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What Price Prosperity?

The news media rarely, if ever, focuses on the impact on society and culture the price of economic growth. Nor do politicians.   This begs the question, what price is extracted from society and culture in the pursuit of economic growth, in particular, when the central and state governments along with the central bank play key roles, namely in the of…
Nicole Williams
October 16, 2019
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Stranger in a Strange Land

I recently relocated--with any luck, temporarily--to a sprawling metroplex of a city of almost seven million, within an even more massive state. I’d believed I understood globalism and loss of identity. I thought I had made an uneasy peace with the reality of modernism and destruction of memory.  I had no idea.  Not only is there no regional culture here—one of…
Leslie Alexander
October 14, 2019
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St. George Tucker’s Jeffersonian Constitution

One could argue that there are two basic visions for America: the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian. The former is nationalist, calling for centralized power and an industrial, mercantilist society characterized by banking, commercialism, and a robust military. Its early leaders had monarchical tendencies. The latter vision involves a slower, more leisurely and agrarian society, political decentralization, popular sovereignty, and local…
Allen Mendenhall
October 11, 2019
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What the Newspapers Said: The Black Confederate “Myth” Examined

Where did the belief in the "black Confederate soldier" originate? Did it begin in 1977, after the success of the television mini-series Roots caused people to reevaluate race and slavery during the Civil War? Were stories of these men absent before then, as one of many historians who tackles this topic claims? Is it accurate or indeed fair to describe…
Shane Anderson
October 9, 2019
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Whatever Happened to Democracy?

Those of us whose experience goes back a way into the last century, can remember when “democracy” was the main theme of American discourse.  A million tongues proudly and repeatedly declared that America was the Democracy, exemplar and defender of that sacred idea to all the world.  Hardly anyone dared to question that sentiment.  It saw us through two world…
Clyde Wilson
October 7, 2019
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The South and “Red Flag” Laws

These days, we see many politicians pushing relentlessly for gun control. In the wake of recent mass shootings, several so-called “conservatives” have shown their true colors by demonizing gun owners and misrepresenting the facts on the issue. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called critics of red flag laws “libertarians” and stated that “the Second Amendment is not a suicide…
Michael Martin
October 3, 2019
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Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

The 150th season of college football serves as a reminder of the intersection between sports and local communities. While the nationalization of sports media outlets brings games and analysis to every living room in America, fan culture retains a very distinct regional and local flavor. College football is one of the greatest testimonies to the endurance of localism in America…
Brian Koss
October 2, 2019
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Gunston Hall Boxwoods

George Mason, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, was happiest at home, either in the fields and woods, with a good book by the hearth, or entertaining neighbors and family.  Living close to the soil, time was measured by the rhythms of nature. The flow of the seasons brought different activities: planting and harvesting, fishing and hunting, visiting neighbors in…
Brett Moffatt
September 30, 2019
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Pointing out Neocon Errors

Conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager has become a YouTube success with his five-minute videos on politics, history, religion and culture. They’ve been viewed 2.5 billion times and he gets thousands of emails daily. About eighty percent are hosted by prominent experts that include prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners, professors and other credentialed authorities. Prager is an especially effective advocate…
Philip Leigh
September 27, 2019
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Reconstructing the Reconstruction

A book condemning the left-wing bias of one of the most widely read and educationally used histories of the United States was recently written by Mary Grabar who received her Ph.D in English from the University of Georgia and went on to teach at various Georgia institutes of higher learning, including Emory University in Atlanta. The focus of her book,…
John Marquardt
September 26, 2019
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The South’s Gifts to Posterity

What does the South have to offer that is valuable to humanity, to civilization? In 1939, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman proposed an answer to this question in his book The South to Posterity. He subtitled it An Introduction to the Writing of Confederate History, but it was something more than that. In presenting the works of Confederate…
Karen Stokes
September 25, 2019
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Guelzo Uncovered

I recently read a report of a professor who declared that he had come sadly to the conclusion that the Founding Fathers had been all wrong in the government they created.  I don’t remember the name or place of this professor.  Whether he had ever contributed anything to scholarly knowledge was not stated, but is doubtful.  He probably suffers from…
Clyde Wilson
September 23, 2019
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A Love of Place

Southerners love home. This is true of many people throughout history, but place has, in part, defined the South. The earliest settlers to what became the South championed its Utopian physical qualities: warm weather, a long growing season, bountiful plant and animal life. Bad weather, disease carrying insects, and dangerous wildlife were annoyances to be tolerated if not overcome. Southern…
Brion McClanahan
September 20, 2019
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Mass Barbecue is the Invasive Species of Our Culinary Times

This article originally appeared on www.TheAmericanConservative.com.  Copyright 2019 From the colonial era well into the 20th century, large public barbecues were an institution across the South, from the Chesapeake eventually to Texas. Although these occasions could be linked to campaigns or celebrations of one kind or another, they could also be just an excuse for people to get together, to…
John Shelton Reed
September 19, 2019
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False Idols? Looking at America’s Founders with a Clear Eye

Increasingly, America’s past is becoming a lightning rod for contemporary ideological struggles. Colleges, highways and Democratic Party fundraising dinners are being renamed, monuments destroyed or desecrated, and a general suspicion seems to be growing of the value of anything emanating from America’s first century, soiled as it is with the stains of racism and slavery. This trend is a cause…
John Grove
September 16, 2019
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Who Won Reconstruction?

Prager U and the American Battlefield Trust recently teamed-up to sponsor this six minute video by Princeton University's Dr. Allen Guelzo who claims that “the North won the Civil War but the (white) South won Reconstruction.” The photo below taken forty-five years after the Civil War shows the true economic conditions of Guelzo’s supposed Southern victors. There was little change in their…
Philip Leigh
September 13, 2019
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Guelzo’s Reconstruction Gaffe

Professor Allen Guelzo has a new video at Prager U “explaining” the “good, bad, and ugly” of Reconstruction. Anyone that has watched a Prager U video knows where this is headed. I laughed through the entire six minutes. Guelzo has a history of South hating rhetoric, and he is a Lincolnian’s Lincolnian. This guy never met a war he didn’t…
Brion McClanahan
September 12, 2019
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Town Line, C.S.A.

In his recent book, Call Sign Chaos : Learning To Lead, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis cited what he termed the current “tribalism” in America as the greatest threat to the nation’s future.  Mattis stated in the book that “We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our…
John Marquardt
September 11, 2019
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Driving Through Virginia, Part III

The Colonial Parkway connects Jamestowne and WIlliamsburg with the third leg of Virginia’s HIstoric Triangle-Yorktown.  The colonial period of history had its beginning at Jamestown, its maturity at Williamsburg, and approached its end at Yorktown. The Colonial Parkway leaves Williamsburg and passes between the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown and Naval Supply Center on the York River on its way to…
Brett Moffatt
September 6, 2019
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Secession Hypocrisy

Leaders of every nation do what they think is in their countries’ immediate best interest and explain their actions with words that seem relevant at that moment. If future actions conflict with previous explanations, forgetfulness remediates the problem. As a result, history includes a record of hypocrisy and is an endemic part of national leaders’ behavior. For the U.S. national…
Norman Black
September 5, 2019
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The War Between the Dreams

Old slave and planter graves a flight apart For thrushes eating seeds of grass and yew, The unmarked plots and plots with dates and names Too weatherworn to trace and know in stone, Bones sinking toward a spring no well can reach, 600,000 dead for whom the War Has long since ended and will never end, The blue and gray…
David Middleton
September 4, 2019
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Southern Populism and the South’s Agrarian Identity

In what passes for political and cultural discourse today, the term “populist” is something of a pejorative, conjuring up images in the mind of the cultural and academic elite of dangerous folks with pitchforks and guns riding about in pick-up trucks looking for an uprising to foment.  This of course is nonsense.  What the tsars of public opinion describe as…
John Devanny
September 2, 2019
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Don’t Remove Confederate Monuments

This essay was presented at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on the New South. In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a sense of having been present there himself in the person…
Philip Leigh
August 30, 2019
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What if the South had Its Own Congress?

On May 17, 2019, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 5: Equality Act—better known as the Trans-Gender Equality Act. The “peoples” House thus spoke on behalf of the American people. The vote was not even close! The final vote was 236 Yes, 173 No, and nine not voting. We can, therefore, conclude that 58% of the American people…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 29, 2019
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Rediscovering Heritage

Lack of attachment to culture, heritage, and tradition is the death of a nation. As a child, I had very little in-depth knowledge of my family’s history. Most of my extended family had died from old age by the time of my birth except for my maternal grandfather, Nelson Pace and great aunt, Mary Paul Pittman Smyrl, both natives of…
Nicole Williams
August 28, 2019
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Louisiana’s Warrior Governor

Louisiana is a state accustomed to incredibly incompetent and corrupt public officials, especially in the governor’s office. Some of my fellow Louisianans will be surprised to know that one of their former chief executives was a model of competence, ability, courage, and self-sacrifice. One Pulitzer Prize-winning historian even suggested that, had the South recognized his talents earlier, the results of…
Samuel W. Mitcham
August 26, 2019
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Lee and Reconciliation

In 1866, a year after taking the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant had reason to consider and comment on the political landscape. At the head of what was likely the most powerful national armed force on the planet, Grant would voice an altering measure of both satisfaction and disappointment of America's attempt to…
Gerald Lefurgy
August 23, 2019
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The Psychosis of Slavery

When most Americans hear the word slavery today, their minds instantly conjure up only images of either a black African in chains or a group of such people toiling away in the fields of some Southern plantation.  This distorted, even psychotic, mental picture of an institution that is as old as civilization itself is now, of course, being used not…
John Marquardt
August 22, 2019
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Strom Thurmond, the “Dixiecrats,” and Southern Identity

This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on The New South. James Strom Thurmond, or Strom, was born on December 5, 1902 in Edgefield, South Carolina. This historic county was also the home of Francis Hugh Wardlaw, the author of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, and Preston Brooks, who caned Charles Sumner in 1856. These three are…
Michael Martin
August 21, 2019
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Contextualizing Southern Heritage

A semantic technique that has worked well for political types is renaming things to make them more acceptable to the public. This has occurred countless times in our society. Here are two examples from the past. Beginning with our first President, we had a cabinet post called Secretary of War. But in the late 1940s, this designation was changed to…
Gail Jarvis
August 16, 2019
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G.K. Chesterton and Old Dixie

Before there was any New England in the North, there was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, there is still - G. K. Chesterton Within Christian and conservative circles, the great English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is widely considered one of the most important authors of the Twentieth Century. As a poet, novelist, mystery writer,…
Garrett Agajanian
August 15, 2019
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Where the Grapes of Wrath are Stored

