Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the, symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive vice-president of the University of Illinois, and myself, a writer and reader of fiction. I don’t presume to speak either for Warren or Lanier, and I don’t know how to…
The Age of Enlightenment represented the Middle Ages as a Gothic night—an interlude of ignorance and superstition when men were enveloped in a cowl, oblivious to the wonders of knowledge, and concerned only with escape from the miseries of this world and of hell. Voltaire said that Dante was considered a great poet because no one read him, that a…
Although the nation recently recognized the 150th anniversary of the end of the War of Northern Aggression, we are still plagued with questions about the legality of secession, issues and inquiries that unfortunately may never end. In exchanges on social media over the years, I have argued our principles as passionately as anyone can, while kindly, but at times very…
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….
“If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle [the issues] on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace. If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the…
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…
Millions know Scarlett O’Hara’s fictional story. Yet few among even the staunchest Southerners know the true stories of Confederate heroines like Molly Tynes, Lola Sanchez, Lottie and Ginnie Moon, Erneline Pigott, Robbie Woodruff, Antonia Ford, Nancy Hart and Alice Thompson. Some of these women en¬joyed a measure of local recognition, but others had to cloak their deeds in secrecy for…
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…
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…
Stonewall lay dying of his wounds at Chancellorsville — “the most successful movement of my life,” he murmured, and then remembered to give full credit to God. “I feel His hand led me.” He had smashed Fighting Joe Hooker and 134,000 invaders of Virginia with 60,000 Confederates. Jackson didn’t mention General Robert E. Lee who was with the reserves that…
American historians often write of a contrast between the South, a closed reactionary society, and the West, free and open and characteristically American. The dichotomy thus presented is a false one. The West is the South. That is, to the extent that the West is a theatre for heroic action, rather than just a place to start a new business,…
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…
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…
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…
A biographer defined Francis Butler Simkins as “one of the most interesting intellectual forces of his generation.” As a scholar who questioned conventional thinking he “helped lay the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, when these momentous events of the 1950s and 1960s challenged the traditional order in the American South, Simkins discovered much…that he believed should be conserved…
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…
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….
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…
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…
Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive vice-president of the University of Illinois, and myself, a writer and reader of fiction. I don’t presume to speak either for Warren or Lanier, and I don’t know how to…
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…
Last week’s vote (June 2016) to repudiate the Battle Flag by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) caught me by surprise and left me in shock. I have long considered our denomination to be socially conservative, prudent, and wise to stay out of issues that do not directly impact the mission of our church. I am a deacon but more importantly on…
In a recent Huffington Post video, director-turned-historian Gary Ross, of the film “Free State of Jones,” debunks what he calls “4 myths of the civil war era.” And since I’ve shown a propensity to answer Mr. Ross in kind, I am quite likely the best candidate to tackle his latest re-writing of history. Myth #1: “The Civil War was NOT…
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…
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…
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…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 30-June 3, 2016 Topics: Patrick Henry, Political Correctness, Secession, the United States Constitution, John Randolph of Roanoke, Jefferson Davis
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…
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…
Delivered May 6, 2016 in Columbia, SC. Archibald MacLeish was a 20th century poet, author and three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote the following about the lost soldier: We were young. We have died. Remember us. We have done what we could but until It is finished it is not done. We have given our lives but until…
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…
As Southern States seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, the matter of transitioning the US Judiciary into the CSA Judiciary required both skill and determination. Issues of jurisdiction, personnel, legal codes, records, writs and ongoing processes had to be considered. Rather than starting de novo, the CSA Provisional Constitution mostly[i] adopted the structure of…
The following is a transcription of a speech given at the inaugural Education Conference of the Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans: ‘The best men of the South have long desired to do away with the institution and were quite willing to see it abolished.’ – Robert E. Lee ‘Most informed men realized that slavery was not…
Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan. What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast…
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln has provoked the utterly predictable torrent of abuse from state worshipers and self-appointed prophets of The True American Way. All DiLorenzo has done (and this does not in the least detract from his courage, eloquence, and insight) is to analyze Honest Abe as a historical figure just like any other, rather than treat him…
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…
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…
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? The Merchant of Venice (Act 3, Scene…
You might not find Stark Young’s So Red The Rose in current recommendations of novels set during the civil war era, but Young’s novel, published in 1934, was a record-breaking best seller, so popular with the reading public that it was made into a Hollywood film. It differs from most novels in that it doesn’t have a protagonist, nor is…
Introduction This is James Johnston Pettigrew’s only book, privately printed in Charleston in the first weeks of the War between the States and here for the first time published. In the opening passage the author describes himself crossing the Alps on his way to seek service in the army of the king of Sardinia. His mission was to take part…
On July fourth 1861, Major J.P. Gillis made a public display of his support of colonial secession from the British Empire as well as Southern secession from the United States by parading in the streets with a Confederate flag of his own design. He drew cheers from a large crowd of onlookers, but two men named Curtis Clark and J.W….
