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Republican Death Wish

As readers of this column well know, I have never really trusted the Republican Party. Even in 1962, when I first worked actively for a Republican candidate (the late Bill Workman), I saw the arrogance of the Party leadership—its love of money and power, its fine contempt for grassroots beliefs and sensibilities. Over the years I have come to understand…
Thomas Landess
April 6, 2017
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Is it 1982 Again?

Those who still think of conservatives as people who clip coupons are badly out of date. Among other things, such a stereotype betrays a lamentable ignorance of the Rockford Institute and its publications. Associated with Rockford College in Illinois, the Rockford Institute is dedicated to the proposition that moral and intellectual integrity are as important to the welfare of American…
Clyde Wilson
April 5, 2017
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On Liberty

Andy Jackson's famous toast, "The Union—it must and shall be preserved," is still recorded in most high school U.S. history books. Calhoun's once equally famous reply, "Next to our liberties, most dear," has slipped out of many recent editions. Like most of the South, Calhoun was on the losing side of the liberty versus union debate. After the Second War…
Thomas Fleming
April 3, 2017
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March Top Ten

Our top ten for March 2017: 1. The South's Gonna Do It Again by Tom Fleming 2. God, Gallup, and the Episcopalians by Cleanth Brooks 3. Southern Heritage Then and Now by Clyde Wilson 4. The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln by Tom Landess 5. A Disease of the Public Mind by Tom DiLorenzo 6. Jefferson and Slavery by Dave…
Brion McClanahan
April 3, 2017
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Why Lee? Why Acton?

A prevailing notion throughout the grand land of America is that the constant brouhaha down South among many of us regarding monuments and flags and statues is much ado. . .so forth and so on. . . and that neo confederates (so-called) are living in the past. While not calling myself a neo-confederate (paleo) I certainly live for the past.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
March 31, 2017
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Yankee Foreign Policy and the Cold War

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is rattling his sabers and threatening war against the United States. He blew up an American aircraft carrier in one propaganda video and has goaded the Trump administration in several other statements, ostensibly to create the image of manly firmness to his people. Obviously, high profile assassinations and executions along with staged videos showing Jong-un…
Brion McClanahan
March 30, 2017
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A Disease of the Public Mind

Historian and novelist Thomas Fleming is the author of more than fifty books, including two very good revisionist histories of the two world wars: The New Dealers’ War, and The Illusion of Victory in World War I. He has authored biographies of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and has written extensively about the founding generation, including his best-selling book, Liberty!…
Thomas DiLorenzo
March 29, 2017
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Jefferson and Slavery

Every so often, contemporary opponents of the Jeffersonian tradition make the argument that the legacy of the “Sage of Monticello” has been tainted by patent hypocrisy. The barrage of attacks Jefferson levied against slavery, they suggest, should be discounted on the grounds that he was a slave owner himself. Beyond this, some go as far as to claim that all…
Dave Benner
March 27, 2017
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Bernard Baruch: Son of the South

On the morning of July 5, 1880, Colonel E.B.C. Cash and Colonel William M. Shannon faced each other with pistols near Du Bose's bridge in Darlington County, S,C. At a word of command, Shannon fired quickly, splashing the muddy ground at the feet of his adversary. Colonel Cash, an experienced duelist with a sinister reputation, coolly took aim and fired.…
Charles Goolsby
March 24, 2017
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Manly Wade Wellman: The Voice of the Mountains

Manly Wade Wellman never penned an autobiography, despite the fact he published 500 stories and articles, won the World Fantasy Award and Edgar Allan Poe Award, and even edged out William Faulkner to win the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award in 1946. Yet, in one of his most famous short stories, Wellman did reveal how he must have seen himself…
Mike C. Tuggle
March 23, 2017
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Southern Heritage Then and Now

Order of the Southern Cross Banquet, Sons of Confederate Veterans National Reunion, Asheville, North Carolina, August 1, 2003 As the direct descendant of a private in the 42nd North Carolina and a sergeant in the 20th North Carolina, I am honoured to talk to a group descended from notable officers in our War of Independence--or the War to Prevent Southern…
Clyde Wilson
March 22, 2017
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Jefferson the Man

Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America. Kevin R. C. Gutzman (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2017). The challenge a historian faces when writing about Thomas Jefferson is which Jefferson does one choose?  The choices of “Jeffersons” include: Jefferson the radical, Jefferson the democrat, Jefferson the philosophe, Jefferson the scientist, Jefferson the statesman, and Jefferson the planter, just…
John Devanny
March 20, 2017
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Coit’s Calhoun

Want to learn about one of the greatest statesmen that the United States has ever produced?  Then get hold of John C. Calhoun: American Portrait by Margaret Coit. When this beautifully-written book received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1951, it was generally agreed that Coit had redeemed Calhoun as a major and admirable, even heroic, figure in American history.  Even…
Clyde Wilson
March 17, 2017
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Heil to the Chief

A Review of: The American Presidency: An Intellectual History by Forrest McDonald Kansas, 1994. Since the surrender at Appomattox, the South has been virtually excluded from two of the three branches of the national government. We can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Southerners who have been appointed to the Supreme Court or elected to the…
James McClellan
March 16, 2017
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The South’s Gonna Do It Again

A few days ago I ran into an old friend, an historian, who started in on the Partisan. "I've lived all my life in the South," he grumbled, "but I don't see what makes Southern life so wonderful that you and your friends want to impose it on the rest of the country." I did my best to reassure him…
Thomas Fleming
March 15, 2017
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The Timely Wisdom of Robert Lewis Dabney

Many of the destructive ideas and “isms” of our century in America had their roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a number of Southern writers and clergymen recognized their nature and warned against them. Among these men was Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) of Virginia, one of the South’s great Presbyterian thinkers.  He was the author of a number…
Karen Stokes
March 13, 2017
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H.L. Mencken and the South

Mencken's "Sahara of the Bozart" is one of the most famous essays of 20th century American let­ters. Since its appearance in 1919, the essay has become widely regarded as Mencken's "slur on the South," as his acid-laced repudiation of Southern culture (indeed his assertion that the South had no culture). "The Sahara of the Bozart" is a bit more complex…
Guy Story Brown
March 10, 2017
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Russell Kirk’s Southern Sensibilities: A Celebration

. .the South—alone among the civilized communities of the nine­teenth century—had hardihood sufficient for an appeal to arms against the iron new order which, a vague instinct whispered to Southerners, was inimical to the sort of humanity they knew." —Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind Certainly those south of the Mason-Dixon line expect little by way of understanding from non-natives, especially…
Alan Cornett
March 9, 2017
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The Bonus Bill Veto and the Southern Tradition

On March 3, 1817, President James Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill of 1817 – a plan that called for the federal construction of various roads, bridges, and canals throughout the country. In a letter to Congress, the president explained his rationale. Out of all historical writings on constitutional interpretation, I believe it stands today as one of the most important.…
Dave Benner
March 8, 2017
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Films from the South

Like it or not, movies are the main art form of our time, the story-telling medium that reaches the largest audience and captures the attention of us all, high and low, wise and foolish. It is also true that movies, like literature and architecture, reflect something of the soul of the particular nation that produces them. If so, we indeed…
Clyde Wilson
March 6, 2017
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The Sense of “Southernizing”

For as long as people have been writing about Southern character—and that's getting to be a pretty long time now—they've been inclined to mention Southern individualism. From Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Mar­quis de Chastellux to Charlie Daniels' "Long-haired Coun­try Boy," Southerners have been inclined to mention or exemplify this trait themselves. W.J. Cash has probably discussed it most thoroughly,…
John Shelton Reed
March 3, 2017
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New England Against America

The Fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, of genius, and that of no common order. Had he been even a Yankee, this genius would have been rendered immediately manifest to his countrymen, but unhappily (perhaps) he was a Southerner His book, therefore, depended entirely upon its own intrinsic value and resources, but with these it made its way…
Clyde Wilson
March 2, 2017
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February Top Ten

The top ten articles for February 2017: 1. Attack on Robert E. Lee is an Assault on American History Itself by Allan Brownfield 2. Presidents Quiz by Clyde Wilson 3. Washington vs. Lincoln by Brion McClanahan 4. Why the South Fought by Sheldon Vanuaken 5. Union or Else by Karen Stokes 6. The Black Confederate and the Teddy Bear by…
Brion McClanahan
March 1, 2017
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Era of the Sow’s Ear

A Review of My Silk Purse and Yours: The Publishing Scene and American Literary Art by George Garrett, University of Missouri Press, 1992 My Silk Purse is a collection of 36 of George Garrett's essays and re­views, largely on the American publishing and literary scene. The essays are rather tightly a unit, having an underlying philosophy which provides the measure…
James Everett Kibler
February 28, 2017
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Let the Bear Flag Go

A large portion of California wants to secede. That’s a good thing. American conservatives should not only applaud the move, they should be doing everything possible to help them find the door. Image a world without Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Diane Feinstein, or Kamala Harris; where Democrats would not start the presidential election cycle with nearly one quarter of the…
Brion McClanahan
February 27, 2017
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Southern Nullification and the Stamp Act

Every so often, a candid examination of current events makes famous incidents in American history altogether relevant again. In my mind no incident demonstrates this more than the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765. Few episodes in American history have so effectively proved how to confront and end the enactment of malignant and unconstitutional laws. In 1765, the standard American position…
Dave Benner
February 24, 2017
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Washington vs. Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln and George Washington stare silently at one another across the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington D.C., their paths inextricably linked by the historians who consider both to be the greatest presidents in American history. One is a monument, a testament to the man and his influence on American history, the other a memorial to the…
Brion McClanahan
February 22, 2017
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Explaining Trump to the Brits

Of the four Christmas cards I received from the UK this past December, three of them had the same request:  explain the Trump phenomenon. This is my reply: America has had a bloodless revolution.  It remains to be seen what will really happen once the New People take over Washington.  No doubt much can (and maybe will) go wrong, but…
Joscelyn Dunlop
February 21, 2017
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Finding the Swamp Fox

John Oller, The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution (Da Capo Press, 2016) Francis Marion is better remembered today than he used to be. There was a time, however, when, outside of his native South Carolina, hardly anyone without a good knowledge of the Southern theatre of the American Revolution would have heard of him. And there…
Jeff Rogers
February 20, 2017
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Union or Else

In 1864, General William T. Sherman wrote to a fellow Union officer that the “false political doctrine that any and every people have a right to self-government” was the cause of the war that had been raging in America since 1861. The general was forgetting, or ignoring, that this very “doctrine” had led the American colonists to declare their independence…
Karen Stokes
February 17, 2017
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The Burning of Atlanta