This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Fundamentalism is often viewed as the most Southern of religions. Yet this is not so.  It was an alien seed planted in ground razed by war and harrowed by Reconstruction.  The harrowing, or Reconstruction if one prefers, was not merely an updating of the constitutional and political…
John Devanny
August 14, 2019
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Revisionism

Does anyone remember United States Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.? I mean, for something other than being the son of The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and for being sentenced to 30 months in jail for violating federal campaign finance laws. Well, I do. It was Jackson, Jr who, in 1999, amended an appropriation bill for the Department of Interior.…
Andrew P. Calhoun
August 12, 2019
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The Statue of Liberty is Falling to Pieces, and I’m Glad

I don’t like the thing. I hate what it stands for, and I respect the givers even less than I respect the gift. Most of the problems we face today can be traced to the Statue of Liberty. If we’d just send it back to the French, crime in the streets would disappear, we’d have a surplus in the federal…
Thomas Landess
August 9, 2019
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No Eulogies

In I Kings 21, we see that Naboth did not feel that he had the right to sell the family land no matter how much money King Ahab offered. The land was not his except as a trust from his forefathers to the generations yet unborn." ~~RJ Rushdoony We have come to the place were every year another noble Southern…
Robert Hoyle
August 8, 2019
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The Case for the Confederacy

This essay was originally published in The Lasting South (Regnery, 1957). Recently when Bertrand Russell was a speaking-guest of the Richmond Area University Center, its director, Colonel Herbert Fitzroy, drove the philosopher from Washington to Richmond over Route One. After some miles the usually voluble Russell grew silent, and nothing would draw him out. Then, as if emerging from deep…
Clifford Dowdey
August 7, 2019
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Economic Reconstruction

Mr. Leigh presented this paper at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on The New South. Historians have reinterpreted Civil War Reconstruction over the past fifty years. Shortly before the Centennial it was commonly believed that the chief aim of the Republican-dominated Congress was to ensure lasting Party control of the federal government by creating a reliable voting bloc in…
Philip Leigh
August 5, 2019
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The United States is Not a Nation

Earlier this month, prominent names in the conservative movement gathered in Washington, DC, for a conference on “National Conservatism.” Speakers included such luminaries as Tucker Carlson, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, John Bolton, Michael Anton, Rich Lowry, Yuval Levin, and Josh Hawley. Representing the academy were F.H. Buckley, Charles Kesler, Amy Wax, and Patrick Deneen. Other conservative writers and thinkers participated…
Allen Mendenhall
August 1, 2019
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Colonial Slavery

In 1715, Colonial Governor Charles Craven remarked that his front line troops in the fight against a hostile American Indian tribe comprised "two hundred stout negro men." Just five years prior, Indian agent Thomas Nairne wrote that the colonial militia in this same colony possessed "a considerable Number of active, able, Negro Slaves; and the Law gives everyone of those…
Brion McClanahan
July 31, 2019
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Driving Through Virginia’s Historic Triangle, Part II

George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson trod the roads of this area as the colony of Virginia grew. George Mason, James Madison and Richard Henry Lee sat in the public houses debating political events. British royal governors, the comte de Rochambeau, Marquis de Lafayette and the Baron von Steuben were just a few of the many Europeans passing across…
Brett Moffatt
July 29, 2019
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Confederate Monuments and Racism?

As noted in earlier posts, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and many academic historians are promoting a false narrative that the Confederate statues erected between 1900 and 1920 were celebrations of white supremacy. In reality, the statues were built because the old veterans were dying-off, which is why there was also a simultaneous surge in Civil War memorial-building in…
Philip Leigh
July 26, 2019
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Allen Tate’s Confederate Ode: Who are the Living and the Dead?

 Then Lytle asked: Who are the dead? Who are the living and the dead? Allen Tate, “The Oath” Over the decades since its first publication in 1927 Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead” has probably received more critical and popular attention than any of his other poems. Tate himself alludes to some of it in his own commentary on the…
Thomas Hubert
July 24, 2019
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Black Southern Support for Secession and War

Sooner or later any student of the War for Southern Independence will run across discussion of "black Confederates," which may well be the most controversial topic related to the war. From an objective standpoint it might seem odd that there is any controversy at all. The South had a large black population in 1861, mostly slave but some free, and…
Shane Anderson
July 22, 2019
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The Neo-Confederate SCOTUS Justice

On February 4, 2002, a current member of the United States Supreme Court gave the following remarks at Loyola University, in New Orleans: a tribute to Judah P. Benjamin, a former U.S. Senator who resigned and took part in the secession of Louisiana.  He was quickly appointed to a cabinet post by President Jefferson Davis: first as Attorney General, and subsequently…
Rev. Larry Beane
July 19, 2019
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Defending the South Against Fake News

I had some correspondence with an editor of the Post and Courier this week when I sent them a letter for publication in response to their July 6, 2019 editorial "Don't let extremists define our national symbols." As a result, I saw an opening to send some valuable Southern history to this newspaper and I jumped on it. Their editorial…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
July 18, 2019
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The Land of Lincoln Bans Confederate Railroad

Illinois’ Governor J.B. Pritzer has banned the Southern rock band Confederate Railroad from the Illinois State Fair because of the band’s name and Confederate flag on their logo. He said that the administration bars using resources to promote symbols of racism. Well, kiss my grits. Let’s look at the state fair’s “Land of Lincoln.” “The land of Lincoln” is the…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 17, 2019
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A History Lesson for Ted Cruz

I am always annoyed when a conservative political leader attacks Southern heritage. I don’t know why because with the present-day crop of cowardly politicians, it is becoming routine, but I am. Unwittingly or not, these modern day Scalawags adopt the “politically correct” line, even though they know (or should know) that political correctness is nothing more than a euphemism for…
Samuel W. Mitcham
July 15, 2019
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Dabney’s Warning for the New South

Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) defended the South both during and after the War Between the States. During the war, this professor of theology left his work at Union Theological Seminary to serve as chaplain for the Confederacy in 1861 and then as chief of staff to General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in 1862. After the war, Dabney made it one of…
Zachary Garris
July 12, 2019
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The War Power is All Power

A bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmen’s Affairs was introduced in the House of Representatives on February 17, 1864, by Massachusetts Republican Rep. Thomas D. Eliot. Democrat Rep. Samuel S. “Sunset” Cox of Ohio responds to the bill, in part, below. www.Circa1865.org   The Great American Political Divide The War Power is All Power “Mr. Cox said: “Mr. Speaker .…
Bernard Thuersam
July 11, 2019
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Republican Revisionists

There is a modern notion among the Republicans and their most vocal acolytes such as Dinesh D’Souza and Mark Levin that the Republicans are the healers and the Democrats are the racists. One political party and its advocates invent as much as the other. These two devotees calling themselves conservatives, strain to blame the Democrat party for slavery, Jim Crow…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 10, 2019
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An Okie From Muskogee

As someone who grew up during the decade of the 1960’s, I am paying attention when I hear those on the Left talking of the events which took place 50 years ago. I was born in Dallas, Texas, but my family moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, when I was four. I lived in Northern Virginia during that decade. At the…
Timothy A. Duskin
July 8, 2019
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Conan the Southerner?

“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to bear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high…
Joel T. Leggett
July 5, 2019
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Civil War PC is Mental Imprisonment

Each of us tends to be a prisoner of our own experience. In a World with billions of people, we experience only a tiny part. Thus, we rely upon our imaginations to complete a mental picture that results in our “worldview,” meaning our personal conception of the World. Moreover, our imaginations are fed by the narratives we learn from academics,…
Philip Leigh
July 4, 2019
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In Memory of Andrew Lytle (1902-1995)

The poem was written shortly after Mr. Lytle's death in 1995. I intended it to be part of an expanded edition of Poems from Scorched Earth, thus continuing the meditation on fire--in both its destructive and regenerative powers. The fire that he loved to stoke was an image of his eternal energy and his gift for conviviality. --J.O. Tate No…
James Everett Kibler
July 3, 2019
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Say It Ain’t So, Joe!

Joe Biden is at it again.  The longtime senator from Delaware, former Vice President of the United States, and current Democratic presidential nomination front-runner recently confirmed his reputation as a human gaffe machine by admitting, in public, that he maintained cordial relations with Southern segregationist colleagues in the Senate forty-five years ago.  After acknowledging that he’s “old-fashioned” compared to “the…
Houston Middleton
July 1, 2019
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Driving Through Virginia’s Historic Triangle

Virginia’s  Historic Triangle: Jamestowne, Williamsburg and Yorktowne encompasses the first permanent English settlement in America, the most important colonial capital, and the last major military engagement of the American War for Independence.  John Smith, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe trod the paths on Jamestown Island. Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, James Madison, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee walked the…
Brett Moffatt
June 28, 2019
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The Place of Nathaniel Macon in Southern History

Many who are well acquainted with Southern history are almost entirely unfamiliar with the historical character of Nathaniel Macon. He is often mentioned by the best of authors as a North Carolinian, as a Georgian, or simply as a Southern Democrat. His share in the political development of the South is but vaguely known, yet every southern state has either…
William E. Dodd
June 27, 2019
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The South Carolina Federalists

Original material for Southern history has been so scarce at the centres where American historiographers have worked, that the general writers have had to substitute conjecture for understanding in many cases when attempting to interpret Southern developments. The Federalists of the South have suffered particularly from misrepresentation and neglect. Their Democratic-Republican contemporaries of course abused them; the American public at…
Ulrich B. Phillips
June 26, 2019
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Secessionville

Battle of Secessionville Commemoration Address by Gene Kizer, Jr. on the battle site at Fort Lamar Heritage Preserve on James Island in Charleston, South Carolina June 15, 2019. This was a memorial service honoring the 157th anniversary of the brilliant Confederate victory of June 16, 1862. The Battle of Secessionville was an extremely important battle because, if the Confederates had…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
June 24, 2019
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Make America States Again

I am honored to speak at the graduation from high school of these young men and women who were once my students and who are now my friends. We’ve grown so close, in fact, I’ve decided to graduate with them! Over the last few weeks, as the day of my departure grew near, many of these dear friends have thanked…
Joe Wolverton
June 21, 2019
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Washington’s Money

Congress has a far greater number of wealthy people than the general population.  Consequently, the bureaucrats that Congress has created by their legislation also have brought unto themselves great wealth. Much of their wealth comes prior to serving in Congress it can be said. But much more from assets to the immediate temptation of graft and corruption euphemistically referred to…
Paul H. Yarbrough
June 20, 2019
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Was Dabney a Prophet?

