in this beautiful, rural and untouched county that we call home. Time has brought changes, as it always does, and some of it is even good. However,…
Travis HoltMarch 9, 2022
Delivered at the 2013 Abbeville Institute Summer School. What I want to do is thoroughly cover Lee in his time and in ours, and try to understand that transformation. There's more there than meets the eye, and it has to do with our understanding of Lee. If we can understand the transformation as carefully as I hope to take us…
William WilsonMarch 8, 2022
On July 17, 1849, Robert Smith Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, died suddenly of cholera. He was among thousands who'd die in the world-wide epidemic that had already killed former president James K. Polk a month before and would be blamed for the death of Edgar Allan Poe a bit later. Todd's hasty death-bed will was endorsed by only one witness;…
Kevin Orlin JohnsonMarch 7, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 28 - March 4, 2022 Topics: Southern humor, Southern literature, Jefferson, Reconstruction, Southern agriculture, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-299?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanMarch 6, 2022
Originally published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 16. 1888 While the Virginia Convention of 1861 was in session in Richmond, wrestling with the weighty problems of the day, and the grand old “Mother of States” was doing all in her power to prevent the terrible strife which her breast was so soon to bear, there occurred at Lexington,…
William A. ObenchainMarch 4, 2022
Filmmaker Arlen Parsa has recently undertaken a project that blots out the faces of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence in John Trumbull’s famous painting “The Declaration of Independence.” The stunt has unsurprisingly gained the filmmaker much notoriety. While the project might seem to have been a frivolous undertaking for Parsa—something to pass the time in these Coronavirus…
M. Andrew HolowchakMarch 3, 2022
Postwar Southern reconstruction became corrupted when congressional Republicans took charge of it with the March 1867 Reconstruction Acts, almost two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Prior to that, the process began in December 1863, while the war was still in progress. After Lincoln died and Andrew Johnson advanced to the presidency, Johnson tried to continue with a “Presidential Reconstruction…
Philip LeighMarch 2, 2022
In the rural Virginia town of Swoope, near the Shenandoah Valley, Joel Salatin practices common sense and ecologically sustainable agriculture on his farm, Polyface. In the wake of a COVID-19 pandemic that has drastically changed food distribution networks and disrupted the entire supply chain of the country, farming methods like Salatin’s have become increasingly desirable as we approach a dystopian…
Michael MartinMarch 1, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Feb 21-25, 2022 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-298?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanFebruary 26, 2022
ACADEMIA'S ABSOLUTE PROOF that the War Between the States was fought over slavery is based primarily on the declarations of causes for the secession of four of the first seven Southern states to secede: South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. However, those four declarations prove nothing of the sort. There were 13 Southern states represented in the Confederate government. That…
Gene Kizer, Jr.February 25, 2022
Have you ever accidentally used the wrong mushrooms in a recipe inducing you to think the South is some type of hallucination? Me neither–I reckon we aren’t enlightened enough to grasp such concepts. Until recently, I never pondered ideas like “regional consciousness” or “Southern distinctiveness”—truth be told, “provincial” seemed too overdressed to feel comfortable amongst my hand-me-down vocabulary—and not a…
Chase SteelyFebruary 24, 2022
There is nothing new under the sun, but there are things which have lain undiscovered, forgotten, or neglected, and these can be brought to light. In my new book South Carolina in 1865, I have collected unpublished, obscure, and neglected records which document events and conditions in the Palmetto State during the last year of the war. The most cataclysmic…
Karen StokesFebruary 23, 2022
The Adventures and Recollections of General Walter P. Lane, A San Jacinto Veteran (1887) John Salmon Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas (1885, 1963) Our forebears of the antebellum South are being subjected to pervasive dishonest slander (by both left and right) these days. Brave and honourable people who did far more than their fair share in the creation of the United…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 22, 2022
As far back as the days of ancient Greece and Rome, people have dreamed of various means of underwater travel and warfare. Over two thousand years ago, Alexander the Great even devised a type of diving bell that allowed his Macedonian troops to make surprise underwater attacks on enemy positions. It was not until two millennia later, however, that an…
John MarquardtFebruary 21, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 14 - 18, 2022 Topics: Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, the War, Reconciliation, Abolitionists https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-297?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanFebruary 19, 2022
The writer remembers with respect and admiration Mr. Anthony E. “Tony” Hamilton (1957-2022), President of the VMI Class of 1979, joining many in the VMI community who are mourning his recent loss. On January 18, 2022, three days after the inauguration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Richmond, Virginia – and for which the VMI Corps of Cadets passed-in-review, as is…
Forrest L. MarionFebruary 18, 2022
I once broke up with a girl because of the South. Well, sort of. We had been dating for a month or so, and she invited me to come visit her parents, who were living in central Virginia. Her father was a widely respected and well-known U.S. Army officer. The family had recently moved to Virginia after many years stationed…
Casey ChalkFebruary 17, 2022