I don’t watch sports as I once did. Growing up down South some of my fondest memories were of the World Series, and the radio connection through Al Helfer, Red Barber or Mel Allen. I can still hear those voices. I know there are fewer and fewer of us who recall those moments, but those still around recognize my sentiments.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
February 16, 2017
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Yale’s Folly

By H. Lee Cheek, Jr. and Sean Busick The effort to rename Calhoun College at Yale University has won the day.  After initially deciding not to rename Calhoun College last year, a special presidentially-appointed taskforce recommended the renaming, guided by set of new renaming criteria.  Unfortunately, Calhoun College is no more. Of course, colleges and universities have the option to…
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
February 15, 2017
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Attack on Robert E. Lee is an Assault on American History Itself

Early in February, the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia voted 3-2 to remove a bronze equestrian monument to Robert E. Lee that stands in a downtown park named in his honor. Vice Mayor Wes Belamy, the council's only African American member, led the effort to remove the statue. In the end, this vote may be largely symbolic. Those opposed to…
Allan Brownfield
February 14, 2017
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The Black Confederate and the Teddy Bear

Most people have never heard of Holt Collier - and those who have heard of the "Teddy Bear" may be surprised to learn about his history. Collier was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1848. By his 15th birthday, he had become an expert on wildlife in the Mississippi Delta and was known as one to of the best bear…
Lunelle McCallister
February 10, 2017
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A Man’s Interest: Sports and the South

I am a Georgian and a University of Georgia alumni. I have been a fan of all the Atlanta sports franchises since I was a kid, and I was a huge fan of the Georgia Bulldogs even before I went there. Needless to say, I was very disappointed by the outcome of the Super Bowl, and since Atlanta/Georgia is a…
Dan E. Phillips
February 9, 2017
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The Continuing Relevance of Calhoun’s Wisdom

I am always glad to talk about my favourite subject–-John C. Calhoun. I think it will become apparent that what he has to say has some relevance to our topic “Building Communities of Resistance”—and perhaps in surprising ways that have little to do with the familiar lessons of State rights and nullification. By the way, despite what you may hear…
Clyde Wilson
February 8, 2017
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Tidewater Wit and Wisdom

An honest man can never be outdone in courtesy. A sensual life is a miserable life. The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us. -Taken from Seneca’s Dialogues, a primer for young men in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland   Fear God. Reverence the parents. Imitate not the wicked. Boast not in discourse of thy wit…
John Devanny
February 6, 2017
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The Southern Yankee

Beyond the New England slave trade which populated the American South with millions of enslaved Africans, there were many Yankees who moved South before 1861 to engage in agriculture and the holding of slaves.  And they had a Southern counterpart who learned the Yankee’s  close-fisted ways.  During the War and after Northern bayonets had conquered Southern regions, many industrious and profit-minded Yankees…
Bernard Thuersam
February 2, 2017
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January Top Ten

The top ten articles for January 2017. 1. Ashley Judd Gets Nasty by Brion McClanahan 2. Old Western Man: C.S. Lewis and the Old South by Sheldon Vanauken 3. The Dixie Curse by Paul Yarbrough 4. Robert E. Lee, Southern Heritage, Media Bias, and Al Sharpton by Gail Jarvis 5. Robert E. Lee: American Hero by Brion McClanahan 6. Stonewall…
Brion McClanahan
February 1, 2017
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Never the North, Always the South

"I think every heritage has things that are good about it, every heritage has things that are harmful about it," replied Representative Tom Price recently to a question from Senator Tim Kaine. "And I'm happy to answer the specific question. I think slavery was an abomination." Price was being interviewed for Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 31, 2017
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Calexit: California, Adios!

It seems that out in California an impressively large number of people are petitioning for a referendum on secession.  While I don’t think much of their motive, I say more power to them. The motivation is, of course, fear by California leftists and foreigners that the 2016 federal election has deprived them of the excessive influence they have exercised over…
Clyde Wilson
January 30, 2017
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My Fantasy Visit with Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty once said that "Each writer must find out for himself, I imagine, on what strange basis he lives with his own stories." This has always struck me as a particularly profound observation about not only the writer's life, but "life" in general, the "stories" we all live. Eudora Welty. One of America's all-time great writers. One of America's…
Wayne Hogan
January 26, 2017
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A Bow to the Ladies

A review of Understanding Mary Lee Settle, by George Garrett, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1988, 187 pages. One useful way to distinguish between types of novelists is to characterize them as either intensive or extensive. An intensive novel, much the more com­mon variety in modern times, deals with a small segment of individual experi­ence and consciousness, wringing from…
Clyde Wilson
January 25, 2017
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Ashley Judd Gets Nasty

  “Treat a woman like a lady, And your lady like a queen….” Charlie Daniels Ashley Judd’s recitation of “I’m a Nasty Woman” at the “women’s” march on Washington D.C. splashed across every media outlet in America. Judd proudly proclaimed to be a feminist and then launched into a verbal diatribe against “racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault,…
Brion McClanahan
January 23, 2017
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The Dixie Curse

In the tradition of all authority to trample love and devotion, an outsider (or perhaps a group of) has decided to cut into the heart of a people’s birthright. Ross Bjork, University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) athletic director has in all his Kansas wisdom arbitrarily and highhandedly told the world that no renditions of the grand old song, “Dixie,” will…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 20, 2017
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Robert E. Lee: American Hero

Several years ago, leftist blowhard Richard Cohen at the Washington Post wrote that Robert E. Lee “deserves no honor — no college, no highway, no high school. In the awful war (620,000 dead) that began 150 years ago this month, he fought on the wrong side for the wrong cause. It’s time for Virginia and the South to honor the…
Brion McClanahan
January 19, 2017
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Recovering Southern History

Every historian has a viewpoint, shaped by his own background, values, and perception of the present. The relationship between background and viewpoint is not necessarily simple. As in the case of Supreme Court nominees, one cannot always predict in advance in what direction a historians background, modified by research and thought, will lead. At any rate, we properly measure a…
Clyde Wilson
January 18, 2017
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This is Mosby

V.P. Hughes, A Thousand Points of Truth: The History and Humanity of Colonel John Singleton Mosby in Newsprint (XLIBRIS, 2016). Given command over a semi-independent unit of partisan rangers in the Army of Northern Virginia, a dashing young Confederate major led a cavalry raid at the Fairfax county courthouse, deep behind Federal lines. With just a handful of men and…
James Rutledge Roesch
January 16, 2017
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The Window on the West

Editor's note: This piece was published less than ten years (1983) before the end of communist control of Romania. Bradford's assessment of the Romanian people well applies to the South, a region that had been defeated and "reconstructed" but still retained much of its cultural vibrancy, albeit suppressed and ridiculed by the political class. It also serves as a stark…
M.E. Bradford
January 13, 2017
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Papa Daws

Three long ringing signals from I the driver's horn, and the hunt was over. I quit my stand and met Dad on the road back of our line. We had both seen a doe that had kept us on our toes for a while, but otherwise, the drive had been uneventful. We fell quiet and listened. Then Dad asked if…
Henry D. Boykin II
January 12, 2017
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Differences

How much better off the American people would be if they could learn the difference between: *investors and speculators *the Constitution ratified by the people of the States and the one promulgated by federal judges *education and training *necessary taxation and an oppressive burden *national defense and foreign interventionism *law enforcement and war *justifiable borrowing and destructive, irresponsible debt *entertainment…
Clyde Wilson
January 11, 2017
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Dan Sickles and the First Presidential Cover-Up

In our time, we think we know a lot about presidential cover-ups. There was Nixon's Watergate, of course. Some of us remember Lyndon Johnson's problems with Bobby Baker. And President Kennedy had his secret girlfriends. All of these, however, are minor matters compared to the granddaddy of them all, the biggest presidential cover-up in American history, the murder of Barton…
William H. Hunter
January 9, 2017
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Things as They Are

William S. Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court (The University of Alabama Press, 2016). Sometimes a professional historian gets it right. William Belko has produced a quality tome that both expands and enhances our understanding of American history. While most academics write about the same subjects and regurgitate fashionable theories with “new”…
Brion McClanahan
January 6, 2017
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A State of Mind

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, which began with the epic demand, “ That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”   After a month of heated deliberation, the Congress finally adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence which…
John Marquardt
January 5, 2017
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Tar Heel’s Revenge

  An article by a Canadian historian in a recent issue of the North Carolina Historical Review lays to rest an old canard—the charge that during the War for Southern Independence North Carolina soldiers were notable for desertion. After an exhaustive study of all available records, Professor Richard Reid concluded that it simply is not so. North Carolina had more…
Clyde Wilson
January 4, 2017
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See ya–Signed C.S.A.

A fellow by the name of Marcus Ruiz Evans was on Fox’s Tucker Carlson program recently. He offered his stance on secession vis-à-vis California’s consideration. His position stood apropos for the Golden Bears because the Supreme Court in its Texas vs White decision of 1869 had offered a loophole bearing on the people’s consent to secede. This bears, of course,…
Paul H. Yarbrough
January 2, 2017
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The Year in Review

Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina told a friend in 1980 that, "I'm bound to confess that President Carter has instilled some foreboding in prospect to the outcome of the election....As I interpret his campaign sermon, President Carter said states' rights had become as obscene as any four-letter word, and Ronald Reagan had proved his unfitness for the presidency by telling…
Brion McClanahan
December 30, 2016
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When the South Was America 1607-1861

Dr. Donald Livingston on "When the South Was America, 1607-1861" at the 2016 Abbeville Institute Summer School on "The Southern Tradition and the Renewal of America," June 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW4M46JXXzE
Donald Livingston
December 27, 2016
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Stereotyping the South Up North

The 1861-65 war destroyed the American South’s economic, legal, political and social systems, and afterward ruled the region with proconsuls dispatched from Washington. From this aftermath of war came the invented view of the desolated South – a section known in antebellum times for providing the majority of presidents and exemplary political thinkers — as an uncouth and backward region…
Bernard Thuersam
December 22, 2016
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I Am So Old I Can Remember When….