The writings of Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) often read like prophecy. After the War Between the States, Dabney wrote essays on a variety of cultural and political issues, both in defense of the South and as an assault on progressivism. Along the way, he made predictions regarding the secularization of public schools, the future of feminism, and the decline of…
Zachary Garris
June 19, 2019
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Democracy vs. Aristocracy in Virginia in 1830

There is in some of our libraries a certain book which the writer of this article ventures to believe is not gener­ally as familiar as it should be to the student of politics. For himself, he chanced one day, several years ago, to blow the dust from off its time-worn binding and nine hun­dred dreary-looking pages of fine print, to…
Jeffrey R. Brackett
June 14, 2019
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Ten Things You Don’t Know About Robert E. Lee

To those Americans who revere him—sadly, a dwindling number these days—Robert E. Lee is still much a “Marble Man”: the noble face of the antebellum South, the tragic embodiment of the Lost Cause, the “perfect” man, as a contemporary deemed him. Even his admirers are unaware of the some of the more interesting details of the life of this very…
Stephen M. Klugewicz
June 13, 2019
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The GMO Threat

Genetically engineered crops have been grown in large numbers across the States since 1996.  These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are created by taking a gene (or genes) from an unrelated species like a bacterium and splicing it (them) into a crop like corn or cotton with the intention of improving some aspect of it (to protect against herbicides, drought, etc.). …
Walt Garlington
June 12, 2019
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The Limits of a Politics of Tolerance

Secession, nullification, and interposition, like the poor, we shall always have with us. These are as American, indeed more American, than apple pie and baseball. Our new federal union, outlined in the Constitution written at the Philadelphia Convention and ratified by the independent states in their separate conventions, was barely out of the gate before the first constitutional crisis hit…
John Devanny
June 10, 2019
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Carr Washing

Silent Sam was a Confederate statue that stood on the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill for 104 years after its 1913 dedication. A student mob toppled it in 2017 for being an allegedly racist symbol. Student hatred had been growing since 2011 when UNC graduate student Adam Domby discovered an outrageously racist incident described by one of…
Philip Leigh
June 7, 2019
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Abraham Lincoln Crushes Civil Liberties in Maryland

Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as one of the nation's greatest Presidents. He is the subject of at least 15,000 books. A popular poem (later set to music) responded to Lincoln's call for troops in biblical terms: "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.…" Upon Lincoln's death, Bishop Horatio Potter wrote that " glorious career of service and…
Michael Schearer
June 6, 2019
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The Southern Tradition Promotes Domestic Peace

I want to tell you a story that you won’t read in the mainstream news. It is a positive story, about people from different backgrounds, who have different cultures, coming together to work for a shared dream. It is a story of people who know they are different from each other, but recognize they can still respect each other and…
Marcus Ruiz Evans
June 3, 2019
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What Did 19th Century Black Americans Think About Confederate Monuments?

One argument used by those wanting to remove Confederate statues is that contemporary blacks had little chance to oppose them when they were erected.  Aside from anecdotal evidence that blacks joined white crowds to observe the dedication ceremonies, one example in Mississippi provides undeniable evidence of explicit high-level black support. In 1890 the Mississippi legislature voted on a bill to appropriate $10,000 for…
Philip Leigh
May 31, 2019
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Dignity and Peace

Catholic and non-Catholic Southerners alike have reason to mourn the loss of Father James Schall, S.J., who passed away shortly before Easter at the age of 91.  As an erudite representative of an older generation, Father Schall preserved for the benefit of the 21st-Century a perspective that has been largely swept away with the many communities and neighborhoods upon which…
Jerry Salyer
May 30, 2019
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The Inescapable Anti-Americanism of the Left

It’s telling indeed that while everyone, irrespectively of political partisanship, can’t refer to “racism” enough, few people, if any, want to spend any time at all talking about “anti-Americanism.” The remotely curious should want to know why the topic of anti-Americanism has seemed to have fallen into disrepute. I have a theory: Democrats and the left would prefer not to…
Jack Kerwick
May 29, 2019
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Memorial Day

Noblest of martyrs in a glorious fight! Ye died to save the cause of Truth and Right. And though your banner beams no more on high, Not vainly did it wave or did ye die! No blood for freedom shed is spent in vain; It is as fertile as the Summer rain; And the last tribute of heroic breath Is…
James Ryder Randall
May 27, 2019
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The Truth No Longer Matters

“All we need to do is to tell the truth about the War.” I became actively involved in the “Southern” movement in the early 1960s. From that time up to the present I have often heard my fellow Southerners declare of our enemies, “They (our enemies) just do not understand the truth about the War. All we need to do…
James Ronald Kennedy
May 24, 2019
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Show Me Where the Statue Hurt You

I attended a protest to tear down the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston on May 16, 2019. This event was being hosted by “The Independent Media Institute,” and consisted of “artists” explaining how the monument is a symbol of white supremacy to them. Almost two years ago, in August of 2017, I attended a similar protest put on by…
Michael Martin
May 23, 2019
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“An Epic Poem in Bronze.”

On August 22, 2018, Forbes Magazine published an article written by Kristina Killgrove entitled "Scholars Explain the Racist History of UNC's Silent Sam Statue." 1 Two days earlier, the statue had been pulled down by a crowd of students and activists, who saw it as a symbol of "white supremacy" that had no place on the campus of UNC Chapel…
Shane Anderson
May 22, 2019
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Think Progress Publishes Fake News

We hear a lot about “fake news” these days. Until I was its victim, I was skeptical about the extent of its existence. Now I understand why trust in the media is so low and why news networks are associated with leftist bias. I have learned, as well, that fake news does not necessarily consist of flagrant, outright lying; it…
Allen Mendenhall
May 20, 2019
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A “Republic of American Values?”

Prager University has a video presentation, “American values” which is no more than historical fiction. These values, Dennis Prager claims in the video, are a result of America’s unique position as not being defined by race and ethnicity. He claims America is defined by three values: 1. E Pluribus Unum 2. Liberty 3. In God We Trust. Such claims redefine…
Paul H. Yarbrough
May 17, 2019
Blog

Nat Turner’s Massacre Apologists

The Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly announced that it will spend taxpayer money to erect a statue honoring Nat Turner who was the leader of a drunken slave rebellion that massacred fifty-five whites in the Southeastern part of the state in 1831. Most of the victims were women and children hacked to death with hatches and axes. Thirty-one…
Philip Leigh
May 16, 2019
Blog

The Procrustean Constitution

We have seen how Mississippi, with its campus free speech bill, totally ignored its own State constitution in favor of federal 1st Amendment arguments.  Now Texas is doing likewise in response to the San Antonio City Council’s decision to reject Chick-fil-A’s request to be a vendor in the San Antonio International Airport.  The opposition to this decision rests mostly on…
Walt Garlington
May 15, 2019
Blog

John Randolph of Roanoke and the Formation of a Southern Conservatism

One of the great issues of American political history is whether an authentic American conservatism exists.  This is a crucial question for Southerners, as the South is historically viewed as the most conservative of the regions of the United States. Louis Hartz, a prominent political theorist during the middle of the twentieth century, answered no, American conservatism does not exist. …
John Devanny
May 13, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia, Part II

The first English settlement in what is now Hampton was started in 1610, when Colonist under Governor Sir Thomas Gates captured a Native American village, Kecoughtan.  Forts Henry and Charles were early defensive work in the area, but by 1637 were abandoned. Hampton is the oldest continually occupied English town in America since Jamestowne was later abandoned. Called Elizabeth Cittie…
Brett Moffatt
May 10, 2019
Blog

Truman and Treason?

Most people believe the novel 1984 by George Orwell was about some futuristic dystopia. Published in 1949, the story reflected the fear of what the world could be like under totalitarian government. The main character in the story, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department of the “Ministry of Truth” as a reviser of historic records. Thought police, misleading language,…
Michael Martin
May 9, 2019
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Are Confederate Memorials Preventing “Social Justice?”

As a stalwart Southerner who came of age before the 1960s, its hard to believe how much that era has transformed our society. Unfortunately, the majority of today's citizens were born long after that decade, so what they know about decades prior to the 1960s comes from agenda-driven Leftist mainstream media. In previous articles, I have expressed my concern about…
Gail Jarvis
May 8, 2019
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Guerilla War from the Pulpit

Jabez Lafayette Monroe Curry was one of the major political figures of the Old South. In the Alabama Assembly and the United States Congress, he was a passionate and articulate advocate for state sovereignty limited government and a strict construction of the Constitution. With the creation of the Confederacy, he helped draft its new constitution and design its “stars and…
John Chodes
May 6, 2019
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The Southern Tradition: Twenty Years After Richard Weaver

The image of Richard Weaver that sticks in my memory is a disturbing one. He is standing before an audience in a conference room at Vanderbilt University, his gnome-like features barely rising above the tall, polished oak podium that holds his manuscript. He wears a brown, wrinkled suit, shiny at the elbows; and at midmorning he is already in need…
Thomas Landess
May 3, 2019
Blog

God Bless America

Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were only the beginning. For anyone that believed American iconoclasm would stop once Confederate statues were removed or "contextualized," they were rudely awakened last week after the Philadelphia Flyers decided to remove the Kate Smith statue in front of the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia due to her "racist" recording history. They first bagged…
Brion McClanahan
May 2, 2019
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Ode to the Confederate Dead

Row after row with strict impunityThe headstones yield their names to the element,The wind whirrs without recollection;In the riven troughs the splayed leavesPile up, of nature the casual sacramentTo the seasonal eternity of death;Then driven by the fierce scrutinyOf heaven to their election in the vast breath,They sough the rumour of mortality. Autumn is desolation in the plotOf a thousand…
Allen Tate
April 29, 2019
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Sins and Virtues of “Civil War” History

History is remembered as a narrative, not facts and figures. If the story is told from the viewpoint of past sins, the rendering condemns our ancestors and makes us ashamed of our legacy. If it is told from the viewpoint of ancestral virtues, it leaves us proud of our tradition and inspired to build upon the accomplishments of those who…
Philip Leigh
April 26, 2019
Blog

A Copperhead Loves the South

CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS  22 April 2019 American by birth -- Southern by the grace of God!  I come from a true Southern state, South Dakota, and I am honored to be probably the first Dakotan to give the Memorial Day address at the capital of the Confederacy. Last week I had a conference call with a man from Michigan,…
John A. Eidsmoe
April 25, 2019
Blog

Bluegrass and Jazz: What Do They Have in Common?