By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, humble, a man of sorrows who believes in malice toward none and charity toward all, who simply wants to preserve the Union so that we can all live together as one people. The…
Statement of College and University Professors in Support of the Confederate Battle Flag Atop the South Carolina Statehouse, drafted just before the legislative “compromise.” To the General Assembly and People of South Carolina: Certain academics have issued a statement on the cause of the Civil War as it relates to the controversy over the Confederate battle flag. They held a…
This essay was originally published in Southern Partisan Magazine, 1989. As we conclude bicentennial celebration of the drafting and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it may be hoped that we have finally arrived at the proper moment for looking back and appreciating the importance of those even more heated discussions of the document which occurred in the…
…… Although I have never Sought popularity by any animated Speeches or Inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known and my practice has been so conformable to my sentiment that I have always employed freemen both as Domisticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. The…
The peaceful political separation desired by the American South in early 1861 was best summarized by President Jefferson Davis’ in his inaugural address: “We seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated. All we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall…
“The one great principle, which produced our secession from the United States – was constitutional liberty – liberty protected by law. For this, we have fought; for this, our people have died. To preserve and cherish this sacred principle, constituting as it did, the very soul of independence itself, was the clear dictate of all honest – all wise statesmanship.”–…
If you showed the average American pictures of famous figures from Confederate States of America, there is a good chance many would recognize Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Pressed further, some may even identify Alexander Stephens. All were influential men, and important to the establishment and development of the Confederacy. However, none of them assisted the Confederate cause in…
The following is an abridged version of a chapter which will appear in the forthcoming, From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South “Union among ourselves is not only necessary for our safety, but for the preservation of the common liberties and institutions of the whole confederacy. We constitute the balance wheel…
The guns of the War Between the States fell silent a century and a half ago, but the verbal and written battles related to that great conflict have continued. In the more than 50,000 books, as well as the countless thousands of additional articles and discussions which have taken place during the intervening years , it would seem that every…
On October 17, 1862 William E. Gladstone, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered a speech at New Castle concerning the widening conflict in America. He said: “We may have our opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army. They…
“Texans! The troops of other states have their reputations to gain, but the sons of the defenders of the Alamo have theirs to maintain. I am assured that you will be faithful to the trust.” – Jefferson Davis, 1861 This ruling was a foregone conclusion. As soon as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg implicitly compared Confederates – the descendants of American…
We had another record breaking month in June. Thank you to all of those who support our efforts to explore what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition. Here are the top ten articles for June. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is number one for the third straight month. 1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: The True History of…
This piece was originally published on 3 July 2014 and is reprinted in light of current events. Are you puzzled and irritated by the viciousness and falsity of most of what is being published these days about the South and Southern history? The beginning of all wisdom on this subject is to know that in American public speech and so-called…
“Way down in Missouri…Journey back to Dixieland in dreams again with me…” – Lyrics from the “Missouri Waltz” (The Official Missouri State Song) by James Royce Shannon. A cultural identity crisis can be an absolutely terrible thing that can often have ramifications that transcend the time in which it was spawned. Such a trend can lead to the cultural destruction…
This essay is published in honor of Abel P. Upshur’s birthday, June 17, 1790. Today, States’ rights are remembered as a legalistic excuse for the preservation of slavery – a part of the past best forgotten. One historian scoffs at the notion of “loyalty to the South, Southern self-government, Southern culture, or states’ rights,” declaring that “slavery’s preservation was central…