—there was no television; and then when there was one station on two hours a day. —newspapers were locally owned, had lots of locally written literate material, and even had intelligent independent commentary on the editorial page. —a male American seen carrying an umbrella would have been ridiculed and probably beat up. —most people had not been up in an…
Clyde Wilson
December 20, 2016
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Richard Taylor

General Richard Taylor was only son of President Zachary Taylor. His father and mother were natives of Virginia, and his grand father, also a Virginian, commanded a brigade of Virginia troops in the battle of Brandywine. The hereditary residence of the family was in Orange county, Virginia. President Taylor's eldest daughter married Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, the late President of the…
Dabney H. Maury
December 16, 2016
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A Southern Saint

William Porcher DuBose of South Carolina is not well known today, but in the early 20th century, he achieved fame in America and abroad as an Episcopal theologian and author. He was born in Winnsboro, S.C., in 1836, and his father, a wealthy, well-educated planter, saw to it that his intellectually gifted son received a fine education. After attending schools…
Karen Stokes
December 15, 2016
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Harvard Confederates

A review of Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men Who Fought for the South, By Helen P. Trimpi, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 380 pp. Someone, perhaps it was Thomas Carlyle, wrote that “History is the essence of innumerable biographies.” While that description does not cover all the duty of historianship, it is true in an important sense. History that becomes too…
Clyde Wilson
December 14, 2016
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Southern Culture: Food

Food is one of the more tangible and recognizable elements of Southern culture and one that is worth exploring. It serves as a bridge between the tables of the Old South and the New. It was once said that Virginians dined, Yankees just ate. This was due in large part to the old Cavalier practice of multi-course meals that could…
Brion McClanahan
December 13, 2016
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They Came From the East

 It is generally thought that when the earliest Homo sapiens arrived on the scene in Africa and Asia less than a hundred-thousand years ago, all of North and South America was devoid of human habitation.  Most in the scientific community also contend that it was no more than twenty to thirty-thousand years ago, as the glaciers from the last Ice Age…
John Marquardt
December 9, 2016
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Liberal and Conservative

The terms “liberal” and “conservative” were usable signs in a society in which the state was governed by politics. They are of little use the in 21st century United States because “politics” no longer plays any significant role in governance. In a dynamic and free republican society, citizens of similar ideas, values, and interests, and even inherited allegiances and inclinations,…
Clyde Wilson
December 8, 2016
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Grant Never Faced Stonewall Jackson

Grant’s relentless and costly attacks on General Lee in Virginia earned him the title of “Butcher” among his own troops and was kept in command by Lincoln who was unbothered by the vast casualty numbers amassed by Grant. He quickly saw that following the Radicals after his master’s assassination was the proper path, and he was rewarded with election to…
Bernard Thuersam
December 7, 2016
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“Rational People” Now Want Secession

 According to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, secession is now being advocated by "rational people, not the fringe."This is an insult to all rational people.Rational people for generations have supported secession, including every scholar at the Abbeville Institute. But now that idiot Leftists in California, Oregon, and Washington are for it, somehow secession has become "rational."I think George Washington, Thomas…
Brion McClanahan
December 7, 2016
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Censoring Jefferson to Safeguard Ignorance

This piece was originally published in the UVA Cavalier Daily.At the risk of offending 469 UVA faculty colleagues and students who protest President Sullivan’s practice of quoting UVA founder Thomas Jefferson “in light of Jefferson’s owning of slaves and other racist views” (“Professors ask Sullivan to stop quoting Jefferson,” Cavalier Daily, Nov. 13), I would submit another Jefferson quote: “This institution…
Robert F. Turner
December 2, 2016
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Save Federalism, Save the Electoral College

Discussing immigration and sanctuary cities, Bill O'Reilly began speaking of the coming clash of two "sovereignties", the States individually and the national government, but never got to finish his sentence. Speaker Gingrich interrupted to say, "there is one sovereignty" in America and that's the national government. "The Civil War settled the sovereignty question." Unfortunately, the Speaker is correct. We need…
Vito Mussomeli
December 1, 2016
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More of the Way We Are Now

Show me a nasty feminist and I will show you a little girl with a disappointing father.The Transportation Safety Administration confiscated my two-inch cigar cutter at the airport the other day. An acquaintance got on the plane with his pocket-knife. It’s all part of the vital global war on terror.Congress has just voted $8 billion for “improved port security.” Contractors…
Clyde Wilson
November 30, 2016
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Home Free

One of my favorite authors, James Everett Kibler, has the consummate perception of localism; the single thing that I believe even Yankees have, though many act as if they don’t understand its basic concept. Fact is, many Southerners have lost its influence as many have left home to rally ‘round the cable-news actors and Washingtonian legerdemain handymen.I read Our Fathers’…
Paul H. Yarbrough
November 29, 2016
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Trump Wins–Secession Back in Style

 Only days after Donald Trump’s victory there were already calls for secession arising from liberal controlled states of California and Oregon. While such calls may be an over-reaction, it does help to make a point that has been urged from the very beginning of our original Republic of Republics.Patrick Henry warned the people of Virginia about the dangers of entering…
James Ronald Kennedy
November 22, 2016
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Why the Electoral College?

For the second time in the last 16 years it seems that we have a new President who did not win the national popular vote, although there are those who contend that once all the votes are counted, Trump could very well come out on top. But whether that’s the case or not the discussions have begun, especially by Democrats,…
Ryan Walters
November 18, 2016
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The Media’s Failed “Southern Strategy”

Source: Washington Post After its usual clichéd arguments weren't lessening Trump's momentum, the mainstream media tried to associate his supporters with its negative caricature of Southerners. The mainstream media has had success in this "Southern strategy" in the past, so it thought it could smear Donald Trump by associating him with its version of a maleovent South. But this time it…
Gail Jarvis
November 17, 2016
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Cherry Picking James Madison

Legal “scholar” Akil Reed Amar made waves recently by arguing that a single comment from James Madison proves that the Electoral College had an intrinsic pro-slavery bent and was designed to perpetuate the institution. According to Amar, Madison suggested that Virginia’s stature would be hindered by a national popular vote for president, an idea proposed in the Philadelphia Convention by…
Dave Benner
November 15, 2016
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Rebel Redux

Rumblings of open rebellion were in the air . . . a certain group within the state had felt for some time that their state’s wealth and resources were being unfairly used by the federal government to subsidize other areas of the nation.  Moreover, it was deemed that the social values of these other areas were in direct conflict with…
John Marquardt
November 14, 2016
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Why No Southern Nationalism?

In the Partisan's last issue, I raised the question of why the United States has not been troubled in this century by regional nationalisms of the sort that are currently disturbing most other industrialized countries. In particular, I asked, why has there not been a serious version of Southern nationalism? Answering my own question, I suggested that (1) the outcome…
John Shelton Reed
November 11, 2016
Blog

#Calexit

Donald Trump won and California wants to secede. Mises Institute President Jeff Deist tweeted during the election: "look for the Dems to discover the virtues of secession, nullification, and states rights." It didn't take long for leftists to realize the value of secession. Within hours of Trump's stunning victory (a victory yours truly predicted as early as February this year),…
Brion McClanahan
November 10, 2016
Blog

Sherman’s March

The History Channel’s recent presentation of "Sherman’s March" has been rightly drawing a lot of criticism from those of us who care about such things. In theory, historical events should become clearer as time passes and the controversies they involved grow less heated. But that is not the case in regard to the War to Prevent Southern Independence—because the myth…
Clyde Wilson
November 9, 2016
Blog

Supping with Norman Lear

Editor's note: Norman Lear's People for the American Way recently made a lot of noise about Donald Trump's "hate speech." Not much has changed in twenty years. This piece was originally published in in First Quarter, 1995 issue of Southern Partisan magazine. The Associated Press reports that 17 groups, all combatants in the "culture war," have come together and agreed…
Thomas Landess
November 7, 2016
Blog

October Top Ten

Our top ten pieces for October 2016. If you have not read them yet, you should. If you have, read 'em again. 1. Why The War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 2. John C. Calhoun: Anti-Imperialist by Clyde Wilson 3. Ortho-Dixie: Orthodox Christianity and Southern Identity by Stephen Borthwick 4. It Probably Won't End Well by Paul Yarbrough…
Brion McClanahan
November 5, 2016
Blog

Lewis Grizzard: A Personal Remembrance

Much has been written about Lewis Grizzard by those who knew him better in his productive years. This is about Lewis when the world was young and some thoughts about the last mile. I first met him in 1964 when we were both wannabe writers, the sons of highly decorated World War II veterans who grew up in towns just…
Rick Cartledge
November 4, 2016
Blog

The Oregon Question

But I oppose war, not simply on the patriotic ground of a citizen looking to the freedom and prosperity of his own country, but on still broader grounds, as a friend of improvement, civilization and progress. Viewed in reference to them, at no period has it ever been so desirable to preserve the general peace which now blesses the world.…
John C. Calhoun
November 3, 2016
Blog

Jacobin Yankees

Martin Scorcese, in an interview, candidly described his new film, "Gangs of New York," as an "opera." He had been asked whether the events portrayed were true to history. I took his reply to mean that the events of the movie were selected and organized for dramatic emphasis and were not to be taken as literal factual record. And, indeed,…
Clyde Wilson
November 2, 2016
Blog

The Other William C. Falkner

The date was Tuesday, November 5th . . . the year was 1889 . . . federal and local elections were being held in twenty states throughout America.  In addition to the elections in Virginia that day, the newly launched steamer “New York” was setting out on her trial run from Norfolk.  Further south, after winning a seat in the…
John Marquardt
November 1, 2016
Blog

Charlie Daniels and the CDB

Charlie Daniels turns 80 today. He is still producing top quality music and is still an iconic symbol of the South and the Southern musical tradition. Most people are familiar with his hits--"The South's Gonna Do It Again," "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," and "Long Haired Country Boy"--but these tunes are a conspicuous though minimal part of a career that spans five…
Brion McClanahan
October 28, 2016
Blog

An Agrarian-Style Economic Self Defense Plan

This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. It occurred to me today that one of the nice things about not having much money is that I don’t have to worry about loosing it in the stock market. But I realize full well that a falling stock market and an overall failing economy will take its toll on me…
Herrick Kimball
October 27, 2016
Blog

Lincoln Follies

A few of us now decrepit pre-Reagan “conservatives” can remember the brief flicker of hope of saving the republic that we had around 1980. Around about that time we were heartened by the founding of the Washington Times, which, it was thought, might become an effective foe of the mainstream media—despite its connection with the vile Moonie cult. Like everything…
Clyde Wilson
October 26, 2016
Blog

Jack Hinson’s One Man War

Jack Hinson’s One-Man War by Tom C. McKenney; ISBN: 978-1-58980-640-5, Pelican, January 27, 2009, 400 pages. Beheading his sons and impaling their heads on the gateposts of his home – these were the acts of the Yankee liberators of northern Tennessee that somehow upset the ungrateful Jack Hinson in the autumn of 1862. Jack Hinson was not a firebrand or…
Terry Hulsey
October 24, 2016
Blog

Podcast Episode 47

The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Oct 17-21, 2016. Topics: Republican Party, Southern Political Tradition, Jefferson, Conservatism, George W. Bush, Southern Religion https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-47
Brion McClanahan
October 23, 2016
Blog