If you’ve come across some of the other things I’ve written for Abbeville, you might have been exposed to my assertion that almost all of American music is Southern music.  Therefore, an obvious answer to the question of what do Bluegrass and Jazz have in common would be geographic origin.  Yes, they definitely both come from Dixie, hallelujah.  And just…
Tom Daniel
April 24, 2019
Blog

The South and the American Union

Stretching from the Potomac River across the southeastern quarter of the United States in a broad arc into the plains of Texas is a region known geographically and politically as “the South.” That this region has been distinctive by reason of its climate, type of produce, ethnic composition, culture, manners, and speech is known to every citizen of the country.…
Richard M. Weaver
April 22, 2019
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Don’t Get Conned by the Neocons on the Constitution

So, smart moms in two homeschool social-media groups of which I’m a member are super-excited about Hillsdale College’s free “Constitution 101” course. “Hillsdale’s conservative, so it must be teaching Christian-centered history,” they say. “Hillsdale doesn’t accept grants from the federal government or participate in federal financial-aid or student-loan programs. How principled,” they opine. “Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine both endorse…
Dissident Mama
April 19, 2019
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John C. Calhoun: American

Of all the American vice-presidents, none is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. Calhoun is known as the “defender of slavery,” the “cast iron man,” the “man who started the civil war.” His monument in Charleston has been vandalized, his name removed from Calhoun College at Yale, his Alma Mater, and now his home, Clemson University, is debating whether to…
Brion McClanahan
April 18, 2019
Blog

An Image of the South

“It is out of fashion these days to look backward rather than forward,” the poet John Crowe Ransom wrote almost thirty years ago. “About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living.” Ransom made the remark in an essay…
Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
April 17, 2019
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The Culture of Thomas Jefferson

To the student of the Classics the most interesting thing in the Library of Congress at Washington is the considerable remnant of the library of Thomas Jefferson. On October 6, 1820, Jefferson wrote to his young grandson, Francis Eppes, "I consider you as having made such proficiency in Latin and Greek that on your arrival at Columbia you may at…
Fred Irland
April 12, 2019
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Respect Across the Bows

'The Journalist & The General' Thomas Morris Chester, the war correspondent in the Eastern Theater for the Philadelphia Press paid homage to General Robert E. Lee on his return from Appomattox and arrival in Richmond, Virginia in 1865. Chester was the only Black American figure to serve in this role for a major newspaper on either side. (1) Chester's account…
Gerald Lefurgy
April 11, 2019
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The Crisis of the Electoral College

A decisive moment is coming for the peoples of the States, especially for those who consider themselves conservatives yet belong to the cult of Lincoln:  Will the Electoral College system for selecting the federal president continue on, or will it be scrapped for a purely national vote?  At the State and federal level, attempts to change it are ongoing: Calls…
Walt Garlington
April 10, 2019
Blog

Reconstruction and Recreation

2019 marks the 150th anniversary of U.S. Grant’s inauguration as President of the United States. It also has sparked a renewed interest in Reconstruction, particularly the notion that America failed to capitalize on an “unfinished revolution” as the communist historian Eric Foner describes the period. This general description of the 1860s has been used by both radical leftists like Foner…
Brion McClanahan
April 8, 2019
Blog

Strom’s Advice

Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, in 1902 and lived to be over 100 years old. He grew up in a time when the average person knew how to live off the land and he learned the values of health and fitness early on when he attended Clemson College, which was a military school at the time. Strom…
Michael Martin
April 5, 2019
Blog

Teach Your Children Well

Compatriots, how do y'all seek to maintain alive the Confederate heritage within your family & relatives? This would be a great discussion point for any Sons of Confederate Camp or United Daughters of the Confederacy Chapter. At the time of the Southern War For Independence, my ancestors were fighting my beloved French. It was a war that lasted 29 hard…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
April 4, 2019
Blog

Reparations: Let’s Do It!

Reparations for the deserving.? Who gets the money? Who gives up the money?  Who owes the money? The idea for reparations for which many of the current political and /or media hacks call the “original sin” of “the country” is restitution. That is, a large number of thugs like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or the usual peripheral suspects of…
Paul H. Yarbrough
April 3, 2019
Blog

The American Taliban

You don’t see much on the continued attack and removal of war memorials in the news, but that’s the intent of the left isn’t it?  Do it quietly but totally. These monuments were dedicated by their loved ones not to the "cause" but rather to honor their loved ones who paid the ultimate price with their lives. The American Taliban…
Lee Congleton
March 29, 2019
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The French Lady: A Most Agreeable Gentleman

“Fatti Maschii Parole Femine”1 In July of 1861, Union troops aboard the Chesapeake Bay steamer the Mary Washington found the “privateer” Colonel Richard Thomas Zarvona hiding in one of her cabins.  Aided by some sympathetic passengers, he had removed the bottom of each drawer of a dresser and had curled himself up inside of it.  Zarvona’s arrest brought to an…
J.L. Bennett
March 28, 2019
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Lee, Virginia, and the Union

The Hall of Fame recently dedicated at New York Uni­versity was conceived from the Ruhmes Halle in Bavaria. This structure on University Heights, on the Harlem river, in the borough of the Bronx, New York City, has, or is in­tended to have, a panel of bronze with other mementos for each of one hundred and fifty native-born Americans who have…
Fred H. Cox
March 27, 2019
Blog

The Challenge of the Southern Tradition

In 1966, Senator Jim Eastland of Mississippi walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee and asked, “Feel hot in heah?” A staffer replied: “Well Senator, the thermostat is set at 72 degrees, but we can make it colder.” Eastland, puzzled by the response, doubled down, “I said, Feel Hot in heah?” The staffer now was perplexed and fearing that he might…
Brion McClanahan
March 25, 2019
Blog

Scotch Snaps and Southern Music

I need to tell you one story in order to tell you another. The Czechoslovakian composer Antonin Dvorak moved to the United States in 1892, and immersed himself in American music while composing his New World Symphony.  Although he was fascinated, inspired, and moved by traditional Southern folk music, Dvorak complained that he simply couldn’t tell the difference between Scottish…
Tom Daniel
March 22, 2019
Blog

Silent Sam: A Personal Experience

Editor's Note: During the height of the Silent Sam protests in the Summer of 2017, Jonathan Harris went to the statue and talked with the people wishing to tear down the monument. This is his story. Maybe it was Southern heritage, the honor of a family name, or Christian conviction. Or perhaps I just needed to prove something to myself.…
Jonathan Harris
March 21, 2019
Blog

Mississippi’s Free Speech Confusion

Some lawmakers in Mississippi, obviously alarmed at the violent demonstrations and restrictive measures at college campuses intended to silence what passes for conservative viewpoints, have come up what they consider a fitting solution in their legislative kitchen, House Bill 1562, ‘Forming Open and Robust University Minds (FORUM) Act’.  But the result is far from enticing. The heart of the bill…
Walt Garlington
March 20, 2019
Blog

Patrick Cleburne

The sketch is necessarily imperfect, from the want of official records. Most of these were lost or destroyed by the casualties attending the close of the war, and those still in existence are difficult of access. Of Cleburne’s early life little is known. The record of his service in the Southern armies belongs to the yet unwritten history of the…
William J. Hardee
March 18, 2019
Blog

Leave Confederate Statues Alone

In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a sense of having been present there himself in the person of one or more of his ancestors. The war filled merely a chapter in his……
Philip Leigh
March 14, 2019
Blog

Athletes and Education: Mutually Exclusive

Athletes gain money when they gain attention. Just like Congressmen. Ole Miss basketball players kneel in deference to standing for the National Anthem. Again, athletes, many of whom have an academic pedigree from high school that suggests borderline literacy, have taken a stand –oops—a kneel for something or against something. Who the hell knows why these muscle-bound morons do what…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 13, 2019
Blog

Is Opposition to Trump “Satanic?”

On a February 2017 episode of televangelist Pat Robertson’s “The 700 club,” a viewer sent in the following question about dissent: “Why do so many hate President Trump and say everything he does is bad? I voted for him and believed he would make ‘America Great Again,’ and he has already in many ways. So what is your answer as…
Michael Martin
March 8, 2019
Blog

Rescuing Old Joe

Whoever weds himself to the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.    —   William Inge Few realize that Florida was so committed to The War Between the States that she gave more soldiers to repel Northern invaders than she had registered voters. Gainesville was among the towns that responded. As a result, the…
Philip Leigh
March 7, 2019
Blog

Modern Monetary Theory: A Jeffersonian Critique

The chattering class’ newest obsession, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has seized the policy initiative from the Democratic Party’s geriatrics by promoting a “Green New Deal.”  T’is clever branding to combine left-wing eco virtue signaling with FDR’s version of “down home” fascism. (If one doubts me on this last point, I refer you to John Garraty’s seminal article, “The New Deal, National Socialism,…
John Devanny
March 4, 2019
Blog

Driving Through Virginia

Southeast Virginia is a region rich in history, from the earliest colonial times to today’s modern military.  Cape Henry welcomes visitors today, just as it did the Virginia Company colonists in 1607, just before they settled at Jamestown.  First Landing State Park commemorates where the colonists first entered Chesapeake Bay, seeking a site for settlement. One of Virginia’s oldest and…
Brett Moffatt
March 1, 2019
Blog

First They Came for Southern Heritage

The so-called Civil Rights movement began in the mid-1950s with goals of ending segregation and discrimination. Over the decades it has evolved from “correcting” certain aspects of society, into a virtual restructure of society. What began as a movement became a revolution. Technological advances in communications made this revolution possible – a revolution similar to the Protestant Reformation. It is…
Gail Jarvis
February 28, 2019
Blog

Talk Radio vs. The South

Right wing radio personalities need no excuse to engage in South-bashing, but the recent events in the Old Dominion have given them free rein to indulge in their passion non-stop.  Governor Ralph Northam’s perceived hatred of “the other” quickly overshadowed his chilling, matter of fact endorsement of proposed legislation establishing new and ghoulish abortion protocols in his state, and with…
J.L. Bennett
February 27, 2019
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A Crisis of Confidence

Pat Caddell died on February 16. Several major news outlets ran stories about his influence in both the Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump campaigns. Everyone understood Caddell's role as the voice of the "outsider." A colleague at the College of Charleston, where Caddell served in the Political Science department for the last couple of years, said that Caddell hated everything…
Brion McClanahan
February 25, 2019
Blog

A Little Whiskey Rebellion

“I plainly perceive that the time will come when a shirt shall not be washed without an excise.”— Representative James Jackson of Georgia, speech against the Whiskey Tax delivered on January 5, 1791 in the House of Representatives As with so many other episodes in early American history, the true story of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion has been purposefully scrubbed…
Joe Wolverton
February 22, 2019
Blog

In Search of the Real Southern Democrat

It was an indelible moment, one that has resonated with me up to the present day. My father and I had gone to whatever permutation of Wal-Mart existed at that time in Union County in late 1982.  (Maybe it was still Edwards then, maybe Big K; the chronology is no longer clear so many years later.)  He was a supervisor…
Randall Ivey
February 21, 2019
Blog

Lord Acton: Confederate Sympathizer

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge history lecturer John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, a.k.a., the First Lord Acton, Catholic godfather of classical liberalism. Where Acton’s critics identify classical liberalism as a theory incompatible with the Catholic faith,…
Jerry Salyer
February 20, 2019
Blog

Contested Ground: Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition

In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay in the archipelago of enlightenment.  There are some cracks in this edifice of Yankee bigotry, but when political and cultural wars become heated, the edifice is trotted out once more…
John Devanny
February 18, 2019
Blog

Podcast Episode 157

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institutes, Feb 11-15, 2019 Topics: Southern history, Political Correctness, Abraham Lincoln, Neoconservatives https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-157
Brion McClanahan
February 16, 2019
Blog

Pro-Confederate Television

In this age of political correctness it may surprise people that there were three TV series that portrayed Confederates in a good light. All three are very good and all the episodes of two of the series are available on DVD, and some of the episodes of the other series is available. The first series is Yancy Derringer. Yancy Derringer…
Jeff Wolverton
February 15, 2019
Blog

Why Are We Letting Them Push Our Buttons?