Jefferson Davis delivered this message to the Confederate Congress on 18 February 1861. GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of the Provisional Government which you have instituted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to me with an humble distrust of my…
A friend of mine, a scholar of international reputation and a Tar Heel by birth, was visiting professor at a very prestigious Northern university a few years ago. In idle conversation with some colleagues, he happened to mention that his mother was an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. His…
This piece was originally published in Southern Partisan magazine in 1987-88. A few years ago I was shuffling through accumulated litter in my garage attic when I came across some clippings dating from the 1960s. Among them were several letters to Life magazine commenting on an article by Bruce Carton. One reads as follows: Bruce Carton’s article is interesting and…
Life and Work Why Read Ludwell Johnson? Both Ludwell Johnson’s style of work and choice of subject matter strongly recommend him to our consideration. As a working historian he is calm and measured, with just the degree of detachment that historical work ideally requires. As he puts it, “trying to identify cause and effect is, to me, the very…
With the Sesquicentennial of the epic war of American history winding down, many may think this War no longer particularly relevant and we can move on to more current concerns. Such an attitude, which I dare say prevails among most Americans, Southerners included, ignores the watershed importance of the War known by any number of names, the “Civil War,” the…
The wife of the president H.L. Mencken referred to as “Roosevelt the Second” provided much of the impetus for the communizing of the Democratic party in the mid-1930s, and could be readily found supporting and speaking before openly Marxist groups like the American Youth Congress, Communist National Student League, Young Communist League, and anti-Franco communists. In a news column she…
Originally published by the Unz Review on 15 April 2015. Back in 1990 in Richmond, Virginia, as part of the Museum of the Confederacy’s lecture series, the late Professor Ludwell Johnson, author and professor of history at William and Mary College, presented a fascinating lecture titled, “The Lincoln Puzzle: Searching for the Real Honest Abe.” Commenting on the assassination of…
From the Confederate Veteran Magazine, Volume 4, 1916, pages 4-5. John Tyler, distinguished Virginian and tenth President of the United States, has received fitting, though long-deferred, honor from the country he served. Fifty-three years after his death the United States government has erected a handsome monument at his last resting place, in the shades of beautiful Hollywood Cemetery, at Richmond,…
Recently, a friend sent me a link on the Smithsonian web site to a 1930 video clip with good sonics of some aged Confederate veterans demonstrating how the famous “Rebel Yell” had sounded some 65 years earlier. All those men were at least in their late 80s, most in their 90s. But their remarkable spirit still showed through. History and time…
Born in 1782 near Abbeville, South Carolina, Calhoun’s educational opportunities were limited, albeit advanced by the occasional tutelage offered by his brother-in-law, Reverend Moses Waddel. After his parents’ death and a period of self-education, Calhoun entered Yale College, studying under the arch-Federalist Dr. Timothy Dwight. He proceeded to study law for two years under Judge Tapping Reeve at the Litchfield…
This essay was first printed in the Southern Partisan Magazine, Volume III, Number 1 (1983). INTRODUCTION One hundred and forty years ago, Senator Henry Clay proposed a constitutional amendment to limit the veto power of the president of the United States. Senator John C. Calhoun replied to Clay; and that speech in reply is the most succinct version of Calhoun’s…
John Mitchel (1815-1875) was a fiery Irish nationalist who was convicted of treason by the British in 1848 and transported first to Bermuda and then to a penal colony in Australia, from which he escaped in 1853. After Mitchel and his family settled in America, he continued his nationalist activism by founding a radical Irish newspaper in New York, denouncing…
James M. McPherson recently appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his latest book, Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief. Together, McPherson and Colbert more or less made a mockery of Davis – “great Confederate president or greatest Confederate president?” As the Good Book says, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls…
Henry Timrod, the greatest Southern poet next to Edgar Allan Poe, the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy,” died during Reconstruction in 1867 at the young age of 38. Dr. James E. Kibler, an outstanding authority on all things Carolinian and a noted author and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia, tells me that Timrod died of starvation….