Claude Kitchin

This piece was originally published at the North Carolina History Project and is reprinted by permission. Claude Kitchin represented North Carolina in the U.S. House during the early 20th century and served as Speaker of the House during the First World War. Though he was a Democrat, he is remembered for risking his political career to oppose President Woodrow Wilson…
Richard M. Gamble
October 21, 2016
Blog

Ortho Dixie: Orthodox Christianity and Southern Identity

Anyone who has grown up in the melting pot of immigrant religiosity of the industrial northeast has a very specific vision of Southern religiosity – evangelical, provincial, low-church, and rabidly anti-Catholic, among other things. Even growing up in a household sympathetic to the South, I had plenty of condescending ignorance about the way Southrons practiced their religion. Grab a Bible,…
Stephen Borthwick
October 20, 2016
Blog

Goodbye, George

An American president can wreck his country and blow up the world, but he cannot recreate either of them. ---Chilton Williamson A recent book on the George W. Bush presidency is called A Tragic Legacy. But tragedy suggests the fall of something high and noble. There never has been anything high and noble about Bush. His career began as low…
Clyde Wilson
October 19, 2016
Blog

It Probably Won’t End Well

Kurt Schlichter wrote an interesting article on Town Hall recently entitled Liberal Attempts to Silence Dissenters Will Not End Well. I thoroughly enjoyed (and agreed with) it. There was a place for comments at the bottom and I toyed with the thought of inserting my comment which would have entailed or encapsulated the words of Lord Acton and/or Robert E.…
Paul H. Yarbrough
October 17, 2016
Blog

Southern Humor

If I may strain a point and introduce among my "Southern Humorists" a man who evinced this vein solely through his conversation, I will make mention of the late Bishop Richard Wilmer, a native of Virginia, though Bishop of Alabama. His vein of wit and humor was fully equal to that of Sidney Smith, and I have frequently regretted that…
Mary Washington
October 14, 2016
Blog

Nullification vs. Secession?

On the 21st of this June, Americans celebrated the 228th anniversary of the nation’s Constitution, making it the world’s oldest existing governing body of laws. It was then that our founding fathers met in their effort to form a union more perfect than the one under which the thirteen sovereign states had been operating since 1781, the original Articles of…
John Marquardt
October 13, 2016
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Review: Reinventing the South: Versions of a Literary Region, by Mark Royden Winchell

Chronicle’s most distinguished contributing editor, can be relied upon, always, to tell it like it is. He is doing just that when he writes in a  blurb to Reinventing the South:“these essays are splendidly written—mercifully free of contemporary critical jargon and easily accessible to the good and serious reader.”  And he amplifies this description of Professor Winchell's work with “high intelligence…
Clyde Wilson
October 12, 2016
Blog

Reestablishing the Family Economy: A Biblical Imperative Part 3

Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. Part I and Part II Back in August of last year my oldest son was telling me about the Duck Dynasty television show. He said he would like to read Phil Robertson’s book, Happy, Happy, Happy, and suggested that I could get him a copy for Christmas. I said I might do that, and ordered…
Herrick Kimball
October 10, 2016
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Arlington–A Milestone in History

By Dr. Simon Baruch From The New York Sun: Amid the silent heroes who rest in honored graves on beautiful Arlington's historic summit was enacted on November 12, 1912, a scene the grandeur of which will illumine the pages of history for all time, modest though it seem among contemporary events. On that day was laid the foundation of a…
Simon Baruch
October 7, 2016
Blog

If This Be Treason….

The polls show that 33 per cent of the public still gives Dubya Bush a favourable approval rating.  Who could these people be? Some of them, no doubt, are well-meaning dupes in the early stages of Alzheimers. But there is a hard core of latent fascism out there. Though they deviously misuse the idea to slander opposition, leftists are not…
Clyde Wilson
October 4, 2016
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Reestablishing the Family Economy: A Biblical Imperative Part 2

Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. We are not called to be slaves. In My Previous Blog Post I wrote about the family economy and posted Returning To The Family Economy, a chapter from a book I wrote in 2005. My premise is, as the title of this essay states, that a family economy is the biblical imperative. An “imperative” is an essential or urgent…
Herrick Kimball
October 3, 2016
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September Top Ten

The top ten for September 2016. 1. Decentralization for Humanity's Sake by Brion McClanahan 2. Secession Without Civil War by Philip Leigh 3. The South as an Independent Nation by William Cawthon 4. Rethinking the War for the 21st Century by Clyde Wilson 5. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by James Rutledge Roesch 6. Deep Down…
Brion McClanahan
October 1, 2016
Blog

Up, Maybe, From Liberalism

When I was active in College Democrats at my small state college, in the early 2000s, we didn’t quite fancy ourselves revolutionaries. Middle class origins were universal; collared shirts were frequent; raised fists were nonexistent. Many of our meetings and events were, like so much else in college, little more than excuses to drink beer. We didn’t aspire to bring…
R.M. Stangler
September 30, 2016
Blog

Union Leagues

The Union League is one of the most cryptic of Civil War and Reconstruction era topics even though it was a wellspring of tyranny. Together with the Loyal League identical twin, Southern chapters prompted the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to evolve from an obscure social club into a violent anti-Republican, and therefore anti-black, vigilante group. The first Union Leagues lodges were formed in…
Philip Leigh
September 29, 2016
Blog

Allegiances

William Faulkner of Mississippi was the greatest writer produced by the United States in the 20th century.  His craft was fiction, but like any great writer he was a better historian and  philosopher  than  most  who  wear  those  labels .  I  was  reminded  of a nonfiction piece of Faulkner’s recently when the hoopla erupted about some of the pampered and…
Clyde Wilson
September 28, 2016
Blog

No Confederacy, No Republicans, But a Pale Horse

The Republican party is no more republican then the Democratic party is democratic. Both are oligarchies promoting their namesakes as if those in charge (power) have the interests of the people firmly in their hearts (with their pocketbooks in their hands). They are both corrupt, though the Democrats have taken fraud and debasement to levels (down) not seen since Thaddeus…
Paul H. Yarbrough
September 26, 2016
Blog

Washington’s Rye

Every student of history knows at least a brief sketch of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, but most people don't realize that Alexander Hamilton's excise tax on distilled spirits hit George Washington in the wallet as well, albeit years after the rebellion. He owned the largest distillery in Northern Virginia from 1797-1799 and shipped hundreds of gallons of moonshine to Alexandria during the…
Brion McClanahan
September 23, 2016
Blog

Reestablishing a Family Economy: A Biblical Imperative, Part I

This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. In my previous blog post I mentioned Allan C. Carlson’s soon-to-be-published book, The Natural Family Where It Belongs: New Agrarian Essays, and Generations With Vision, a ministry that is working to bring about the reformation of strong Christian families by casting a vision for the establishment of vibrant family economies. The…
Herrick Kimball
September 20, 2016
Blog

Deep Down in the South

The late 1970s represented the heyday of popular Southern music. Southern rock and "outlaw country" dominated the airwaves. It was chic to say "ya'll," even in Boston, and with the election of Jimmy Carter, it really seemed the "South was gonna' do it again." It wouldn't last. During an interview at Capricorn Studios in Macon, GA one afternoon, Charlie Daniels spit into his cup and…
Brion McClanahan
September 16, 2016
Blog

A Faithful, Southern Fisherman

I was a faithful, Southern fisherman even in New England exile. "Oh, these small mouth bass are fine," I'd tell them, "but when I was a kid back home in Tennessee," blah, blah, blah. "Heck, we'd have won that War if our boys weren't off fishing all the time." I told tales of smiling Southern bass jumping into the boat…
Ted Roberts
September 15, 2016
Blog

The Great Divide–And Secession?

Of all the phenomena the 2016 election year has demonstrated, none is greater than the proof that this nation is deeply and probably irretrievably split into two political camps with very, very little in common. It is more than blue states and red states, it goes deeper: it is truth, jobs, security, and intelligence on one side and lies, coddling…
Kirkpatrick Sale
September 12, 2016
Blog

Decentralization For Humanity’s Sake

The Roman historian Titus Livius once called Rome “the greatest nation in the world.”  He wrote those words in a time of moral and political decline, and Livy was hoping by outlining the greatness of the once proud republic, the Roman people would arrest the decline and embrace the principles that had made Rome great.  Livy argued that without understanding…
Brion McClanahan
September 9, 2016
Blog

Essential Reading: The Confederate Constitution of 1861

This review was first printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1995. Marshall DeRosa: The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism (University of Missouri Press, 1991). Let there be no doubt, my friends. Marshall DeRosa addresses a serious and important issue. He claims the struggle for American independence was renewed and, in a sense, reached a peak during…
Robert Martin Schaefer
September 8, 2016
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Call Me Simple with Strange Words for Strange Days

Call me simple... But I don’t understand: Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem. Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber. Why the government spends billions on “intelligence” and defense but could not prevent 9/11. Why pointless filthy language has taken over in popular…
Clyde Wilson
September 7, 2016
Blog

Freedom and More Freedom

Several years ago a friend of mine, head of the Education Department at a Southern university, came reeling back from a visit to New York City schools, eyes glazed. It seems that she had seen two things while on her trip that still haunted her memory. First she discovered teachers up there who were actually conducting their classes from cages…
Thomas Landess
September 5, 2016
Blog

Secession Without Civil War

Since most modern historians agree that the South seceded to protect slavery they often conclude that the Civil War was "all about" slavery. The inference, however, overlooks the possibility that the Southern states could have been allowed to depart in peace. Within the lifetimes of most readers, for example, the Soviet Union peacefully disintegrated into its constituent countries as did…
Philip Leigh
September 2, 2016
Blog

August Top Ten

The top ten articles for August 2016: 1. Debunking the Debunking: Gary Ross and His "Myths of the Civil War" by Ryan Walters 2. American Culture: Massachusetts or Virginia by Clyde Wilson 3. NASCAR's Slow Ride to Nowhere by Mike Tuggle 4. Was the Civil War About Slavery? by Dave Benner 5. Reflections of a Ghost: An Agrarian View After…
Brion McClanahan
September 1, 2016
Blog

More Deja Vu, circa the George W. Bush Years

Twenty-three Republican Senators joined a large majority of Democrats to vote for the Bush bill to amnesty millions of present and future illegal aliens. The bill passed the Senate 62–36. The Republican Senators supporting amnesty and future immigration increases were from Maine (2), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio (2), Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona,…
Clyde Wilson
August 31, 2016
Blog