I. The Fall of Richmond In 1930, that caustic fellow H.L. Mencken wrote that if the war of 1861-1865 had gone otherwise, “Richmond would be, not the dull suburb of nothing that it is now, but a beautiful and consoling second-rate capital, comparable to Budapest, Brussels, Stockholm or The Hague.” I had occasion to be in downtown Richmond for a…
Joseph R. StrombergFebruary 16, 2022
A review of How Radical Republican Antislavery Rhetoric and Violence Precipitated Secession, October 1859 - April 1861 (Abbeville Institute Press, 2022) by David Jonathan White. One of the tragic casualties of America’s long culture war is the distortion of the country’s central event, The War Between the States. During the 1950s, historians such as Avery Craven began to question the…
John DevannyFebruary 15, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, February 7-11, 2022 Topics: Abraham Lincoln, the War, Southern Tradition, Lost Cause https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-296
Brion McClanahanFebruary 13, 2022
Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Familiar Lincoln idolaters will gather to celebrate the birth, on Feb. 12, 1809, of the 16th President of the United States, and finesse his role in “the butchering business”—to use Prof. J. R. Pole’s turn-of-phrase. Court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is sure to make a media appearance to extol the virtues of the president who…
Ilana MercerFebruary 11, 2022
A Series by Clyde Wilson. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870) of South Carolina, amazingly prolific novelist, poet, essayist, lecturer, historian, critic, and editor, has been rightly called "The Father of Southern Literature." Without question Simms is the most important Southern writer of the 19th century after Poe. Without question Simms is in every way one of the most important American writers.…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 10, 2022
On a website devoted to publishing scholarly articles, I recently did a search for “The Lost Cause” and unsurprisingly found a plethora of articles on that theme relating mostly to the aftermath of the American War of 1861-65. Also unsurprisingly, many of these apparently set about to examine the issue with a view toward debunking that effort as futile,…
Thomas HubertFebruary 9, 2022
The opening of this essay is from my segment of the documentary Searching for Lincoln under the heading: Lincoln and Total War. Herein I mentioned the claim that the “Lieber Code” of war – General Order 100 – was somehow unique illustrating that the concerns of Lincoln, his Administration and his military was the humane waging of war: Despite growing…
Valerie ProtopapasFebruary 8, 2022
Delivered at our 2011 Scholar's Conference, The South and America's Wars Well, good morning, and I wonder if you have the stamina for a third hour? Prop yourself up here and I’ll try to keep us all awake. My thanks to Don Livingston for his invitation to speak to you today and for all of his work organizing and hosting…
Richard M. GambleFebruary 7, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 31 - Feb 4, 2022 Topics: Reconciliation, Southern Tradition, the Founding https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-295?si=32c56dfc806440239b666087f4ed321d&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Brion McClanahanFebruary 5, 2022
A series by Clyde Wilson HENRY ROOTES JACKSON (1820—1898) of Georgia was a lawyer, judge and poet. He was U.S. Minister to Austria/Hungary 1853—1858 and was well-known for prosecuting Yankee slave traders trying to import African captives into Atlanta shortly before the war. He was Colonel of the 1st Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War and fought in the Confederate…
Clyde WilsonFebruary 4, 2022
By Forrest McDonald and Clyde Wilson. These essays were originally published in the Fall 1982 issue of Southern Partisan. A review of M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution. Marlborough, NH: Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982 and M.E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. La Salle, Ill.: Sherwood…
Abbeville InstituteFebruary 3, 2022
Excerpt from Ryan Walters, Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President (Abbeville Institute Press, 2021) While in his first term in the White House, Cleveland decided to make a symbolic gesture of goodwill toward the South. Acting on a recommendation from the secretary of war, the president decided to return captured Confederate battle flags to their respective Southern states. The move,…
Ryan WaltersFebruary 2, 2022
I’ve spent the last forty-five years doing family research and family history. I’ve interviewed some of my older relatives who have now passed on and I’m grateful that I had the foresight to do that. My only regret is that I did not start sooner. This process started around 1977 with the premier of the movie “Roots” the dramatization of…
Barbara MarthalFebruary 1, 2022
In the summer of 2015, a 60-year old former-member of the American Service and retired-electrician determined on a course that would result in a pedestrian protest from his home in the state of Alabama, culminating in the hall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. In response to the removal of the Confederate Battle Flags from the Alabama state capital…
Gerald LefurgyJanuary 31, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 24-28. 2022 Topics: Reconciliation, Confederate Monuments, Southern Tradition, Grover Cleveland https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-294
Brion McClanahanJanuary 30, 2022
A series by Clyde Wilson Thomas Holley Chivers (1809—1858) of Georgia was a physician and poet and a friend of Edgar Allan Poe, who encouraged him. He published over 10 volumes of poetry and plays but was largely forgotten until rediscovered by 20th century critics. Chivers believed that good poetry was a result of “divine inspiration.” Faith Faith is the flower that…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 28, 2022
In his 1903 book, The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney, Thomas Cary Johnson wrote of his friend, colleague, and spiritual brother, “Dr. Dabney was a great man. We cannot tell just how great yet. One cannot see how great Mt. Blanc is while standing at its foot. One hundred years from now men will be able to see…
Miles FoltermannJanuary 27, 2022