I usually don’t engage in online arguments and discussions because I know I’m not the smartest cookie in the jar, and I’m afraid that I might open my mouth and prove that point.  That being said, there comes a time when you see evidence of such full scale lunacy, you just can’t continue to remain silent.  The controversy over Virginia…
Barbara Marthal
February 14, 2019
Blog

Our Interesting Times

There is an old Chinese curse the English translation of which is “May you live in interesting times.”  The implication of the curse, of course, is that it is better to live in seemingly dull and tranquil times, times in which little occurs that would threaten to upset the peaceful daily rhythm of the accursed’s life.  Let us set aside…
Houston Middleton
February 11, 2019
Blog

Did Ulysses Grant Own and Rent Slaves?

Even among the most Grant-partial historians there’s no denying that Ulysses Grant and his wife owned slaves prior to the Civil War. In fact, “Ulysses Grant” is the correct answer to a crafty American history trivia question that asks: “Can you name the last slaveholding President?” As growing political correctness causes our culture to increasingly condemn historical figures connected with…
Philip Leigh
February 8, 2019
Blog

Hamilton on Steroids

“The revenue of the state is the state.”  Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution Washington D. C. finds itself in the midst of an entertaining, nay consuming, Kabuki theatre.  The federal government has “shut down” its non-essential functions, re-opened the same, and promised to do it all over again in a few weeks, raising the question as to why…
John Devanny
February 7, 2019
Blog

Confederaphobes

Presented at the Lee-Jackson Banquet, Finley’s Brigade Camp 1614 - Tallahassee, Florida, 19 January 2019 Prologue It seemed like just another day at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, for the vice chancellor of student affairs, Paula Knudson, until the phone calls, student visitors, and official “hate and bias” reports began to pour in. A truck—a semi-tractor trailer truck to…
Paul C. Graham
February 6, 2019
Blog

Texas is Going to be Bluer Than Bluebonnets

Texas will turn blue before it’s over with its local Neocons in charge. Former sports announcer and Bankrupt, now Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick has decided that his historical acumen can bring Texas forward into the true modern way of thinking.  That is, the South is and always had been a bunch of ignorant savages. But no more. If…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 1, 2019
Blog

Orwell’s America

In the ongoing war against Southern Confederate heritage, we need to be cognizant of the academic pressures against it. As y'all know, UNC Chapel Hill recently tore down Silent Sam. This is going on throughout all the great Southern schools. As a professional scholar, I was a member of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature; the Southern Historical…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
January 31, 2019
Blog

Kentucky’s Confederate Sons

Suffering from a nasty bacterial infection, the insomnia induced by a lamp kept lit in his cell at all hours, and the very real possibility of being hanged by a kangaroo court, Jefferson Davis drew strength during his postbellum imprisonment from a certain slender little volume that was once renowned throughout Christendom – the The Imitation of Christ.  The Imitation…
Jerry Salyer
January 30, 2019
Blog

The Southern Critique of Centralization

The Southern political tradition, in practice and theory, is one of its most valuable contributions to America and the world. The one constant theme of that tradition from 1776–through Jefferson, Madison, John Taylor, St George Tucker, Abel Upshur, John C. Calhoun, the Nashville Agrarians, Richard Weaver, M. E. Bradford, down to the scholars of the Abbeville Institute–is a systematic critique…
Donald Livingston
January 28, 2019
Blog

The South and Germany

I hope that no one who reads this paper will suppose that I have any feeling in the matter. I am only correcting errors in Northern writers, and I trust that, after more than half a century since the war between the States, this may be done without exciting any sectional bias. On the other hand, I have no idea…
Lyon G. Tyler
January 25, 2019
Blog

A Cautionary Tale on Monument Protection Laws

When Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo issued a ruling on the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act just minutes before his term expired last week, he upended the entire understanding and meaning of the original Constitution and the relationship between the States, the cities, and the general government. More importantly, though Graffeo's decision will probably--not definitely--be overturned, the ruling provides a…
Brion McClanahan
January 24, 2019
Blog

John C. Calhoun’s Foreign Policy: “A Wise and Masterly Inactivity”

The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining the South to a dark little corner of history labeled “Slavery and Treason.” This is already governing the public sphere of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Such an approach not only libels the South, it is a fatal distortion of American history in general, and, I dare say, even of…
Clyde Wilson
January 23, 2019
Blog

Robert E. Lee and the Nation

The White House, Washington, January 16, 1907.  To the Hon. Hilary A. Herbert, Chairman, Chief Justice Seth Shepherd, President Edwin Alderman, Judge Charles B. Howry, General Marcus J. Wright, Mr. William A. Gordon, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, Mr. Joseph Wilmer, And others of the Committee of Arrangement for the Celebration of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of General Robert…
Theodore Roosevelt
January 21, 2019
Blog

Southern Conservatives

The South is and always been conservative. But with the constant hammer of political correctness and political falsehood (redundant?) pounded on it, it has waffled among many who brand it as evil. Punchy from the blows, it has sought to defend itself in the wrong places: In presentism and with Republicans. Republican and Air Force veteran Mike Hill, the first…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 18, 2019
Blog

Franklin Pierce, Political Protest, & the Dilemmas of Democracy

On the stump in New Boston, New Hampshire in early January 1852, Franklin Pierce gave a long oration during which free-soil hecklers forced him to address his ideas on slavery. “He was not in favor of it,” the Concord Independent Democrat reported. “He had never seen a slave without being sick at heart. Slavery was contrary to the Constitution in some…
Michael J. Connolly
January 17, 2019
Blog

Trump Agonistes

The presidential election of 2016 gave promise to be a watershed in American politics. Donald Trump appeared, a non-politician and rich enough to support his own campaign without selling himself to the usual special interests. He collected all the right enemies. He deflated a whole platoon of Republican celebrities down to their actual pigmy size. He vanquished them by something…
Clyde Wilson
January 16, 2019
Blog

The Southern Tradition

Many years ago the historian Francis Parkman wrote a passage in one of his narratives which impresses me as full of wisdom and prophecy. After a brilliant characterization of the colonies as they existed on the eve of the Revolution, he said, “The essential antagonism of Virginia and New England was afterwards to become, and to remain, an element of…
Richard M. Weaver
January 14, 2019
Blog

Julian Green

One summer day in Paris, France, just a year after the Great War, a former French military officer, not yet nineteen years of age was invited by his father to have a chat. Slim, handsome, and gifted, the young man knew it was time for the big talk concerning his future now that peace had returned. To help him make…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
January 11, 2019
Blog

To the Smithsonian…

When one grows old one tends to resent wasting time and there is nothing that wastes time quite so much as efforts to counter the claims and assertions surrounding the American “Civil War” Of course, the first of these is that the conflict was not a “civil war.” But those who insist upon that label continue to do so despite…
Valerie Protopapas
January 10, 2019
Blog

The Cost of Southern Cultural Genocide

The destruction of Confederate monuments and the slandering of all things Confederate is in vogue in contemporary mainline media, academia, and the political establishment. The destruction of Confederate monuments by radical mobs is similar to the radical Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist monuments and the Soviet Union’s denial of public expressions of native culture in the Baltic states—all are examples of…
James Ronald Kennedy
January 9, 2019
Blog

The Legacy of D.W. Griffith

None knew it then, but in 1915, Southern agrarian influence on the movies was at its height. The film trade had just left Fort Lee, New Jersey, only to land in the equally piously named Mount Lee, California. Of course, the latter’s new name was Hollywood, due to its Kansas prohibitionist developers, but it was also the same name as…
Norman Stewart
January 7, 2019
Blog

The Long Ago

Oh! a wonderful stream is the river of Time, As it runs through the realm of tears, With a faultless rhythm, and musical rhyme, And a broader sweep, and a surge sublime, And blends with the ocean of years! How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow, And summers like buds between, And the ears in the sheaf, —…
Philo Henderson
December 31, 2018
Blog

Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox Meet St. Nicholas

On one fine evening, in which winter’s chill hung in the air and the stars sparkled merrily in the heavens above, a happy song of the season could be heard faintly weaving it’s way through the trees and rolling hills surrounding the humble home of Uncle Remus. “Ho my Riley, in this happy Christmas time, the black folks shake their clothes,…
Lewis Liberman
December 25, 2018
Blog

What Are Symbols For?

In 1875, Rev. Moses Drury Hoge stood before 40,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, at the foot of the newly dedicated statue of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and delivered what one historian called the "noblest oration of his later life." He believed that in the future, the path to that statue would be "trodden" by the feet of travelers from "the…
Brion McClanahan
December 21, 2018
Blog

We the People of South Carolina….

William Plumer Jacobs (1842-1917), a native of Yorkville, South Carolina, was a Presbyterian minister and scholar whose entire life has been called “a singular consecration to work and service in behalf of his fellow men.” He is closely identified with the town of Clinton, where he pastored a church and founded the Thornwell Orphanage and the Presbyterian College of South…
Karen Stokes
December 20, 2018
Blog

The Neo-Puritan War on Christmas

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” – H. L. Mencken “Let any man of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them , they close up their ears, his reasons they weigh not . . . . They are impermeable to argument and have their answers well drilled.”  – Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical…
John Devanny
December 19, 2018
Blog

What Does the Fracturing of the American Identity Mean for the Southern Tradition?