Slavery in Pennsylvania

Indentured servitude is one of the more neglected elements of American labor history. Most historians gloss over the subject in route to African slavery. This is largely due to the impact of long standing issues of race in America, but Southerners understood Northern complicity in the institution of African slavery and often pointed to Northern hypocrisy in regard to the…
Brion McClanahan
August 29, 2016
Blog

From Monument to Cenotaph

In 1896 at the Reunion of United Confederate Veterans in New Orleans, Gen. Steven Dill Lee, the Commander of organization delivered his famous ‘charge’ speech where he laid out the goals of the UDC and the SCV, and also the goals for the surviving veterans. The first item on his list was the erection of public monuments to the Confederate…
Lunelle McCallister
August 26, 2016
Blog

South of New York with Charley and Me

Southerners (and there are many who still proudly spell that with a capital “S” even if positioned in the middle of a sentence; we don’t simply think we are that because we live farther south of Canada than the masses in New York et al.) remain steadfast when in a fight, sometimes to the point of leading, like the great…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 25, 2016
Blog

Filmlog: Three for the Resistance

World War II has provided a vast amount of material for cinema in Europe, America, and Japan. Some if this is superb. Much of it is hokey entertainment and propaganda. We perhaps did not realise how hokey until the horrors of D-Day were portrayed in Saving Private Ryan. That useful dose of realism deserves to be set off against Stephen…
Clyde Wilson
August 24, 2016
Blog

Confederate Memorial Hall and Jack Daniels

In 1935 the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) constructed Confederate Memorial Hall as a residence for girls at Nashville's Peabody College. Originally residents who were descendants of Confederate veterans and agreed to become teachers were granted free room and board. The school and dormitory were acquired by Vanderbilt University in 1979. Earlier this month university chancellor, Nicholas Zeppos, announced…
Philip Leigh
August 22, 2016
Blog

NASCAR’s Slow Ride to Nowhere

The thrill is gone, and the numbers prove it. After decades of phenomenal growth, NASCAR’s popularity has hit the wall. At Bristol Motor Speedway a couple of years ago, Jeff Gordon told reporters he couldn’t believe the rows of empty seats. Where were the cheering fans who normally packed the stands and infield? Attendance is down at NASCAR races, and no…
Mike C. Tuggle
August 19, 2016
Blog

The Art of Ugliness, Part I

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published at The Fleming Foundation. This piece appeared  in the second issue (1980) of the Southern Partisan, which Clyde Wilson and I (along with John Shelton Reed, Sam Francis, and Chris Kopff) had created.  I have corrected a number of errors--including the quotation from the film version of Gone with the Wind--made several small  verbal…
Thomas Fleming
August 18, 2016
Blog

Your Future as a Terrorist

The Homeland Security apparatus has garnered quite a bit of attention lately for a paper that identified anti-abortionists, anti-immigrationists, and war veterans as terrorist suspects. (I thought “profiling” was forbidden, but in that matter, as so often these days, it would seem that some people are more equal than others.) Some Republican politicians are playing at outrage and demanding an…
Clyde Wilson
August 17, 2016
Blog

David Duke Does Not Represent Conservative Louisiana

The perennial champion of racial division and hatred has, unfortunately, returned to Louisiana politics. Duke’s return will be a boon to his race-hustling counterparts on the left. The likes of Al Sharpton and the Southern Poverty Law Center are no doubt already preparing their mailing list to solicit millions of dollars to fight racism in Dixie. And Duke, one can…
James Ronald Kennedy
August 15, 2016
Blog

Jefferson’s True Wall of Separation

The United States Constitution does not contain the words “separation of church and state,” nor does it require the general government to purge all religious influence from public institutions. To the contrary of modern conceptions, the document does not require that elected officials abstain from making decisions based on religious proclivities, nor does it call for government to intervene to…
Dave Benner
August 12, 2016
Blog

The Vanishing Republic of Our Fathers

The New South is one of the more misunderstood periods in American history. The contemporary narrative generally describes the period and its leaders as dense political hacks riding the coattails of Northern business elites. They were "wannabe" statesmen whose political ideology was singularly tied to race. This perspective is clouded by present conditions and our own short-sighted infatuation with racial politics. Historians…
Brion McClanahan
August 11, 2016
Blog

Rats and Republicans

Never knew for sure where the expression came from that my grandmother voiced to my brother and me from time to time, “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” but whether or not it was original with her, that probably wasn’t vital to her concern; only the intent to make a point for her grandsons. I’d like…
Paul H. Yarbrough
August 9, 2016
Blog

The Inside War

Editor's Note: This article was originally published at The Southern Literary Review and is an interview with author Robert J. Ernst by Allen Mendenhall covering Ernst's book, The Inside War. APM: Thanks for taking the time to sit down for this interview, Bob. Your novel The Inside War is about an Appalachian mountain family during the Civil War. How long…
Allen Mendenhall
August 5, 2016
Blog

The Compact Fact

Mainstream historians are both an incestuous and snarky bunch. They latch on to trends--fads really--and pull those trends like mules lugging a heavy cart to market (where they hope to sell books to their tens of fans). In time, the mules give out, but unlike the mule, these historians never realize they are whipped.  They hire more mules like them…
Brion McClanahan
August 4, 2016
Blog

The Unionist Davis vs. The Radical Lincoln

Jefferson Davis was the conservative who tried vainly to save the Union in the face of Republican attempts to pit North against South, and force the South to seek a more perfect union without the North. The greatest ironies of that era was Rhode Island being the slave trading center of North America by 1750; Yankee inventor Eli Whitney making…
Bernard Thuersam
August 2, 2016
Blog

July Top Ten

The Top Ten for July 2016. Read 'em again. 1. The Free State of Jones: History or Hollywood? by Ryan Walters 2. Understanding the Battle Hymn of the Republic by Howard Ray White 3. Why Vicksburg Canceled the Fourth of July – For a Generation by Karen Stokes 4. Rethinking the Declaration of Independence by Brion McClanahan 5. Nathan Bedford…
Brion McClanahan
August 1, 2016
Blog

Booker Washington’s Bucket

Post Civil War racial adjustment was a problem Southerner whites didn’t want to face and Northerner whites declined to share. When the war started 40% of the Confederacy’s population was black whereas it was only 1% in the free Northern states. Even a century later blacks represented only 2% of the population of Massachusetts, which was the birthplace of abolitionism.…
Philip Leigh
July 29, 2016
Blog

New England Bound

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren; ISBN: 978-0871406729, W.W.Norton, June 7, 2016, 368 pages. Squanto the Indian came out of the woods in the spring of 1621, and taught the Pilgrims how to raise the crops of the New World, thereby saving their lives. What is wrong with this picture? The story is true,…
Terry Hulsey
July 28, 2016
Blog

Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford

Perceptive and insightful people have known through the centuries that William Shakespeare could not possibly have written the plays and sonnets that had been attributed to him, beginning with certain suspicious posthumous folios. That uneducated hayseed from the North Country about whom very little is known! And, for Heaven's sake, an actor to boot! Impossible! There must be a mystery…
Clyde Wilson
July 27, 2016
Blog

Do Motives Matter?

A friend of mine is translating a book on Lincoln written by Karl Marx. Her first installment was a refutation by Marx of the European press’s contention that the assault by the North on the South was not about slavery, but about economic and political power. Of course, one cannot divorce the issue of slavery from either consideration but Marx…
Valerie Protopapas
July 25, 2016
Blog

Southern Baptists and the Flag

It appears that the abstractions of the Enlightenment have over the last five-hundred years been read into Scripture and into the theologies of most of the Christian confessions as eisegesis and read back out as exegesis, thereby becoming the metaphysical touchstone of modern and post-modern Christianity. This certainly seems to be the case of the most recent statements by Pope…
Robert M. Peters
July 15, 2016
Blog

Culture War

Transcend yourself and join in the universal struggle to bring about the self-transcendence of all men! –Karl Marx Culture, as the term is used in America in our times, covers a vast territory with ill-defined frontiers. There is primitive culture (flint spearheads, animal and human sacrifice). There is high culture (Shakespeare, Michelangelo). There is, or used to be, folk culture…
Clyde Wilson
July 14, 2016
Blog

Nathan Bedford Forrest

This essay was published as a new introduction for Lytle's Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company and is published here in honor of Forrest's birthday, July 13. This is a young man's book. To have anything more to say about a book you did fifty odd years ago brings you hard up against the matter of time. The young author…
Andrew Nelson Lytle
July 13, 2016
Blog

The Louisiana “Hippeaux”

In America, there are a lot of places you can go that will make you feel like you’re in a foreign country.  Certain areas of Miami, Phoenix, or San Francisco immediately come to mind, and you might feel like you need a passport to go there.  However, I firmly believe that when I travel to some parts of Louisiana, I…
Tom Daniel
July 11, 2016
Blog

Musings of a Southern Antifederalist on the Presidential Election

The one consolation of the Antifederalist persuasion is telling everyone you meet “I told you so.”  Granted, this does not go down well in most circles, be they progressive, socialist, conservative, neo-conservative, constitutionalist, et al.  At best, some of these folk will agree that the Antifederalists were correct about the consolidation of power in the federal government, the excesses of…
John Devanny
July 8, 2016
Blog

A Book for a Southerner’s Bookshelf

Recently a commencement speaker exhorted graduating students to "be on the right side of history." The commencement speaker used the phrase 'be on the right side of history' to mean actively supporting social trends that are currently in fashion. But 'the right side of history' also implies that there are right and wrong sides of history. Indeed there are different…
Gail Jarvis
July 7, 2016
Blog

Through European Eyes

This essay was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine, 1985. Historians have long misinterpreted the responses of Europeans to the events of the American War Between the States. One of the earli­est cases in point was Karl Marx, who considered himself a scientific historian and a knowledgeable commentator on the great American Crisis. Writing on December 12, 1862, about the…
Paul Gottfried
July 6, 2016
Blog

American Counter-Revolution

A Review of The American Counter Revolution: A Retreat From Liberty, 1783-1800, by Larry E. Tise, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1999, 634 pages. A good historian ought to make it clear where he is coming from rather than assume an impossible Olympian objectivity. Then, if he has handled his evidence honestly, he has fulfilled the demands of his craft—whether or…
Clyde Wilson
July 4, 2016
Blog

The South: Land of Heavyweight Boxing Champions

The South in the twentieth century has embraced any number of northern athletic imports and made them her own. Arguably, the South has produced the premier basketball player in Michael Jordan, the top baseball player in Ty Cobb, and the greatest football player in Jim Brown. Boxing, however, is not a sport that one associates with Southern bred champions. The…
John Devanny
July 1, 2016
Blog