From Ryan Walters, Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President (Abbeville Institute Press, 2021). “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas Jefferson “I have faith in the honor and sincerity of the respectable white people of the South. … I am a sincere friend of the negro.” Grover Cleveland On March 4,…
Ryan WaltersJanuary 26, 2022
The federal government facilitates fundraising for traitors. That’s the claim made by the Washington Post’s Joe Davidson in a 14 January column. This occurs, says Davidson, through the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), a philanthropic funding operation managed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which enables federal employees to donate to charities they choose through automatic payroll deductions. This may…
Casey ChalkJanuary 25, 2022
When Robert E. Lee died in 1870, a memorial association was formed in the City of New Orleans. After six years had passed, the association raised an amazing $36,400 - during the throes of Reconstruction - to construct a monument. The world-famous New York-based sculptor Alexander Doyle (who studied in Bergamo, Rome, and Florence) was commissioned, and it was installed at…
Rev. Larry BeaneJanuary 24, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 17-21, 2022 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Russell, Wokism, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-293
Brion McClanahanJanuary 22, 2022
A series by Clyde Wilson. LOUISA SUSANNAH CHEVES McCORD (1810—1879) of South Carolina was one of the most outstanding women of 19th century America. She was the daughter of Langdon Cheves, who had been Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and had held other important posts. In the antebellum period, while a plantation mistress, she published poetry, strong polemical…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 21, 2022
The Yankee Empire was born on the ruins of the shattered South. After the Yankee imperialists who had hijacked Northern politics looted, raped, and burned their way through the South, they kept armies of occupation there—armies which remain to this day. Long before there were any Yankee Empire bases in Korea or Japan, or anywhere in Europe or the Middle…
Jason MorganJanuary 20, 2022
This essay was originally published in the First Quarter 1992 issue of Southern Partisan. A Review of: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (UNC Press, 1991) by Alan T. Nolan When Frank Owsley sought from among the vast number of interpretations of the cause of the war of 1861 for the principal cause, he defined it as “egocentric…
David BovenizerJanuary 19, 2022
A Review of: Richard B. Russell, Jr. Senator from Georgia (UNC Press, 1991) by Gilbert C. Fite “We can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Booker T. Washington, speech to the Atlanta Exposition, 1885 Speaking of the current trend toward all-black dormitories, fraternities, and graduation exercises, Coretta Scott…
Charles GoolsbyJanuary 18, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 10-14, 2022 Topics: Slavery, Democracy, the War, Southern History, Northern Studies https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-292
Brion McClanahanJanuary 16, 2022
A series by Clyde Wilson Alexander Beaufort Meek, Part 2 The Rose of Alabama I loved, in boyhood's happy time, When life was like a minstrel's rhyme, And cloudless as my native clime, The Rose of Alabama. Oh, lovely rose! The sweetest flower earth knows, Is the Rose of Alabama! One pleasant, balmy night in June, When swung, in silvery…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 14, 2022
Edmund Ruffin, from his Diary: hen the mob bears the sway in elections, it knows little, & cares not at all, for the superior fitness or honesty of candidates. Each of the lowest voters gives his vote, or the direction of his vote, to some one the nearest in qualities to himself, or by whose favor the voter expects to…
Abbeville InstituteJanuary 13, 2022
After 200 years of digesting Enlightenment ideals of natural rights, and reciting a pledge that concludes with “liberty and justice for all,“ it is hard for us to realize there are circumstances when slavery could be considered a “positive good.” John C. Calhoun has lately been excoriated for taking this position. Yet in 1861 an educated Georgia slave named Harrison…
Rod O'BarrJanuary 12, 2022
But most significant of all was the attitude assumed by the Federal Government in dealing with the secession of the South. Long before that secession some of the best observers had clearly pointed out how the influence of climate, and much more the special type of industry and character which slavery produced, had already created a profound and lasting difference…
William Edward Hartpole LeckyJanuary 11, 2022
There once were more than fifteen hundred Confederate memorials, including over seven hundred major monuments and statues, erected all across the United States and Canada, as well as in such far-flung locations as Brazil, Ireland and Scotland. These memorials were erected from 1867 to 2017, and during the first century and a half of their existence, only five of them were ever removed…
John MarquardtJanuary 10, 2022
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 3-7, 2022 Topics: Southern History, Abraham Lincoln, the War, Reconstruction, Southern Literature https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-291
Brion McClanahanJanuary 8, 2022
A series by Clyde Wilson ALEXANDER BEAUFORT MEEK (1814-1865) of Alabama. Meek was one of the most prominent citizens of antebellum Alabama--judge, orator, international chess master, and historian of the early days of his State. He also published two volumes of verse. Selections are from The Songs and Poems of the South (1857). COME TO THE SOUTH Oh, come to…
Clyde WilsonJanuary 7, 2022
Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal along with Tesla’s Elon Musk and an early Facebook investor, is famed for his thought-provoking questions. One example is a question he typically asks entrepreneurs seeking venture capital from him: “What are you certain to be true that most of your peers would disagree with you about?” Copernicus, for example, might have answered that…
Philip LeighJanuary 6, 2022