The Abbeville Institute conducted three conferences this year on the fracturing of American national identity and what means for the Southern tradition and the Southern people. The general public knows America is coming apart and that they're anxious about it, but most don't understand why because our political leaders and the national media generally suppress its origins. We wanted to…
Donald Livingston
December 17, 2018
Blog

Southern Music is American Music

Why do Southerners continue to fall into that trap where we only talk about the years1861-1865?  There are almost 400 years of Southern culture to talk about, yet we keep limiting ourselves to just four of them.  And it doesn’t matter how much of an expert someone becomes about Fredericksburg, Yankees will always have that same ace-in-the-hole comeback, “You lost.” But…
Tom Daniel
December 14, 2018
Blog

Shoeless Joe

Two of the poems I most admire are very short. One is simply a name - Shoeless Joe Jackson. Read it aloud and feel the assonance and alliteration. The other is a phrase Say it ain't so, Joe, delivered sadly, with its final rhyme. There is a mythic quality in both of these poems. The name, Shoeless Joe Jackson; the…
Ray Merlock
December 13, 2018
Blog

Black Southerners in American Wars

President Trump recently used his executive powers to designate a national monument to honor African Americans’ role as soldiers during the War Between the States. The monument will be a 380-acre site in Kentucky to commemorate Camp Nelson, which was one of the largest recruitment stations for the United States Colored Troops. The unfortunate reality is that the monument will…
Michael Martin
December 12, 2018
Blog

Social Justice and Clemson University

In November 2018 Will Hiott, Director and Curator of Historic Properties at Clemson University, included a thinly disguised political paper from Clemson University History Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas as part a packet distributed to Historic Properties Advisory Committee members. The essay has no relevance to ongoing volunteer efforts toward the Preservation of Historic campus buildings and is nothing more than…
Andrew P. Calhoun
December 10, 2018
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Steady Hand at the Wheel

Thomas Johnson was born in Calvert County, Maryland, on his father's lands near the mouth of St. Leonard's Creek. He was the son of Thomas and Dorcas Sedgwick Johnson and the grandson of Thomas Johnson, barrister, who was the first of the line to reside in Maryland, having fled there after running away with a chancery ward. All of these…
M.E. Bradford
December 7, 2018
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Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was born into poverty in rural North Carolina. His father died after saving some town locals from drowning and left the family to fend for themselves in a two-room shack. A young Andrew began working as a tailor’s apprentice and developed an appreciation for the laboring class early on. Johnson was poorly educated and learned how to write…
Michael Martin
December 6, 2018
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The Problem with Lawyers and the Constitution

On November 10, 2018, the Abbeville Institute hosted an event called The Revival of Nullification and Secession in Dallas, TX. The purpose was to educate people on the means by which we can escape the hatred and hostility that is consuming not only headlines, but our very souls. The population of these United States is split pretty much equally in…
Suzanne Sherman
December 5, 2018
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The Tragedy of Land Use in the South

For all of the pontificating of the virtues of the South, we have increasingly seen our agrarian landscape polluted by strip malls and environmental contamination. I make the case that neither of these things are inherently Southern in character, and as I believe, are contributing negatives to the soul and character of our region. We must work to correct these…
Nicole Williams
December 3, 2018
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The King and the Fool

The King of Rock and Roll brought himself up by his bootstraps, served Uncle Sam as a soldier and before his early demise came he had made an honest fortune for himself and many others. For that, he is belittled by those who hardly knew him. “A little nod to the good old days, back when black visionaries could invent…
Paul H. Yarbrough
November 30, 2018
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The Washington Post March of Infamy

Yesterday The Washington Post published an Op-Ed by former General Stanley McChrystal in which he boasted of removing a long-displayed Robert E. Lee painting from his home to “send it on its way to a local landfill for burial.” It is but one of perhaps a dozen Post articles during the last three years disparaging Lee, Confederate monuments and Southern heritage.  All condemn Lee…
Philip Leigh
November 29, 2018
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Operation Desert Storm: Lee or Sherman

As the brilliant American military victory in the Persian Gulf approaches its second anniversary, the focus has shifted from the emotions of homecoming celebrations to the seriousness of lessons learned and lessons validated. While the ingredients of victory are a combination of many factors, from logistics to training to armament, history has shown that one of the most important elements…
Jeffrey Addicott
November 26, 2018
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How to Run the American Revolution: Belated Advice

In the spirit of historical course correction, I herewith submit some thoughts to those who may find themselves in an American Revolution between 1774 and 1783. 1. Rule number one. Don’t cooperate with any leaders, even if you appointed them. If you do, such cooperation will later be taken as proof that you were just obeying the commands of some…
Joseph R. Stromberg
November 23, 2018
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Driving Through Dixie

Citizens of Dixie…. This is a call to arms, or rather, a call to your legs and feet.  Get up off that couch! If you don’t have family plans, ballgame, school play, or church event- get out and tour Dixie!  Take a few hours, a day, or a weekend, and see the beauty and history of Dixie. Start local; tour…
Brett Moffatt
November 22, 2018
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Poe of Virginia

The opinion has been often stated that Edgar Allan Poe was bizarre and amoral; that he was a lover of morbid beauty only; that he was unrelated to worldly circumstances-aloof from the affairs of the world; that his epitaph might well be: “Out of space-out of time.” But it is dangerous to attempt to separate any historical figure from his…
Robert E. Merry
November 21, 2018
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How Jakob Emig Fought the Yankees

From the front porch, Jakob Emig could look across fields where his winter wheat greened nicely. An old man now, with sons gone off to war, he lived mainly in a woman's world of married daughters and daughters-in-law on farms scattered nearby. He himself lived alone, widowed now for two years, hard work during war-time finally having taken its toll…
James Everett Kibler
November 19, 2018
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Securing the Blessings: Today the South, Tomorrow….

We are threatened by a powerful, dangerous, conspiracy of evil men. The conspiracy is the enemy of free institutions and civil liberties, of democracy and free speech; it is the enemy of religion. It is cruel and oppressive to its subjects. Its economic system is unfree and inefficient, condemning its people to poverty and deprivation. It has a relentless determination…
Ludwell H. Johnson
November 16, 2018
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Defusing a Second Civil War Through Peaceful Secession?

Secession? Nullification? A second Civil War in the presently not-so United States of America? According to a historic and highly fascinating Abbeville Institute event that took place November 9 and 10, 2018 in Dallas, Texas, a number of influential American thinkers, political figures and activists gathered to discuss how peaceful secession and nullification could very well be one of the most important…
Matthew Silber
November 15, 2018
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The Southern Political Tradition is Winning

Nationalist Jeff Sessions gets canned and a nullifier takes his job. This is actually an odd twist of fate. A friend of mine knows Sessions personally, and he continually expressed disappointment at Sessions's actions as AG. Jeff Sessions is from Alabama and is named after two famous Confederate heroes, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard.  His replacement, Matthew Whitaker, hails from…
Brion McClanahan
November 14, 2018
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A Return to Barbarism

Prehistoric warfare was total war in which victors normally killed all enemy women, children, and adult males, according to groundbreaking research published by Lawrence H. Keeley, in his book War Before Civilization1. Keeley wrote that primitive war was always a struggle between societies and their economies, and warriors carried out that struggle. Rome fielded great armies, in historical time, and…
Norman Black
November 12, 2018
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Why Aren’t Americans Interested in History?

The study of history cannot be neatly contained behind the tall foreboding doors of an ivory tower nor swept under the rugs of dusty corner offices housing stacks of paper. It bleeds into other fields as it serves to inform both individual and group identity. It gives context to the current world and helps one understand their place in it…
Jonathan Harris
November 9, 2018
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History and Social Justice Activism

I recently traveled with ten undergraduate students to the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) held at Calvin College, Grand Rapids Michigan.  This was an exciting and enriching trip for our students.  They, along with other history students from across the country, presented research papers at the undergraduate portion of the conference. For the past fifteen years I have attended…
Samuel C. Smith
November 8, 2018
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Charleston’s Faulty “Contextualization”

I grew up in Summerville, South Carolina, just a few miles from historic Charleston. This quiet little town is separated from the Holy City by some plantations, swamps, and marsh but shares the same fascination with local history. Folklore states that Summerville is the birthplace of sweet tea, the source being a newspaper article from 1890 that lists the menu…
Michael Martin
November 7, 2018
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Stone Mountain and the “Monument Man”

When National Socialism came to power in Germany in 1933, it sought an ethnic and cultural cleansing of the country. Jewish culture and art was not considered fully human and underwent a purge. Once Nazi Germany started World War II in 1939, it also sought the same purge for all of Europe. Art considered Germanic was confiscated from all over…
Timothy A. Duskin
November 5, 2018
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Was Lincoln a “Conservative?”

The latest in Lincoln polemics comes courtesy of Rich Lowry, editor of National Review.  In the latest issue of the latter, Lowry both promotes his new work and takes aim at those of our 16th president’s detractors that are to Lowry’s political right—the “Lincoln haters.” The “Lincoln haters,” Lowry insists, are limited “mostly, but not entirely,” to a libertarian “fringe”…
Jack Kerwick
November 2, 2018
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McChrystal vs. Lee

Retired General Stanley McChrystal who never led troops in a winning war bravely threw out a picture of Robert E. Lee because his wife apparently made him do so. As a defense of the action he went into a brief explanation that he no longer considered Lee one of the great leaders. Lee, he said was a great soldier for…
Paul H. Yarbrough
November 1, 2018
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A Neoconservative Wakes Up

Pro-Southern writers have long been suspicious of Victor Davis Hanson, given his association with the neoconservative ascendance of the Bush II era.   Yet unlike most of his former colleagues, the California classicist seems to have learned something from the dramatic transformations of recent years.  His book Mexifornia marked his enlistment in the unfashionable cause of border control, in part because…
Jerry Salyer
October 31, 2018
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Progressive Neo-Confederates?

Greetings fellow neo-Confederates. You have been right all along. How do I know this? Hillary Clinton said so, and if the smartest woman in the world said it, then it has to be true. Of course, she did not directly call herself a "neo-Confederate," but the progressives have rediscovered federalism and by default have vindicated every evil "neo-Confederate" in America.…
Brion McClanahan
October 29, 2018
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The “Desert Blooming Like The Rose.”

In 21st–century America, it’s difficult to imagine life without the ability to access information at an electronic click or command. But it was not always so. Two centuries ago, outside of New England, many small towns and rural communities lacked the institutions and the formally educated individuals (especially higher-learning institutions and pastors) that might have been expected to provide the…
Forrest L. Marion
October 26, 2018
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An Act of Tyranny

Constitutional Violation: Amendment One. Freedom of Speech Denied. Vallandigham Imprisoned in Ohio. “From the beginning to the end of these proceedings law and justice were set at naught;…the President should have rescinded the sentence and released Vallandigham:…a large portion of the Republican press of the east condemned Vallandigham’s arrest and the tribunal before which he was arraigned.” James Ford Rhodes, historian and…
John M. Taylor
October 25, 2018
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Was the Old South Feudal?