June Top 10

The ten best for June 2016.  Read 'em again. 1. Oh Say Can You See...Another One Bites the Dust by David McCallister 2. How (and Why) to Dress Like a (Southern) Conservative, Part I by Dan E. Phillips 3. Who Will Be Our Monuments Men? by Lunelle McCallister 4. The Theology of Secession by M.E. Bradford 5. Jefferson Davis: A…
Brion McClanahan
July 1, 2016
Blog

Q&A on Nullification and Interposition

Q: What can I read that can give me a serious overview of the true impact of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 on South Carolina? A: I think the question of the impact of the protective tariff on South Carolina is the wrong question to ask. It is something of a diversionary tactic, for reasons I will try to…
Clyde Wilson
June 29, 2016
Blog

Brexit: Dividing the Indivisible

REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth In his first Inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln explained his moral justification for invading the Southern States. Plainly, he said, “the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” He reasoned that if a State can lawfully secede from the Union, so can a part of that part and a part of that part, on down to one…
Donald Livingston
June 28, 2016
Blog

The Brits Believe in Secession After All

As I spend some wonderful time with family in my home state of Alaska, I watched with intrigue as the UK appears to have decided to exit from the European Union. I am an Alaskan by birth and a U.S. citizen, and now reside in Tennessee. So, my perspective or stake in the UK’s decision is not rooted in how…
Bradley G. Green
June 27, 2016
Blog

Wikipedia Book Burning

Editor's note: Mr. Leigh has published a new book titled The Confederacy at Flood Tide.  A sample chapter is available here. I once attempted to correct a Wikipedia article by citing Robert Selph Henry’s 1938 The Story of Reconstruction. The change was automatically rejected by software explaining the book was an unacceptable source. Next, I changed the article’s mistake by…
Philip Leigh
June 24, 2016
Blog

More Secession Theology: Thomas Smyth of Charleston

Lately there has been mention of Dr. Thomas Smyth in two Abbeville Institute blog and review posts, namely, “The Theology of Secession” by M. E. Bradford, and “What Lincoln's Election Meant to the South” by Bradley J. Birzer. Having written about this Charleston clergyman in an upcoming book, I thought our readers might be interested in learning a little more…
Karen Stokes
June 23, 2016
Blog

Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXVI

In fact, capitalists have no objection to federal meddling.  They just want it to be such meddling as puts money in their pockets. Nothing more.  Ever.--Fred Reed The market is wonderful, but it is not everything.--Clyde Wilson Order is the first need of the soul.--Russell Kirk I am for peace:  but when I speak, they are for war.--Psalms 120:7 The…
Clyde Wilson
June 22, 2016
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Nullification to Save the Constitution

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from an 1833 4th of July Oration delivered by Henry L. Pinckney and is available in its entirety at The James McClellan Library.  This feature of our website contains over 100 primary documents on State's Rights and federalism compiled by one of the founding members of the Abbeville Institute. ....But why is it that…
Henry Laurens Pinckney
June 20, 2016
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What Lincoln’s Election Meant to South Carolina

This essay was originally published at TheImagninativeConservative.org and is republished here by permission. The finest of gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the famous London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, upon his arrival in Charleston in April, 1861. “It was established not by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who implanted in the North the standard of Torquemada, and breathed…
Bradley J. Birzer
June 16, 2016
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Why They Hate Jefferson

A Review of The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800, by Conor Cruise O'Brien, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 367 pages. What a marathon of Jefferson-bashing we have had in the last few years. This book by the "global statesman" O'Brien follows several other critical biographies, all of which have been highlighted in the fashionable reviews.…
Clyde Wilson
June 15, 2016
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Silent Cal and the War

Calvin Coolidge is one of the more maligned presidents in American history. I rank him as one of the best in my 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America.  Coolidge should be commended for his executive restraint and homespun honesty, two character traits that have escaped the modern American executive.  He was a throwback to the nineteenth century when the president…
Brion McClanahan
June 13, 2016
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Who Will Be Our Monuments Men?

The 2014 movie “Monuments Men” exposed a little known aspect of the horrors of Hitler’s Aryan supremacist totalitarian regime – the looting of priceless historical treasures and cultural purge of peoples he viewed as inferior. In the years leading up to American involvement in WWII, art historians around the world were in an uproar, concerned about systematic theft and destruction…
Lunelle McCallister
June 10, 2016
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How (and Why) to Dress Like a (Southern) Conservative, Part I

I probably should not admit this due to certain… ummm… shall we say… stereotypes, but since I was a young adult, I have had a particular interest in fashion. For the record, I am married with six children. Probably reflecting my underlying conservative disposition, however, I was always more concerned with the “rules” of fashion, such as they were in…
Dan E. Phillips
June 9, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXV

These Haters seem to want to destroy anything and anyone they can tie to slavery. . . . Let’s bulldoze the Washington monument and the Jefferson Memorial.--Henry Eversole I just don’t understand why people would choose to go the Washington & Lee and then complain about Lee.--Jason Moyer It is a flaw of the deeply self-interested men of the world…
Clyde Wilson
June 8, 2016
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The South Carolina Doctrine

Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step further than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to go in relation to the present subject of our present complaints; not a step further than the statesmen from New England were disposed to go under similar circumstances; no further than the senator from Massachusetts himself once considered as within "the limits of a…
Robert Y. Hayne
June 7, 2016
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Oh Say Can You See…Another One Bites the Dust….

Will the beloved author of our national anthem, Francis Scott Key, soon join Christopher Columbus, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert E. Lee as a demonized whipping-boy of the culture-war? Once the "Resolution of Hate" only inspired Confederophobes, but has now been expanded to an Anti-American icon industry, sweeping all in its path of cultural destruction. They started…
David McCallister
June 6, 2016
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May Top Ten

Our top ten articles for May.  Read 'em again. 1. Hampton Roads: A Twist in the Lincoln Myth by Dave Benner 2. Erasing Southern History, Step by Step by Alphonse-Louis Vinh 3. Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham 4. "Don't Leave Me Here to Bleed to Death!" by Karen Stokes 5. Is "White Supremacy" an Exclusively "Southern" Ideology?…
Brion McClanahan
June 2, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXIV

A pioneer creates a new country from foresight, courage, and hard work.  An immigrant takes advantage of what the pioneer has created.   I suppose now we really are “a nation of immigrants.”--Clyde Wilson The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists . . . .--Alexis de…
Clyde Wilson
June 1, 2016
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Long Live the Flags of Dixie!

This piece was originally printed at AntoniusAquinas.com. On May 19, the House of Reprehensibles passed a proposal that would essentially ban the display of Confederate flags from national cemeteries.  The amendment was added to a Veteran Affairs spending bill. Not surprisingly, House Speaker Paul Ryan allowed the measure to be voted upon in hopes of not disrupting the appropriations process. …
Antonius Aquinas
May 31, 2016
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Southern Reparations Have Already Been Paid

As the Sesquicentennial of Reconstruction progresses and the popular press debates whether slavery merits reparations, few students of the era realize that Southerners have already paid a form of reparations; if not for slavery, then as a penalty for the war. As the table below illustrates, for at least twenty-five years after the war three items represented more than half…
Philip Leigh
May 26, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXIII

I am not a Catholic, but I just have to admire all of this Pope’s meticulously photographed and internationally broadcast acts of humility.--Conservative Pundit Do you think the Civil Rights Act would have passed in 1964 if most Northerners had thought that it would apply to them and not just to the South?--Clyde Wilson The Massachusetts Kennedys are better than…
Clyde Wilson
May 25, 2016
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Southern Family

What makes the South, the South?  Most modern Americans would say football and grits sprinkled with a bit of country music and NASCAR. These clichés hold true for many Southerners today, but what made the South before the commercialization of the American economy was a commitment to land, family, and God.  It was both a temporal and a spiritual understanding…
Brion McClanahan
May 23, 2016
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Betrayed by Yankees Perverting the Constitution

Originally published at Circa1865.com. The presidential messages of Jefferson Davis were filled with assertions of the South’s legal right to secede and form a more perfect union, and determine its own form of government to the letter of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Not losing sight of this, even in early 1865, one Confederate congressman stated that “This is a war…
Bernard Thuersam
May 20, 2016
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Thomas Jefferson vs. Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, et. al.

This post was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. Paul Krugman is a popular guy these days. The American economist was awarded a Nobel prize in Economics this year. In a recent interview I heard Krugman say that no one person is responsible for America’s current financial crisis. But, he said former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan certainly deserves a…
Herrick Kimball
May 19, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXXII

I believe that the American South, the last bastion of Christianity in the West, will have a special role in the final chapter of history.--Anne Wilson Smith I just may take a tomahawk to the next person who tells me this is a nation of immigrants.  I want them to have the authentic experience. --Alice Teller Fact is, we NEED immigrants…
Clyde Wilson
May 18, 2016
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Hampton Roads: A Twist in the Lincoln Myth

According to the standard narrative maintained by the North, Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation brought about a new moral aim that justified a particularly bloody conflict. The act is often described as a device that would usher in a new age where angelic Northerners suddenly abandoned their racist past in favor of a fair, more equitable course for enslaved men. From…
Dave Benner
May 16, 2016
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The Imperial and Momentary We

This piece was originally published in Chronicles Magazine, October 2012. “O Fame, O Fame! Many a man ere this Of no account hast thou set up on high.” —Boethius “It is a kind of baby talk, a puerile and wind­blown gibberish. . . . In content it is a vacuum.” —H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding’s speeches Americans are a…
Clyde Wilson
May 13, 2016
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A Christian Defense of the South

It is said that the more things change, the more they stays the same. This has proven more than a mere cliche in the aftermath of the horrifying events in Charleston, SC last year. When racial animosity failed to materialize in the wake of the shootings at a predominantly African-American Church, Progressive political elements made the call to eliminate Southern…
Thomas Bryant
May 12, 2016
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“Don’t Leave Me Here to Bleed to Death!”