The true legacy of Lincoln usually gets drowned in the perennial gush about a president whose name is synonymous with freedom and the end of slavery. Lincoln’s role in bringing to an end the Jeffersonian ideal of a limited, constitutional government, with powers vested in sovereign states, remains relatively unexamined. The direction in which Lincoln took America is not without…
Ilana MercerJanuary 5, 2022
“That the negroes did not revolt is one of the incomprehensible features of our Civil War. Every chance for success was theirs, nor were they ignorant of their opportunity for striking an effectual and crushing blow against their oppressors. Why was it not done? Several potent causes combined to render any widespread insurrection at that time impossible. There was in…
Rod O'BarrJanuary 4, 2022
The subject of lynching, or “lynch law” as it was also called, is a decidedly unpleasant and, often, a morally repugnant, topic. The term lynching has been used more broadly than as a synonym for death at the end of a rope at the hands of a violent mob to include other forms of vigilante activity such as shootings or…
Forrest L. MarionJanuary 3, 2022
The barbarians have broken through the gates and are now running rampant through the streets. The opening of the Lee Monument "time capsule"--with one preservationist admitting it wasn't really a time capsule because it was never intended to be opened--and the decision to hand over every Richmond Confederate Monument to groups determined to destroy them are just examples of the…
Brion McClanahanDecember 31, 2021
Growing up on ‘Holt Hill’ in Vendor, Arkansas, I was truly blessed. I had a touch of the ‘Old South’ that I now have oft read of; a true, closed community of my own people who endured hardship, drought and war, and came out stronger as a result. Of the many giants who walked through my childhood, there is one…
Travis HoltDecember 30, 2021
Is it un-patriotic for Southerners to question American military intervention? This is a perplexing question for those raised during the Cold War. For us, it was a battle to defeat atheistic communism—an evil power attempting to force its will upon the world. We were raised and educated by the World War II generation for whom patriotism was intricately linked to…
James Ronald KennedyDecember 29, 2021
Governor Northam's henchmen have finally located the time capsule buried in the Memorial erected to Confederate Gen. Robert Edward Lee in Richmond, Virginia. How shameful and hypocritical that today the Virginia Department of Historic Resources shows so much interest in opening and disgorging the contents of the time capsule in light of their insipid defense of this monument and others…
Cliff PageDecember 28, 2021
In a speech to the Georgia legislature in 1866, Former Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens urged, "That wise and humane provisions should be made for " and that they "may stand equal before the law, in possession and enjoyment of all rights of person, liberty, and property. Many considerations claim this at your hands. Among these may be…
Donald LivingstonDecember 27, 2021
Christmas can be both a wonderful and awful time of the year for many of us. The holiday has become one associated with worries over holiday debt, sadness from loss, concerns over gatherings, and add into that the calamities of the last few years: the pandemic, politics around the dinner table, and now, worries over the supply chain. Contrary to…
Nicole WilliamsDecember 24, 2021
After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his hosts as a joke had hung a…
Jeff MinickDecember 20, 2021
In the warped minds of today’s so-called “woke,” even such an evocative holiday song as Irving Berlin’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” can take on a far different connotation than when Bing Crosby sang it eight decades ago. Going back much further in time, the simple “OK” hand gesture which has been in use around the world for well…
John MarquardtDecember 9, 2021
Andrew Nelson Lytle—novelist, dramatist, essayist, and professor of literature—extolled the order of the family, which by the 1930s he thought all but spent, precisely because it was rooted in the very concept of divine order that the modern world had decried and rejected. As patriarchy deteriorated, as acceptance of divine supremacy vanished, the family languished, and with it the community…
Mark G. MalvasiDecember 8, 2021
There are stories, and then there are stories within stories. This is one of the latter. In 1981, upon the publication of Robert Drake’s The Home Place, I wrote a review of it for Modern Age (Fall 1981) which I entitled “A Concelebration of Verities.” I suppose that title captured some element of the book, but as I look back…
Thomas HubertDecember 7, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 29-Dec 3, 2021 Topics: Tradition, Southern Politics, Secession, Treason, Southern Education https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-290
Brion McClanahanDecember 6, 2021
The flourishing of art is necessary for the preservation of any people or tradition. Over-reliance upon didactic or dialectical methods of communication is trademark of rationalism's withering grip. Artistic expression, whether in architecture, on the canvas, in prose or verse, in works of literature, or in music, possesses the ability to conjure or reinforce the values and traditions of a…
Robert HoyleDecember 6, 2021
“My shirt is ragged and my pants are tore. I ain’t found nothin’ I’m a-looking for, And I want to go back to Baltimore…. Good old Baltimore.”— lyrics from a country song recorded in 1954 by Sonny James In 1910, when visitors would come to call on Confederate Veteran George Watts, he would “ from a rickety chair” and receive…
J.L. BennettDecember 3, 2021
Editor's note: The author of this piece won the Bennett History Medal in 1908 for this essay, and was published in the June 1909 volume of the John P. Branch Historical Papers. The Bennett prize is still awarded annually by Randolph Macon College to the best undergraduate history paper. This particular essay displays a depth of understanding even contemporary graduate…
D. Ralph Midyette, Jr.December 2, 2021
A few more words, and we shall be in a condition to answer the question which stands at the head of this chapter. Being a legal question, it will depend entirely upon the constitutional right the Southern States may have had to withdraw from the Union, without reference to considerations of expediency, or of moral right; these latter will be…