Was the Old South Feudal? Eugene Genovese wrote several works on antebellum slavery that essentially argued the Old South was neither feudal nor capitalist. His book Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism and earlier writings on slave economies postulated that the Southern mode of production was pre-capitalist and utilized a type…
Michael Martin
October 24, 2018
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Could “Calexit” Create a Left-Right Confederacy?

“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” The 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump produced the wedding of Bible Belt social conservatives and a flamboyant New York Billionaire with a legitimately questionable history of less than “Christian” moral social values. But the wedding of these “strange bedfellows” appears to be working out quite well—at least for the time being. As presidential politics…
James Ronald Kennedy
October 22, 2018
Blog

Accuse-Convict-Remove

In the past few weeks two major interrelated events took place in these once United States of America that should serve as a warning for all Americans.  First, after the most contentious confirmation process for a Supreme Court justice in over 100 years, America has displayed its political-cultural division to the world and second, the ever-growing campaign of cultural genocide…
Walter D. (Donnie) Kennedy
October 18, 2018
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Justice Kavanaugh and the Triumph of Symbol over Reality

“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Attributed to Mark Twain Americans at their best are a pragmatic “can do” folk, be it “Yankee ingenuity” or good old fashioned “get ‘r done.”  We are at our worst when we stray from this pragmatic bent into the misty fields of sacerdotal ideology, which is to say when we ascribe…
John Devanny
October 17, 2018
Blog

A Red and Blue Coalition?

On June 20, 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Crawford: “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in union, I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’” Jefferson thought secession can be a good thing. Lincoln in his first inaugural presented secession as something always bad: “Secession,” he said, “is…
Donald Livingston
October 15, 2018
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Southern Memories of the Good Ol’ Days

Having traveled in all fifty states, I must admit there are certain areas of this great country that continue to draw me back, time and again, to enjoy their natural beauty, pleasing climate, and their historical sites. The most fascinating place I’ve traveled is the tiny village of Barrow, Alaska, the northern most of cities in the United States. However,…
Cary Lindsay
October 12, 2018
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The Old South’s Poor Whites

There was a time, before universal white male suffrage and the closing of the frontier, when the poor whites of the South were considered shiftless and without caste. If we were to look at the South as a hierarchical system, it could be argued that the poor whites were a kind of pariah. There’s a common misconception that all whites…
Michael Martin
October 11, 2018
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What if We Listened to the Southern Founders?

Mel Bradford's outstanding tome A Better Guide Than Reason lifted that phrase from a speech John Dickinson made during the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Dickinson worried that the delegates to what we now call the "Constitutional Convention" were insistent on crafting a document that would reinvent the government of the United States, something James Madison proposed with his now famous…
Brion McClanahan
October 10, 2018
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The Supreme Selection Supported by Senator Sasse and the Several Dwarfs

Why does congress have hearings for people who are paraded through their judiciary committee- noise for examination as to their qualifications. Quality of what?  Those jobs, for example the Supreme Court Justices, certainly only require little more than a reasonably educated person. And the people examining these people seemingly requires virtually no intelligence at all. It is a monstrous show…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 8, 2018
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The Left Edge of Insanity

A Short Story of a Dystopian America To my fellow Associates: My name is Diversity-26, although my family and friends knew me as John before the Great Purge of Christianity. Today, as part of my punishment, I have been required to give you my story and beg you all for forgiveness for having disrupted your safe and happy lives. According…
Lewis Liberman
October 5, 2018
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Why Was General Earl Van Dorn Murdered?

In some ways, historians are like anyone else: they hate to make mistakes. But if you write enough, sooner or later, you will make a mistake—I assure you. I certainly have, but I have been more fortunate than most. Sometimes, mistakes benefit you. What I suppose are my two most significant errors to date came more than two decades apart,…
Samuel W. Mitcham
October 4, 2018
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Confederate Soldiers Were Not Traitors

The following is a letter-to-the-editor of the Charleston, SC Post and Courier September 15, 2018 defending the crew of the CSS Hunley. It applies to all Confederates soldiers. Dear Editor of The Post and Courier, A letter writer on September 12, 2018 is adamant that the proposed museum for the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley should not be incorporated into…
Gene Kizer, Jr.
October 3, 2018
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Reconstructing the New South

“Nashville’s going to be a progressive, diverse city and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Millennials moving from up north and foreigners immigrating from across the border have changed the city’s population and thus changed the city’s way of life – for the better. Nashville isn’t a Southern city anymore and is never going to be a Southern…
James Rutledge Roesch
October 1, 2018
Blog

What’s in a (Generational) Name?

The whole 20th century was a horrible time for the friends of tradition:  the mild rule of Europe’s Christian monarchs - Habsburgs, Romanovs, and others - was replaced by the ruthless Communists and later the despotism of the European Union, amongst other totalitarian ‘isms’; Mao overthrew Confucius in China; the natural rhythms of the agrarian life in many places of…
Walt Garlington
September 28, 2018
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Was Jesse James a Southern Robin Hood?

There is a dichotomy to how people view Jesse James. While some have viewed him as a murdering thief, others have argued that he was like a modern-day Robin Hood. To really understand the man requires an examination of his life and an honest analysis of the events that shaped him in Missouri. WHO WAS JESSE JAMES? Jesse James was…
Michael Martin
September 27, 2018
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Calhoun, Not Webster, Was Right

Writing about the “Great Triumvirate” of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun during the third Nullification controversy in America of 1828-1832, and in particular about the Webster-Hayne debate of 1830, the late Prof. Merrill D. Peterson made this telling point:  “In the course of answering Hayne point by point, Webster unfolded a  conception of the Union and the Constitution that stood in stark…
W. Kirk Wood
September 26, 2018
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Rhetoric, Reality, and the Late Unpleasantness

The 1850s is viewed by most scholars as the crucial decade of the sectional crisis that resulted in the War Between the States. The Great Triumvirate of John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster had passed from the scene.  These giants were replaced by lesser lights, and “the war came” as Mr. Lincoln claimed.  As historical explanations go, there…
John Devanny
September 24, 2018
Blog

First Kiss

Back in 1958, when I was fifteen years old, I made the most critical and important decision in my youthful life. I made the choice any all-American fifteen-year-old farm boy would have made. It was time for me to get my first kiss from a girl. You see, I had a crush on Mary Sue! Mary Sue and her brother…
Cary Lindsay
September 21, 2018
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Six Reasons to Love the Confederate Battle Flag

Some claim offense by the red white and blue image of the Confederate Battle flag and demand its immediate removal from public places. Others embrace it and fly it proudly. Why would in individual chose one side over the other? Here are some possible reasons. 1. Christianity A prominent feature of the Confederate Battle Flag is the “X” emblazoned boldly…
Lola Sanchez
September 20, 2018
Blog

Fighters

Editor's Note: The text is taken from Tom Skeyhill's, His Own Life Story And War Diary, a collection of interviews Skeyhill conducted with World War I Medal of Honor recipient Alvin C. York of Pall Mall, TN in the 1920s. I ain’t had much of the larnin’ that comes out of books. I’m a-trying to overcome that, but it ain’t…
Alvin C. York
September 19, 2018
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Fractured Federalism

Proposals to turn national programs over to the states are abound in Washington. The failure of federal programs over the past 60 years demonstrates that centralized solutions to local problems are ineffective. Federalism—the constitutional distribution of power between the states and national government— is once again on the agenda. Lessons regarding centralization have been learned the hard way. For example,…
William J. Watkins
September 17, 2018
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Myth of a Nation

Galactic Imperium News Service (GINS) Special Report: Will Democrats and Republicans in America finally set aside their differences and save the world through the imperial aspirations of big government, a robust Presidential ruler and visionary leaders like Abraham Lincoln? Such are the much heralded promises made surrounding Dinesh D’Lousa’s most recent unveiling of his controversial film, Myth of a Nation:…
Lewis Liberman
September 14, 2018
Blog

Mule Breeding

“Why don’t you get a tractor? You could get more done.” “Don’t need more done.” “But you could get it done faster.” “Faster than what?” “Faster than that mule goes.” The Yankee machine man really wanted to sell this down-south farm boy a tractor on account of the boy seemed to really be struggling with the mule (whom the boy…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 13, 2018
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When the Yankees Shut Down the First Amendment

Constitutional Violation: Amendment One: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. “Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, precious relics of…
John M. Taylor
September 12, 2018
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Was the Louisiana Purchase Constitutional?

When the evolution of presidential power in early American history is discussed, it is sometimes alleged that the Louisiana Purchase was a particularly unconstitutional act and an example of presidential malfeasance. According to this line of reasoning, President Thomas Jefferson expanded the bounds of the presidency and betrayed his republican inclinations by favoring desired outcomes over executive restraint. Those that…
Dave Benner
September 10, 2018
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When New Yorkers Cheered Dixie

On October 31, 1910—seven years after the Wright Brother’s first airplane flight of less than a minute—seventy-five thousand spectators gathered at Belmont Park to watch a day of competition among pioneering aviators. Events culminated with a thirty-six mile round trip race between Belmont Park to the Statue of Liberty. Only three aviators attempted the trip, which had about one million…
Philip Leigh
September 7, 2018
Blog

Calhoun and Modern Economics

Much of John C. Calhoun’s criticism stems from his 1837 speech in the Senate where he stated slavery was “a positive good.” This quote is often paraded as evidence of Southern racism and is used in attempts diminish Calhoun’s legacy. Quite possibly no other politician, aside from Lincoln, is so often misrepresented and misunderstood. The reason is that nowadays, we…
Michael Martin
September 6, 2018
Blog

Upholding Voter ID in the South

The punitive “preclearance” regime under the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) of 1965, imposed on seven “covered” southern states and a number of counties in two others, was essentially invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013.   The lifting of this incubus freed the previously “covered”  states and emboldened others to introduce legislation, notably a requirement…
Michael Arnheim
September 5, 2018
Blog

Nullification and Secession: Solutions or Talking Points?