The most recent issue of Hallowed Ground, a publication of the Civil War Trust, features an 1863 photograph of several Confederate soldiers laid out in shallow graves—casualties of the fighting at Gettysburg. This picture is like many of the grim photographs of the war dead, but what makes it unusual is that one of the soldiers has been identified. Two…
Karen Stokes
May 11, 2016
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Defend to the Death

When I was young, there was a very famous and much articulated saying, to wit: “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!” Everyone—or at least everyone who was rational, moral and decently educated—knew that this was the creed of a free society in general and “America” in particular.…
Valerie Protopapas
May 9, 2016
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Secession of the Heart

A dear friend of mine, a Harp like myself but born and raised in the Deep North, repeated to me for the umpteenth time one of the most persistent of all Southern stereotypes, the duplicitous Southerner. This type is all smiles and sweetness, until the proper time comes to lower the boom. As my friend put it, “No, we are…
John Devanny
May 6, 2016
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Erasing Southern Culture and History, Step by Step

Throughout the entire South, our Confederate Southern heritage is under massive attack. This time, it's not just Yankee invaders who are doing this under a new Reconstruction; it's being reinforced as well by influential Southern liberals who hate the traditional South. There's a line that can't be crossed. Jesus gave us an injunction to love our enemies, but this doesn't…
Alphonse-Louis Vinh
May 5, 2016
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Shades of John Brown

Southerners who honour their Confederate forebears have often been admonished:  “Get over it.  You lost!”    The admonishers often do not follow their own advice.  As a modest but earnest  advocate  of Southern heritage, I  have quite often been threatened, usually anonymously, with harm to my person and a renewal of the  extermination campaign against my people.  I once received from…
Clyde Wilson
May 4, 2016
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“Contextualizing” American History

Few, if any, currently prominent historians voice unqualified objection to the destruction of Confederate monuments. The most tolerant among them instead suggest that the memorials should remain, but with new explanatory inscriptions offering “context”—a code word that simplifies to: South=Bad, North=Good. Consider, for example, the contextual marker that might be added to Liberty Hall, former home of Confederate Vice President…
Philip Leigh
May 2, 2016
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April Top Ten

The top ten articles for April 2016: 1. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by James Rutledge Roesch 2. Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic by Paul C. Graham 3. Why the War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 4. The Cause of Jackson is the Cause of Us All by James Rutledge Roesch 5. Lies My Teacher…
Brion McClanahan
May 1, 2016
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A Brave New World

Friedich Nietzsche's statement: "There are no facts, only interpretations" is essentially true about social sciences and social issues. But, although historians' views of the past are interpretations, they are based on serious research into sources of evidence that are felt to be reliable. Similarly, in legal proceedings, the burden of proof is on the accuser, who must present a preponderance…
Gail Jarvis
April 29, 2016
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Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic

Institutionalized Hate and Fear A student at Framingham State University (FSU), located 20 miles outside of Boston, was “traumatized” when a Confederate flag sticker was seen on another student’s laptop computer. This “bias incident” was quickly reported to FSU’s “Bias Protocol and Response Team” (BP&RT) who quickly responded to the complaint. FSU’s “chief diversity and inclusion officer,” Sean Huddleston, responded…
Paul C. Graham
April 28, 2016
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Texas Secession?

It may not get anywhere at all, but there are a number of people in Texas trying to get the official state Republican Party to debate the issue of secession at the party convention on May 12-14. The movement got started by the Texas Nationalist Movement, a group that's been around for more than a decade, involved mostly in trying…
Kirkpatrick Sale
April 25, 2016
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Healing the Wounds of War

Over the years, countless thousands the New Yorkers have passed by monuments in their city that were dedicated to two eminent physicians who were related by marriage, but there is little doubt that few of them, until recently at least, had ever realized that the statues were erected in memory of former Southerners. The two men of medicine were Dr.…
John Marquardt
April 22, 2016
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Backwards in a Sideways World

This article was originally printed at Tony Woodlief's website, Sand in the Gears. When I was twelve, we were evicted from our house in Florida, a consequence either of Reaganomics or our failure to pay rent for three months, depending on whose story you wanted to believe. We faced a long, hungry drive back to North Carolina. A neighbor, also…
Tony Woodlief
April 21, 2016
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New From Southern Pens, Part 4

A new contribution to Southern literature from one or both of the Kennedy brothers, authors of the classic The South Was Right! and other good books, is always a cause for celebration. The latest, Uncle Seth Fought the Yankees by James Ronald Kennedy, does not disappoint. Uncle Seth, a Confederate veteran, in about 100 easy lessons, gently educates the young…
Clyde Wilson
April 20, 2016
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Grant Gets the Votes

It is no surprise to Civil War students that Ulysses Grant’s reputation has soared over the last fifty years. During the past twenty years nearly all of his biographies have been favorable. They typically ignore, minimize, or deny his failings. Examples include those of Jean Smith, H. W. Brands, and Joan Waugh. Two more will apparently join the group later…
Philip Leigh
April 18, 2016
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Is the Mississippi State Flag “Anti-American”?

United States District Judge Carlton Reeves is considering a lawsuit by Mississippi attorney Carlos Moore to rule that the Mississippi State flag is unconstitutional because it is “anti-American,” meaning it symbolizes secession and slavery. I leave aside the contorted legal reasoning that might support such a suit, namely whether Moore has standing to sue, if this is a judicial not…
Donald Livingston
April 15, 2016
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Sherman’s Army in North Carolina

Some historians have suggested that General William T. Sherman's terror campaign through the deep South came to an end when his troops crossed the state line into North Carolina, and some of his officers are on record noting a pronounced change in the conduct of their soldiers. It is true that North Carolina did not see the scale of ruthless…
Karen Stokes
April 14, 2016
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Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday

Thomas Jefferson’s birthday went virtually unnoticed earlier this year (1993), the 250th anniversary of his birth. Nothing is more indicative of how badly we Americans have squandered our moral capital and betrayed the substance of our history. We did have, of course, President Clinton’s inaugural journey from Monticello, though it is hard to imagine anything further from the true spirit…
Clyde Wilson
April 13, 2016
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McWhirter Tries to Strike Back

My recent piece on James Ryder Randall, "At Arlington", touched a nerve, at least with Christian McWhirter.  I spent some time in "At Arlington" discussing his March Time magazine piece, and thus he was compelled to reply. McWhirter begins by wondering when the "neo-Confederate crowd" would respond to his article.  It only took him one sentence to use the tired pejorative "neo-Confederate"…
Brion McClanahan
April 12, 2016
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American Music Is Southern Music

“American Idol,” a reality-based music singing competition on the Fox Network, has come to an end, and Yankees everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief, as their long, national nightmare is finally over.  Yankees haven’t been whipped this badly since Fredericksburg, and it’s a miracle they allowed the American Idol carnage to continue on as long as it did.  All…
Tom Daniel
April 11, 2016
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The Sovereign States

This essay is the introduction to Mr. Kilpatrick's The Sovereign States (Regnery, 1957). AMONG the more melancholy aspects of the genteel world we live in is a slow decline in the enjoyment that men once found in the combat of ideas, free and unrestrained. Competition of any sort, indeed, seems to be regarded these days, in our schools and elsewhere,…
James J. Kilpatrick
April 8, 2016
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Why They Hate Us

This post was originally published at fredoneverything.org. A frequent theme nowadays is “Why do they hate us?” meaning why does so much of the world detest the United States. The reasons given are usually absurd: They hate our freedom or democracy. They hate us for our cultural superiority. They hate us because we are wonderful. No. Actually the reason is…
Fred Reed
April 7, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXX

The Western intellectual knows,  or  rather thinks he knows, what others do not.  He rarely considers reality as such. . . . He thinks in terms  of  concepts and abstract models.  The reasoning  does  not start with the observation of events , but with  the invocation of a formula or a theoretical concept  issued  by a theoretician  whom he considers…
Clyde Wilson
April 6, 2016
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Lee’s Memory

In the wake of growing hostility toward the Confederacy a New Orleans Robert E. Lee statue is scheduled for destruction and debate is underway in Charlottesville, Virginia to remove another one. Even though Washington & Lee is a private university, it has already yielded to pressures to remove the Confederate flag from the Lee Chapel. The school may ultimately feel…
Philip Leigh
April 4, 2016
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March Top Ten

The Top Ten articles for March 2016: 1. Why The War Was Not About Slavery by Clyde Wilson 2. Baltimore Set to Ban Lee and Jackson, to Welcome Degenerate Divine by J. L. Bennett 3. Secession Hypocrisy: The Case of West Virginia by Dave Benner 4. The Battle Flag and Christianity by Lunelle McCallister 5. Andrew Jackson: The Good, the…
Brion McClanahan
April 2, 2016
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Interpreting Southern Art

For several weeks my local art museum displayed a traveling exhibit from the Johnson Collection of art permanently located in Spartanburg, South Carolina.   The prevailing consensus among historians is that the antebellum South did not produce much in the way of art, that its literature was substandard, and that its only contribution to American history was slavery and militaristic oligarchy.  Those who read this blog understand this position to…
Brion McClanahan
April 1, 2016
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The Jeffersonian Solution

This post was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. The original strength of our American republic was found in the ability to supply our own needs. That is the very definition of independence. We provided our own form of government, our own energy resources, our own manufacturing, and we grew an overabundance of our own food. We were a self-sufficient…
Herrick Kimball
March 31, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXIX

In a PC world, humor is a capital offense.   --Taki Happiness is never an accident.  It is the prize we get when we chose wisely from life’s great stores.  --Irene Dunne,   citing advice from her  Kentucky father There is no such thing as being too Southern.    --Lewis Grizzard “The war between the Yankees and the Americans.”  --Granny  Clampett  on the …
Clyde Wilson
March 30, 2016
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Secession Hypocrisy: The Case of West Virginia

Many people know that the state of West Virginia came to be during the Civil War, but very few know that its admission to the union was particularly controversial. Even in the north, free from the influence of the departed southern states, many opposed Lincoln’s desire to admit West Virginia. Opposing Lincoln’s ultimate stance, those who offered candid deference to…
Dave Benner
March 28, 2016
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A Rural Southern Easter

Benjamin Franklin White, born 1800 in South Carolina, was a Southern music pioneer. His collection of hymns titled The Sacred Harp, published in 1844, was based on shape note singing and became the standard hymnal in the South. Shape note music first appeared in 1801 and quickly spread through the rural Southern congregationalist communities. The music is performed a cappella…
Brion McClanahan
March 25, 2016
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Vale Res Publica

Once again, it is politicking time in the good ol’ US of A.  The Democrats, the party of youth, vision, and vigor, present to the country a senile old socialist who doesn’t believe that poor white people exist, and a former first lady rejected by Netflix central casting for a role in  House of Cards (It was the looks, not…
John Devanny
March 24, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXVIII

Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing,  and  careerist  logrolling. --John Derbyshire A lie can travel half way around the world while truth is still putting on his boots.  --Mark Twain The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those, who, in times of great moral crisis,  maintain  their neutrality.  --Dante They change their sky, not…
Clyde Wilson
March 23, 2016
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Death is Mercy to Secessionists

William T. Sherman viewed Southerners as he later viewed American Indians, to be exterminated or banished to reservations as punishment for having resisted government power. They were subjects and merely temporary occupants of land belonging to his government whom they served. The revealing excerpts below are taken from “Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama,” published in 1872: Headquarters, Department of…
Bernard Thuersam
March 21, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXVII

“My name’s Anderson.  They call me Bloody Bill.   Going to  Kansas to kill Red Legs.  Want to come along?”    Clint Eastwood replies:   “I reckon I will.”   --“The Outlaw Josey Wales” The success of equality in America is due, I think, mainly to the circumstance that a large number of people, who were substantially equal in all the important matters, recognized that…
Clyde Wilson
March 16, 2016
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Renaming Calhoun College

The post was originally published at LewRockwell.com. I’ve recently received information that Yale University may be about to rename what is possibly the most picturesque of the twelve colleges that house its undergraduate population. Calhoun College, which flanks stately Elm Street in the now badly run-down city of New Haven, is for me a scene of youthful memory. As a…
Paul Gottfried
March 14, 2016
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Real Federalism: Switzerland

With each visit to Switzerland, my understanding and appreciation of the political economy of the country becomes deeper and more nuanced. The Swiss people have been incredibly successful in evolving a philosophy, culture and political structure which, limits the potential power of a centralist, nationalist and statist administration through the adoption of a federal system and other policies which distribute…
Harry Teasley
March 11, 2016
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The Muckraker and the War

It was the spring of 1865 . . . the remnants of what once had been Confederate regiments had stacked their arms, the tattered battle flags were furled, the cause which had been so gallantly defended was lost and one by one the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of Tennessee and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi were disbanded. Those…
John Marquardt
March 10, 2016
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The Tuskegee Confederate Memorial

For anyone with a casual knowledge about Alabama’s juicy and active history, the words “Tuskegee” and “Confederate” seem to be an odd match. Tuskegee, Alabama is the site of Booker T. Washington’s visionary Tuskegee Institute, the home of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, and the location of the first integrated public high school in Alabama. And yet, the center of town…
Tom Daniel
March 7, 2016
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Baltimore Set to Ban Lee and Jackson, to Welcome Degenerate Divine

    As Baltimore is preparing to honor a coprophagic crossdresser, the city’s double-equestrian Lee-Jackson monument is coming down.  Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who presided over and encouraged the riots following the death of Freddie Gray last year, is expected to direct its removal from Wyman Park where the monument, the site of many Lee-Jackson Day celebrations, has stood since 1948. …
J.L. Bennett
March 4, 2016
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The Battle Flag and Christianity

First they banned prayer in schools.  Then they removed nativity scenes on courthouse grounds. Then they removed the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court.  Next came the “War on Christmas”  involving the omission of the word “Christmas” from office and Government calendars to be substituted with “Holiday”.  According to Wikipedia “The expression ‘War on Christmas’ has often been used…
Lunelle McCallister
March 3, 2016
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What is PC?

This talk was delivered on Friday, February 26, 2016 at the Abbeville Institute Conference "The PC Attack on the South." We are here to deal with the PC attacks on Southern Tradition. We have become so familiar with PC in everyday life that our perception of what it actually is has been dulled. PC is a deceptive cover name for…
Clyde Wilson
March 2, 2016
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February Top 10

The top ten articles for February 2016: 1. The Nationalist Myth by Brion McClanahan 2. Scalia, the Constitution, and the Court by Carl Jones 3. What's Holding Alabama Back? by Tom Daniel 4. The Principle of Secession Historically Traced by George Petrie 5. Rethinkin' Lincoln by Brion McClanahan 6. Dilorenzo and His Critics by Clyde Wilson 7. John C. Calhoun…
Brion McClanahan
March 1, 2016
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A Tale of Two Southern Books

This time of year we begin seeing recommendations of books for Christmas presents. This article is also a recommendation for a gift book but I admit that I have an ulterior motive. I intend to compare this book with another one in order to illustrate a political phenomenon that has always intrigued me. The phenomenon I am referring to is…
Gail Jarvis
February 29, 2016
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Rethinkin’ Lincoln

The most frequent question I have received during promotion of my new book, 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her, has been, “How can you say that Lincoln screwed up America?” After all, he is the man who saved the Union and who put slavery on the path to extinction. There should be a…
Brion McClanahan
February 26, 2016
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Scalia, the Constitution, and the Court

With the recent passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, folks are writhing in fear over the prospect of Obama appointing a new SC Judge. "This", they say, "could be the most monumental appointment in history and could drastically change our political landscape" and this "is especially true with regards to how the 2nd Amendment is interpreted." This is all…
Carl Jones
February 25, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXVI

A friend’s encounter with a clergyman:  His mission, he says, is Social Justice.  Our South Carolina governor, when she removed the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, had “a Jesus moment,” a Divine Revelation of Social Justice.  He hopes that  others will have such a Moment.  What impressed me most about this leader of the faith was not the arrogant…
Clyde Wilson
February 24, 2016
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George Washington

From Washington and the Generals of the American Revolution by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and William Gilmore Simms, 1847. (Editor's Note: Thank you to Simms scholar Jeff Rogers for correcting the auhtorship of this article.  Griswold, not Simms, wrote this chapter on Washington.  Simms wrote several chapters in this two volume work, notably on Southerners Pinckney, Sumner, and Moultrie). An attentive…
Rufus Wilmot Griswold
February 22, 2016
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The Nationalist Myth

Dave Benner, Compact of the Republic: The League of the States and the Constitution (Life and Liberty Publishing, 2015). James Ronald Kennedy, Uncle Seth Fought the Yankees (Pelican Publishing, 2015). Jack Kerwick, The American Offensive: Dispatches from the Front (Stairway Press, 2015). One of the results of the Northern victory in 1865 was the codification of Lincolnian nationalism and its…
Brion McClanahan
February 19, 2016
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The Lincoln Douglas Debates

This essay first appeared in National Review, 6/1, June 21, 1958, 18-19. Just one hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were stumping Illinois for tire office of United States Senator. They made a total of eighty-three appearances before the voters of that state, seven of which were in the form of joint debates. Now, on this anniversary…
Richard M. Weaver
February 15, 2016
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James Iredell

One of the greatest legal minds of the founding generation was also one of the most reserved and unobtrusive. On many levels, he differed from his peers. Outspoken Federalist from New York, John Jay, became the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Prominent Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph was selected by George Washington to be the first Attorney…
Dave Benner
February 12, 2016
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Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXV

The death of the spirit is the price of progress. --Eric Voegelin The Athenians know what is right, but will not do it. --Cicero Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush:  therefore they shall fall among them that fall:  in time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith…
Clyde Wilson
February 10, 2016
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Elephants in Dixie

The origin of the elephant as a symbol of the Republican Party occurred in 1874 after a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in the popular New York newspaper, “Harper’s Weekly.” It was during the congressional elections of that year when Nast, a renowned Republican satirist, drew a picture of the Democratic donkey dressed in a lion’s skin frightening away…
John Marquardt
February 9, 2016
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Reconstruction in South Carolina

In 1872, Daniel W. Voorhees, a Congressman of Indiana, made a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he described conditions in the South after the war, during the period (laughingly) known as “Reconstruction.”  He accused the United States government, under the control of the Republican Party, of plundering and slandering the conquered Southern states, sending “powerful missionaries…
Karen Stokes
February 8, 2016
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“Dar’s nuttin’ lak de ol’-time ways”

Many people are familiar with the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project of the 1930s. While some historians reject them for what has been called gross inaccuracies due in large part to the many positive memories of the institution (the negative accounts are always used), they have become the standard source for firsthand information on the institution from the…
Brion McClanahan
February 5, 2016
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The Confederacy, Oscars, and Social Justice

"Social Justice" is one of today's manipulative phrases. In this case "justice" is defined as the equal distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges among all groups in a society. In past generations, the concept of "social justice" was referred to as "leveling"; a more accurate, and certainly more honest, description. Leveling is one of those Utopian goals often sought, but…
Gail Jarvis
February 4, 2016
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January Top 10

Our top ten articles for January 2016: Black Slaveowners by Larry Koger Robert E. Lee: Gallant Soldier, True Patriot, Noble Christian by Mike Scruggs Did Black People Own Slaves? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A Southerner Repents by Fred Reed Stonewall Jackson by James I. Robertson, Jr. When the Yankees Come: Former South Carolina Slaves Remember the Invasion by Paul…
Brion McClanahan
February 2, 2016
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What’s Holding Alabama Back?

As I watched my local Montgomery, Alabama news station this morning, I saw that question pop up on the screen. What’s holding Alabama back? Wait, what? What do you mean by “holding back?” In the segment, the news station sent out a roving reporter on the streets of Montgomery to ask random citizens to tell him what they believe is…
Tom Daniel
February 1, 2016
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Old South Education before the War to Destroy Southern Civilization

In the Old South, only those children whose parents thought they needed education, attended school; many did not.  Of those who did not, many were taught at home to read or to read and write.  A higher percentage of Southerners than Northerners attended college, though students in Southern colleges were more interested in making and enjoying social contacts than in…
George Crockett
January 29, 2016
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Huey Long’s Potlikker Recipe

In Louisiana history and folklore, Huey Pierce Long occupies a very special niche.  To be depressingly brief, he was born and reared in north-central Louisiana’s hardscrabble Winn Parish where, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contrariness, populism and socialism were dominant.  Charismatic and unscrupulous but unquestionably brilliant, Huey secured a law degree and entered politics.  With a knack…
Roger Busbice
January 28, 2016
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The Heritage of the South

This essay served as the concluding chapter to Page's biography of Robert E. Lee, published in 1908. I stood not a great while ago on the most impressive spot, perhaps, in all Europe: beneath the majestic dome of the Invalides where stands the tomb of Napoleon. It was a summer evening, and we descended the steps and stood at the…
Thomas Nelson Page
January 25, 2016
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Lee the Philosopher

This essay was originally published in The Georgia Review, Vol. II, No. 3 (Fall 1948), 297-303. As the Civil War assumes increasingly the role of an American Iliad, a tendency sets in for its heroes to take on Fixed characterizations. Epithets of praise and blame begin to recur, and a single virtue usurps the right to personify the individual. In…
Richard M. Weaver
January 22, 2016
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Robert E. Lee: Gallant Soldier, Noble Patriot, True Christian

January 19 will mark the 209th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Lee in 1807, one of the most respected and revered military leaders in American history. That respect and reverence extends over most of the world, wherever military leadership is studied. Lee’s birthday is an official state holiday in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida. It was also an…
Mike Scruggs
January 19, 2016
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American Hypocrisy

I was watching the national news immediately after the San Bernardino terror. A sympathetic host was interviewing a refined Muslim gentleman, who was given more than ample time to explain that his faith and its symbols were being misrepresented by the terrorists’ holocaust. But consider: The Koran contains the words of Allah whose many commandments therein call for the extermination…
Herbert Chambers
January 18, 2016