Raphael SemmesDecember 1, 2021
The proud folks of The Old Dominion turned their state from Blue back to Red in their recent governor’s election. Even more dramatic is the fact that in the last twelve months, voters in various Virginia counties voted overwhelmingly to keep their Confederate monuments! In nine out of nine ballot referendums, the voters spoke, and they spoke with a loud…
James Ronald KennedyNovember 30, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 22-26, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern Tradition, Southern History, Southern Culture, Thanksgiving https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-289
Brion McClanahanNovember 27, 2021
Of all the giants that strode through my childhood, some loom larger than others: Some due to their innate kindness or acts towards me, some for the wisdom they imparted or their willingness to share life experiences, and some simply due to the fact of just how damn likeable they were. But there are a few who loom large for…
Travis HoltNovember 26, 2021
In the future some historian shall come forth both strong and wise-- With a love of the Republic, and the truth before his eyes! He will show the subtle causes of the War be- tween the States, He will go back in his studies far beyond our Modern dates; He will trace out hostile ideas, as the miner does the…
James Barron HopeNovember 25, 2021
On Saturday, November 20, MSNBC aired a segment by activist Gyasi Ross comparing Thanksgiving to genocide. "But I'm still trying to find out what indigenous people received of value. Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence…” he said. Ross’s ignorance and searing rhetoric contradicts the historical record but nevertheless has been fueled by an educational…
Brion McClanahanNovember 24, 2021
A review of Robert E. Lee: A Life (Random House, 2021) by Allen Guelzo “How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason?” asks historian Allen C. Guelzo in his new book Robert E. Lee: A Life. It’s a bit of an odd question for a historian to ask. Sure, treason is a terrible crime. But so are…
Casey ChalkNovember 23, 2021
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,/ Rough-hew them how we will.” - Hamlet V, ii, 10-11 “I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there warn’t no help for him any more.” – Huckleberry Finn, Ch. 3 That the concept of…
Thomas HubertNovember 22, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 15-19, 2021 Topics: Foreign Policy, Southern Tradition, Southern Symbols, Wokism https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-288
Brion McClanahanNovember 20, 2021
Editor's Note: This speech was delivered in 1917 and was published in the September issue of Watson's Magazine. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: Deeply impressed with the gravity of this occasion, and an earnest desire to preserve the liberties of my people and our common country, I beg to submit, that — The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United…
H.W. JohnstonNovember 19, 2021
The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation…
J. William FulbrightNovember 18, 2021
By 1860 our country was so hopelessly divided that it broke up, and only by force was it kept unified. While the North and South had profound political, economic, and moral differences, institutional slavery being paramount, the two halves had a great deal in common, so much so that after the bloodletting and rage subsided, we were able to come…
M.C. AtkinsNovember 17, 2021
As in the practice of lingchi, the ancient Chinese form of slow and painful execution by a thousand cuts, Southern history and tradition are today dying a similar death. The first of these virtual cuts was inflicted over twenty years ago in South Carolina when the Confederate Battle Flag was taken down from the dome of the State Capitol in…
John MarquardtNovember 16, 2021
Many years ago I spent five fantastic weeks in Boston during the fall. Though I had heard about the explosive colors of autumn in New England, it truly was a sight to see. So too were the two games I attended at Fenway Park, only a year after the Red Sox swept the Rockies in the World Series. But the…
Casey ChalkNovember 15, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Nov 8-12, 2021 Topics: Lost Cause, Social Justice, Woke, Northern Studies, Slavery, Monuments https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-287
Brion McClanahanNovember 13, 2021
John Rock was an American teacher, doctor, dentist, lawyer and abolitionist. Rock was one of the first African-American men to earn a medical degree. In addition, he was the first black person to be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. On January 23, 1863, John Rock made a speech at the annual meeting of…
Rod O'BarrNovember 11, 2021
Editor's Note: Often considered one of the more important "Lost Cause" post-bellum narratives, Letitia Burwell's A Girl's Life in Virginia Before the War offers a captivating glimpse of life in the Old South. Her grandfather had been Thomas Jefferson's private secretary and her father served in the Virginia legislature ten times. Americans often marvel at the social mores and customs…
Letitia M. BurwellNovember 10, 2021
Editor's Note: Former Abbeville Institute summer school student Jon Harris and his Last Stand Studios produced this original documentary about American monuments and the ongoing American iconoclasm. It features Abbeville Institute scholars Donald Livingston, Brion McClanahan, Bill Wilson, Philip Leigh, and Kirkpatrick Sale. From the website: "Our next project, American Monument, will explore the good, true, and beautiful qualities represented…
Abbeville InstituteNovember 8, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Nov 1-5, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, the War, Cancel Culture https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-286
Brion McClanahanNovember 6, 2021
Missouri celebrated her 160th anniversary of her secession from the Union on October 28. It was that day, in 1861, that both chambers of the duly elected Missouri legislature passed an ordinance of secession in extra session in Neosho, Missouri. The ordinance was signed by the duly elected governor three days later, on October 31, 1861. Missouri was officially accepted…