Many of us in the South have maintained our faith in the Constitutional right of nullification and secession despite the efforts of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets. But is the talk about nullification and secession an earnest effort to put forward solutions to an out of control, Deep State, supreme federal government or is it merely an exercise in heady political…
James Ronald Kennedy
September 3, 2018
Blog

Fake News and Fake History

The “Fake News” appellation has been applied to just about every outlet that presents itself as something on the order of a news outlet, manned (yes--the word) by what are christened as journalists. The ill-use of the “J-Word” provides enough tidings for an essay a yard and a half long, but that is another write for another day (Charly Reese…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 31, 2018
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History as a (Leftist) Weapon

There is a tendency for each generation to assume its opinions are the ultimate correct opinions. But each generation's beliefs are typically modified by succeeding generations. Unfortunately, societal structures are sometimes altered based on contemporary notions that lose credence over time. This is the case with Social Justice Warriors in this generation. They demand that whatever doesn't suit present-day social…
Gail Jarvis
August 30, 2018
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Robert E. Lee vs. Twitter Historians

In June 2017, The Atlantic published a hit-piece on Robert E. Lee titled "The Myth of the Kindly General Lee." The article made the rounds on Leftist echo chamber social media accounts and quickly found favor with the popular Leftist Twitter historians, a collection of "distinguished professors," some without a substantial publication record, who like to trumpet their status as "actual…
Brion McClanahan
August 29, 2018
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Revisiting the “Cornerstone Speech”

Most mainstream historians point to the “Cornerstone” speech by Alexander Stephens as the clearest piece of evidence that slavery and white supremacy alone were the reasons for Southern secession. After all, most transcriptions show Stephens having stated that the Confederate government was founded on the “great physical, philosophical, and moral truth” of white superiority. A major quote that the historians…
Michael Martin
August 27, 2018
Blog

Lincoln on Mars

There is a 1909 “Lincoln penny” attached to the probe arm of Curiosity, a unit of currency, as it were, stuck to its palm. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem such a remarkable idea, but on the coin there are three inscriptions: “In God We Trust,” “Liberty,” and the date. That money should precede us in the exploration…
Malcolm McNeill
August 24, 2018
Blog

Silent Sam and Me

In September of 1961, I left my job at a basket factory in Wilmington, North Carolina and hitch-hiked up to Chapel Hill to become a student there. I followed in the path of UNC’s very first student, a boy named Hinton James, who had famously walked those roads up from Pender County back in 1789. As befits the first student…
Ben Jones
August 22, 2018
Blog

The Last republican President

Jimmy Carter may have been the last Jeffersonian to be president. A recent article in the Washington Post labeled him the "Un-Celebrity President." In either case, Carter is a reflection of a people and a place. He is the most authentic man elected president since Calvin Coolidge, and like Coolidge a true Christian gentleman. At the very minimum, Carter represented the…
Brion McClanahan
August 20, 2018
Blog

End of an Era

I was saddened to hear that Phil Harris had died. I knew the man. You might say we were old friends. As a matter of fact, we first met in 1954 in Monterey, California. I was attending the Army Language School, learning Russian, and Phil was playing in the Bing Crosby Pro-Am tournament. His professional partner was Dutch Harrison, a…
Thomas Landess
August 17, 2018
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The Sounds of the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia

Because we live in such a hurried time, we hear countless “noises” but have little time to appreciate actual “sounds.” Sound is a sensation that you can feel, not just something you can hear. To understand this idea, consider how some musicians have actually played concerts for the deaf, who cannot hear the music but still feel the vibrations. These…
Michael Martin
August 16, 2018
Blog

Anything Is Nice If It Come From Dixieland

In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the executive mansion. This was an unprecedented move. No African-American had ever been asked to dine with the president, and while neither Roosevelt or his staff said much of the event, it was surely done in the spirit of reconciliation and Roosevelt's desire to be "the people's…
Brion McClanahan
August 15, 2018
Blog

The Southern Muse of Ronnie Van Zant

The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970's were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about, their Southern identity. In fact, in the 1970's, it seemed to actually go a little beyond this. We shouldn’t push this too far, but in 1970’s America there seemed to…
Jeff Rogers
August 13, 2018
Blog

The Southern Saga

In the book The Mystery of the Wonder-Worker of Ostrog, the main character, Mladjen, a fictional representation of the modern Serb uprooted from his traditions by the lingering effects of Communism (who is very much akin to many of those inhabiting the New South, shorn of so much of their past by the all-too-present effects of Communism’s alter-ego, Capitalism), has…
Walt Garlington
August 10, 2018
Blog

Causes of the “Civil War”

In a PBS interview seven years ago historian and Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery,” she said before adding, . . . “when the various states announced their plans for secession, they uniformly said that the main motivating factor was…
Philip Leigh
August 9, 2018
Blog

Southward Returning/Sanctuary

Southward Returning To you, Virginia, Tennessee, To Georgia’s red roads, to the past That binds the delta and the sea, Your Southern sons return at last. No more the always going forth From ruin and our old regret, No more the sundering of faiths By some who taught us to forget. For us, the long remembering Of all our hearts…
Donald Davidson
August 8, 2018
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Lead Belly’s Southern Roots

Sometime around 1939, Lead Belly sang the song Daddy I’m Coming Back to You, which features the interesting lyrics: “I’m dreaming tonight of an old Southern town, the best friend I ever had...I’ve had my way, but now I’ll stay, I long for you and for home.” The song was a tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, who is often considered one…
Michael Martin
August 3, 2018
Blog

July 4 Comes and Goes, but Doesn’t Square with The Swamp

“Living in Washington, you can't take politics too seriously. I draw the line at honesty. I have no time for political hacks who say things they don't believe because they get paid to.” Tucker Carlson My opinion on Trump’s election is that those who voted for him (by states, as required) was because those people who voted knew, and know,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 2, 2018
Blog

Lost Cause Myth or Yankee Propaganda

Whether it's the Civil War, War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence or Lincoln's War, this extremely important period of American history continues to resonate powerfully over 150 years later. And with American Veterans monuments and artwork being censored and removed throughout the country, some might even say that Reconstruction and the fight over Jeffersonian ideals vs. Hamiltonianism never…
Lewis Liberman
August 1, 2018
Blog

Colonel Baldwin Meets Mr. Lincoln

This essay is Chapter 13 in Mr. Taylor's Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation (2016). “I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only way to save the country, but I see my mistake. I visited Washington a few weeks ago, and I saw the corruption of the present administration—and so long as Abraham…
John M. Taylor
July 30, 2018
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The Late Unpleasantness: Memory, Meaning and Understanding

The War Between the States is called by many names, the most genteel being “The Late Unpleasantness.”  The low country districts of South Carolina, including the environs of Charleston, is the geographic origin of this title for America’s most bloody and divisive conflict.  There is a deeper significance to the term than a polite and refined attempt to soften an…
John Devanny
July 27, 2018
Blog

The Dukes of “Hazzard”

Following the senseless racial murders at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015, Hollywood’s moonshining Duke boys from fictitious Hazzard County, and more particularly their 1969 Dodge Charger “General Lee,” replete with a Confederate Battle Flag painted on its roof, were placed on the growing list of Southern images to be erased from public view. Not only were scheduled reruns…
John Marquardt
July 26, 2018
Blog

Time for the South to Ban Affirmative Action

The leading authority on this aspect of affirmative action is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (2014), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (by a plurality) that it is permissible for a state to ban affirmative action.  The case arose out of a voter-approved initiative amending the constitution of Michigan that made affirmative action illegal in public education,…
Michael Arnheim
July 25, 2018
Blog

Nationally Acclaimed, Locally Detested

The Tricentennial celebration of New Orleans has stirred much interest into different facets of the city’s history. The search for the quintessential old New Orleans novel yields few results. The rich culture of New Orleans makes it one of America’s great cities. The Crescent City has served as muse for a litany of writers, accomplished and rising, yet it remains a near impossible place…
Abbeville Institute
July 23, 2018
Blog

The Southron’s Burden

Southerners confronted by Northerners touring our section are made aware of the difference in their speech from ours. They approach us speaking a form of English known outside the United States as "American." We of the South also like to consider ourselves American; however, it has long been an accepted belief that we Southerners have an accent. And not just…
Laurie Hibbett
July 20, 2018
Blog

Bushwacking the Bill of Rights

Last November, when President Bush issued an executive order establishing a system of military commissions to punish non-citizens, I asked myself, as no doubt countless other Americans did, “But what about Ex Parte Milligan (1866)?” Surely George W. and his Dad had studied this landmark Supreme Court decision in the course of those searching discussions of American history they must…
Ludwell H. Johnson
July 19, 2018
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The Americanization of James Iredell

James Iredell was born at Lewes, Sussex County, England. He was the eldest of the five sons of Francis Iredell, a Bristol merchant, and Margaret McCulloh Iredell, originally of Dublin. Young James came to the New World in 1768 because, after his father suffered a stroke in the mid-1760’s, it was necessary for the boy to leave school and accept…
M.E. Bradford
July 18, 2018
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Nathan Bedford Forrest and Southern Folkways

There are many examples of heroism that illustrate spiritedness in America’s history. Indeed, the American Revolution was won because of the indomitable spirit of the Patriots and a growing unwillingness of the British to put down the campaign for independence. The same spirit was present a century later during the War between the States. It is routinely acknowledged that Confederate…
Benjamin Alexander
July 16, 2018
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I Heard A Voice

They were standing at the ledge. Their view mirrored a panorama of buildings and smoke stacks. Great edifices, heaving asymmetrically, skewed with monster cylinders venting plumes of expended energy. The farms, the land, scarcely discernible, were hiding from the crowding machines in ambient spaces where life of life and lives of lives grappled and struggled for survival. The agrarians had…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 13, 2018
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Sam Houston and Texas Secession

"Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for ... So, I say, stand by the 'Constitution and the Union', and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according to the Constitution we are safe ..." (emphasis added) Letter from Sam Houston to Colonel A. Daly, August 14, 1860 The 1860 Election was still 3 months in the future and…
Vito Mussomeli
July 12, 2018
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Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South

In the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, after Atlanta has been burned and Scarlett O’Hara is fleeing to Tara, there is a scene where she arrives at neighboring Twelve Oaks Plantation to find it burned by Yankee troops and in ruins. The mansion’s once-grand double staircase is open to the night sky, and a cow appears…
Robin Spencer Lattimore
July 11, 2018
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Is Dixie A Captive Nation?

Is the South today a captive nation? Most Southerners would never consider the question—most likely because they would deem the issue to be absurd. But is it inane to ask such a question—is it forbidden in politically correct America to ask such a “confrontational” question? Conservatives would immediately dismiss such rhetorical questions as being unpatriotic or even treasonous—after all, everyone…
James Ronald Kennedy
July 9, 2018
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The Ministry of ‘Ordinary Means’ and the Kentucky Revivals of 1828

In his important 1994 work, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858, the Rev. Iain H. Murray examined the periods in American church history known as the first and second awakenings. Focusing mainly on the spiritual movements in the North, Murray argued persuasively that in general the First Awakening period of the mid-18th century was characterized…
Forrest L. Marion
July 6, 2018