Wes FranklinNovember 4, 2021
Critical to the debate regarding the right of secession is where, in the minds of the founders, did sovereignty reside. Were the States sovereign principals and the federal government their created agent? Or was the federal government sovereign and the States its created agents? State sovereignty prevailed for most of the 70 years after the founding, but political prejudice and…
Rod O'BarrNovember 3, 2021
The current conservative populist movement appears to offer some hope of mounting an effective resistance to the corporate state that was established during, and has largely adapted and stayed in power, since the failed War for Southern Independence. While having turned away from the endless wars and being able to effectively mobilize people to resist the political establishment that has…
James (Jim) PedersonNovember 2, 2021
In August, Thomas Moore, novelist and founding Chairman of the Southern National Congress, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Aiken, South Carolina at the too-early age of 73. Tom was South Carolina-born, a graduate of the Citadel and had an M.A. in National Security Affairs from Georgetown University. He worked for 25 years in powerful circles in Washington in…
Clyde WilsonNovember 1, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Oct 25-29, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, slavery, Robert E. Lee, John C. Calhoun, Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-285
Brion McClanahanOctober 30, 2021
Editor's Note: United States Senator Thomas F. Bayard delivered this speech in January, 1875 on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. Bayard, later United States Secretary of State, considered the military occupation of New Orleans to be an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a direct assault on republican government. He denounced Gen. Philip Sheridan, insinuated that…
Thomas F. BayardOctober 29, 2021
It has become fashionable to bash the South - not only by removing war memorials or looking the other way as they are vandalized, but even in discussions of things like slavery. It's never just slavery; it's Southern slavery. The existence of slavery in the North has been whitewashed and sent down the memory hole. Frankly, most of our American…
Rev. Larry BeaneOctober 28, 2021
George Will writes what amounts to a review of Allen C. Guelzo’s biography, Robert E. Lee: A Life in the Washington Post. The review and apparently the book are disparaging of Lee. Considering who Lee was and the fruitful historical mindsets who have lionized him, both black and white: (Churchill, Eisenhower, both Roosevelts as well as Booker T, Washington to…
Paul H. YarbroughOctober 27, 2021
Though John C. Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman and thinker, he is little appreciated in his own country. Calhoun rose to prominence on the eve of the War of 1812 as a “war hawk” in the House of Representatives and was the Hercules who labored untiringly in the war effort. While still a congressman, he was the chief architect…
John DevannyOctober 26, 2021
At the University of Virginia, Room No.13 on the fabled Lawn is reserved as a permanent shrine to Edgar Allan Poe, who reportedly lodged in the room during his brief time on campus (or “the grounds,” as we say). One wonders what Poe, though a proud Virginian, would think about this honor — he was not terribly happy with his…
Casey ChalkOctober 25, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, October 18-22, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern History, The War, Thomas Jefferson https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-284
Brion McClanahanOctober 23, 2021
The delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, presumptuously shelving that document, concluded their work on the proposed U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787. On another September 17th three quarters of a century later, the quarrels that had commenced at that gathering were to continue in a cornfield at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. One hundred…
J.L. BennettOctober 22, 2021
Our farm was a broadly covered area of green stalks, blanketing the ground for hundreds of acres all around. In a slow-motion explosion, day-by-day, week-by-week, the land revealed the white birth of cotton, the king crop of the Mississippi Delta. There were great vines of honeysuckle on one side of the house. The aroma seemed more noticeable in the open…
Paul H. YarbroughOctober 21, 2021
After finishing a biography titled, Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty, by John Kukla, I am convinced that Mr. Henry, Colonel Henry, nay, Governor Henry is the real father of our country instead of the beloved General, President George Washington. As I become more familiar with the particular history of Old Dominion and her role and that of her leading citizens…
Julie PaineOctober 20, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 11-15, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Southern Politics, Southern Culture, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-283
Brion McClanahanOctober 16, 2021
It is not the purpose of this article to set forth any new discovery, nor to present any reflections which are especially startling or original. The purpose is, to emphasize a neglected fact of American history; a fact attested by ancient records, narrated in historical works, and familiar to historians; yet a fact the full significance of which is not…
William Robertson GarrettOctober 15, 2021
This article was originally published in the May 1916 issue of the Journal of Political Economy. To turn men away from the “barren” field of political history is one professed object of Professor Charles A. Beard in the two volumes which he has in recent years submitted to the public. Other purposes of these interesting volumes are to call the…
William E. DoddOctober 14, 2021
When T.S. Eliot said that there are no lost causes because there are no won causes, he probably was not thinking of American conservatism. Nearly sixty years after the New Deal, the American right is no closer to challenging its fundamental premises and machinery than when Old Rubberlegs first started priming the pump and scheming to take the United States…
Sam FrancisOctober 13, 2021
This essay was originally published in the August 1995 issue of Chronicles magazine. Some folks have been kind enough to notice my absence from these pages, and a few have been even kinder and expressed regret at it. The fact is that my wife Dale and I are working on a book. It will be called 1001 Things Everyone Should…
John Shelton ReedOctober 12, 2021
The routine removal of Confederate statues signifies a new stage in the evolution of political progressives. Their vision for a new order that can provide social justice for the so-called oppressed is becoming a secular religion. Assaults on statues are symptomatic that the new faith is working to destroy traditional values. The birth of a new religion—even a secular one—is…
Philip LeighOctober 11, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 4-8, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Wokism, Political Correctness, the War https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-282
Brion McClanahanOctober 9, 2021
“Aggressive abroad and despotic at home.” --Robert E. Lee The empire Lincoln built is on the wane. Those who know history can see the signs— And even those with ears can hear the whines And bellows of frustration. All in vain! Empires commence in pain and end in pain. The honest haruspex no doubt divines This course from the beginning.…
Thomas RileyOctober 8, 2021
The locusts descend upon the land. Not the literal ones, but a kind much worse, in my estimation. The urbanites, long disenchanted with the social upheaval of late, have begun to migrate to the country. My home county, Newton County, Arkansas, is sadly not immune, though we are largely blessed. Rugged and in the remote mountains of northwest Arkansas, my…
Travis HoltOctober 7, 2021
In the dis-United States today, far too many of its people have now lost all sense of proportion and as movie magnate Richard Rowland said over a century ago . . .“the lunatics have taken over the asylum.” What was formally accepted as standard American history and sociology are now being replaced with the 1619 Project and…
John MarquardtOctober 6, 2021
Thomas Carlyle said that it takes men of worth to recognize worth in men (1). Among the many worthy men across Western Civilization who recognized the worth of General Robert E. Lee was Sir Winston Churchill who summed it up, saying Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains in the annals…
H.V. Traywick, Jr.October 4, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Sept 27 - Oct 1, 2021 Topics: Confederate monuments, War for Southern Independence, Reconstruction, United States Constitution, Southern Tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-281
Brion McClanahanOctober 2, 2021
The following is an excerpt from an article by a man named Troy Cauley. It is titled “Hindsight” and was first printed in the Southern Partisan over 30 years ago. If one can appreciate anything beyond “modernity” as to life’s heart such as: family, tradition, manners, love, friendship and at the same time cease worshipping gold, silver, technology, “industrial revolutions”…
Paul H. YarbroughOctober 1, 2021
Who has not heard of Wounded Knee? Most know at least the general facts surrounding what is acknowledged as an atrocity committed by the army of the United States. On December 29th, 1890, the 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers—a spiritual movement of the Lakota Sioux—near Wounded Knee Creek. The soldiers demanded that the Indians surrender their weapons.…
Valerie ProtopapasSeptember 28, 2021
My wife, Elizabeth, comes from a village called Greenwich in northern New York state. Among the keepsakes preserved by her family is a box of letters from her great-great uncle Reuben Stewart, a young draftee who served in the 123rd New York regiment as it marched through the South, leaving a trail of desolation, suffering, and death. One of those…
Barton CockeySeptember 27, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, September 20-24, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern history, Southern monuments, Southern music https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-280
Brion McClanahanSeptember 25, 2021
A lot has happened in the last 20 years. Reflecting on the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, aka the “Twin Towers” 20 years this week puts recent history into new perspective. What did the Twin Towers represent to the terrorists? Perhaps their view of the essence of America - Capitalism. The first terrorist salvo – Yankee soil. New York. …
Lola SanchezSeptember 24, 2021
We’ve all heard some cliché joke about ‘voices in our head’, usually posted over and over again on Facebook or quoted by someone who hasn’t quite figured out just how tired that concept is. But this isn’t about some comic concept of ‘voices in one’s head’, but rather something that has haunted me for some time. I long ago accepted…
Travis HoltSeptember 23, 2021
In a significant departure for this series, the 9th installment of What Makes This Musician Great will focus on a band instead of one musician, and more appropriately, a band of brothers. The Balfa Brothers were a Cajun band of real-life brothers Rodney, Dewey, Will, Harry, and Burkeman. They learned music from their father, who was a Louisiana sharecropper, and…
Tom DanielSeptember 22, 2021
Perhaps it was after watching yet another film depicting the South as irredeemably backwards and bigoted. Or perhaps it was after reading yet another round of commentaries denigrating Robert E. Lee because Lee was a traitor (so were the American revolutionaries, technically), a defender of a slave owning society (as most societies were before the nineteenth century), and ultimately a…
Casey ChalkSeptember 21, 2021
Regarding Afghanistan. There is nothing to say that has not been said better by those, both believers and heretics, better versed in the theology of the “American century,” the “rules-based world order” over which the “indispensable nation” has presided since the largely peaceful dismantling of the godless authority in Russia. And with what such shambolic and shameful consequence: the collapse…
Enoch CadeSeptember 20, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Sept 13-17, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern Symbols, Woke Culture, Southern Education https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-279
Brion McClanahanSeptember 18, 2021
The numerous declarations among "right-wing" websites, blogs, and print publications usually present a conundrum of any given thoughts among them. It is like a string of firecrackers exploding. They are necessarily lighted in sequence but seem to sound in explosive randomness. Afghanistan a catastrophe? Of, course. What do you expect? That is if you are a conservative, what do you…
Paul H. YarbroughSeptember 17, 2021
Conditions and Limitations of Southern Educational Efforts. In the discussion of educational interests and educational work in the various parts of the Union, from the colonial period to 1861 and later, a proper account has not usually been taken of the conditions and limitations which controlled educational effort in the various sections. The states at large are, by the facts,…
Robert Burwell FultonSeptember 16, 2021
Freddy Fender? You mean that Mexican fella? No, I mean the Southern musical pioneer from Texas who served in the U.S. Marines, and successfully merged Tejano music with Country music in the 1970’s. Freddy Fender was the Elvis of Tejano music, and he deserves much more recognition than he ever gets. Born in San Benito, Texas in 1937 as Baldemar…
Tom DanielSeptember 15, 2021
This piece was originally published in the Confederate Veteran, Vol. 22, Issue 2, 1914. Replies to the inquiry about the lines, “He did not die that day in Lexington; Fame came herself to hold his stirrup while he mounted,” place them as a part of the beautiful “Memorial Ode” by James Barron Hope, written for the laying of the corner…
James Barron HopeSeptember 13, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Sep 6-10, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Southern Tradition, Wokism, Southern Music, Southern History https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-278
Brion McClanahanSeptember 11, 2021
The court historian is as old as history itself. Early states were based on the monopolization of information—accounting tablets at first, for taxation, but then “official” histories so that rulers could legitimize their ongoing theft of other people’s resources. Someone had to write these “histories” of the righteous, divinely sanctioned persistence of the ruling house, and thus the court historian…
Jason MorganSeptember 10, 2021
Biblical history tells us that Abrahamic monotheism, the foundation of not only Judaism but Christianity and Islam as well, began some four thousand years ago in Ur, the ancient land that is now southern Iraq. There, the patriarch Abraham made his sacred covenant with God in which the followers of Abraham were to someday inherit the promised land of Canaan.…
John MarquardtSeptember 9, 2021
As I talk to people about American music and Southern music, I’ve noticed that many folks mistakenly assume that Bluegrass is an old genre stretching back into the hills for generations. In fact, it’s one of the newer genres of American music, and we can trace its beginnings to one man in the 1940’s who single-handedly set all the standards…
Tom DanielSeptember 8, 2021
It seems clear to many of us that there are two rising tides in American life these days. One has been called by many names: Political Correctness, “Wokeism”, Cultural Marxism, Theoretical Revisionism, Radical Socialism, and any number of other sobriquets that are all a product of that absurd neediness of powerless “intellectuals” to assert their imagined sense of superiority. What…
Ben JonesSeptember 6, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 30 - September 3, 2021 Topics: Southern humor, Southern music, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-277
Brion McClanahanSeptember 4, 2021
Editor's note: The following story was told by "Private" John Allen, a Congressmen from Mississippi from 1885-1901. "I want to tell you of the greatest legal victory of my life," said Allen once to a group of congressmen. "It was down in Tupelo, just after the war. I was at that time a practicing lawyer—that is, I practiced when I…
John M. AllenSeptember 3, 2021
THOMAS JEFFERSON TO ROGER C. WEIGHTMAN MONTICELLO, June 24, 1826. RESPECTED SIR: The kind invitation received from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate…
Thomas JeffersonSeptember 2, 2021
L. Q. C. LAMAR TO THE VICKSBURG COMMITTEE OXFORD, Miss., Dec. 5, 1870. To Col. William H. McCardle, and others, Committee, etc., Vicksburg, Miss. GENTLEMEN: When, on the occasion of Gen. Lee's death, I received your invitation to deliver an address on the 19th of January next, at the city of Vicksburg, the strongest impulses prompted me to an immediate…
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus LamarSeptember 1, 2021
The sixth Southern musician to be examined in this series of What Makes This Musician Great will be a bluesman that was so good he became a ghost story – Robert Johnson. The Blues is probably the most significant musical form created anywhere in the world in the 20th century, and it absolutely came straight out of the Mississippi Delta,…
Tom DanielAugust 31, 2021
Originally published in the March 1998 issue of Reason magazine. Local busybodies target the front porch. In the small-town American South porch sitting was once a nearly universal pastime. As a place for sipping tea or Co’ Cola, smoking or dipping, telling stories, courting, and watching lightning bugs, the front porch was unsurpassed. Southern porches have been celebrated in song…
John Shelton ReedAugust 30, 2021
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Aug 23-27, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern music, Jefferson Davis. Slavery, Southern religion, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/ep-276
Brion McClanahanAugust 28, 2021
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Last Words, The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States (Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2021) by Michael R. Bradley and is published here by permission. The Farewell Address of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Forrest's Cavalry Corps, May 9, 1865…
Michael R. BradleyAugust 27, 2021
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