I have seen enough of publick men to come to the conclusion, that there are few, indeed, whose attachment to self is not stronger, than their patriotism and their friendship. –Calhoun We are children of the earth. We are not unlike the Titans, the earthborn giants of mythology, who were invincible in battle only as long as their feet were…
The following is excerpted from a letter which I sent to my State Senator At the Florida State Fair, Governor Rick Scott and his Cabinet tabled the question of whether Confederate soldiers – in particular, Samuel Pasco, David Lang, and Edward A. Perry – were eligible for admission to the Veterans’ Hall of Fame, requesting the legislature’s “clarification.” The apparent…
This essay is part of the chapter “Southerners” in Brion McClanahan’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes. The Northern essayist and Republican partisan E.L. Godkin wrote following the death of “Stonewall” Jackson in 1863 that Jackson was “the most extraordinary phenomenon of this extraordinary war. Pure, honest, simple-minded, unselfish, and brave, his death is a loss to the…
Robert Barnwell Rhett, born on December 21, 1800, is remembered as one of the foremost “fire-eaters” of the South in the years leading to the War in 1861. He championed nullification between 1830 and 1859 in order to preserve the Union, but had decided after the election of 1860 that the Union of the Founders had been dissolved and replaced…
As 1861 drew to a close, Governor Thomas Hicks recorded for posterity the events of the Northern invasion and occupation of Maryland in a message he sent to members of the state’s first reconstruction era legislature, an extralegal body that would prove friendly to the Yankee regime. In defending his reluctance to authorize a special session of the previous General…
“The amount of plundering, burning, and stealing done by our own army makes me ashamed of it. I would quit the service if I could for I fear we are drifting towards vandalism. Thus you and I and every commander must go through the war justly chargeable for our crimes.” – General William T. Sherman, 1863 “I have felt a…
*Apologies to Jon White from whom I sole the title for this piece. Invariably, any discussion regarding the causes of the Late Unpleasantness brings forth the tortured issue of slavery. Back when I was a graduate student in the 1990s, there was still some room, though not much, for a multi-causational interpretation of the War, not so much anymore. Much…
Many current Americans, indeed perhaps most, regard the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 as a premeditated act of violence by South Carolina against the United States Government. They further assume that violence was both intended and desired by Southern leaders in the months leading to the War Between the States. After all, the South should have known that…
“What caused the Civil War?” Ever since the close of the conflict, historians have been struggling with this crucial question. Given the profound consequences of the war, asking “how?” and “why?” are worthy endeavors. Lately, however, the cause of the War of Southern Independence has been distilled down into a single word: slavery. Ideology has deposed understanding. This notion that…
“No wonder men were willing to fight for such a country as ours—and such women. They were enough to make heroes of any material.”- President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A. Mary Boykin Chesnut’s diary is a touching human and intimate history of a civilization locked in a struggle for life or death. Out of respect to her, and to preserve the authenticity…
One of the oldest and most prestigious sporting events in modern Western Civilization, “The America’s Cup,” is set to begin next year, probably in San Diego. The sailing race has been held by challenge since 1851, the year the schooner America defeated the British (under the eye of Queen Victoria) and took the coveted trophy to New York where it…
On August 24th, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to politician and editor Henry J. Raymond that Raymond might seek a conference with Jefferson Davis and to tell him that hostility would cease “upon the restoration of the Union and the national authority.” In other words, three plus years of hideous bloodshed and war crimes would simply be ended on the…
This article originally appeared in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (ISI Books). It is reprinted by permission of the publisher. Southern conservatism, as opposed to the generic American variety, is a doctrine rooted in memory, experience, and prescription rather than in goals or abstract principles. It is part of a nonnegotiable Southern identity with what it is prior to what it…
The North is full of tangled things . . . . —G.K. Chesterton A meddling Yankee is God’s worst creation; he cannot run his own affairs correctly, but is constantly interfering in the affairs of others, and he is always ready to repent of everyone’s sins, but his own. —North Carolina newspaper, 1854 The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no…
Too often a narrative is passed from one person to the next until it becomes accepted as fact or “common knowledge.” In the society that we live in critical analysis is rarely applied, and so a notion that if scrutinized would be exposed as silly (or worse), instead becomes “fact.” Such is the case with the situation at Ft. Sumter…
The Pledge of Allegiance is neither a sacred American tradition nor a patriotic duty, but a relatively recent piece of propaganda penned specifically to eradicate the memory of America’s revolutionary heritage and to indoctrinate the American people into believing lies about their history. If General George Washington ever heard the Pledge, he would not have put his hand on his…
For any historian, seeing or hearing the past, holding it in your hand, is almost euphoric. We trudge around cemeteries, carefully handle old letters, documents, and newspapers while every word drips like nectar from the pages, visit historic houses and museums to “hear” the artifacts talk—to feel the past—and pour over old photographs and paintings to understand the humanity of…
Most people don’t know, but today (June 11) is Clyde Wilson’s birthday. I had the honor of being Clyde’s last doctoral student. I first met Clyde in the Spring of 1997 as a senior in college trying to decide where to attend graduate school. My top choices were South Carolina and Alabama, Clyde Wilson or Forrest McDonald. My advisor as…
After his release from imprisonment in 1867, President Jefferson Davis journeyed to Canada where he met several Confederate leaders in exile at today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, directly across the river from Old Fort Niagara. Available from the Niagara Historical Society [Canadian] is Nicholas Rescher’s excellent “Niagara-on-the-Lake as a Confederate Refuge.” After Mr. Davis became somewhat stronger he travelled to Niagara and Toronto,…
June 2 was John Randolph of Roanoke’s (1773-1833) birthday. We at the Abbeville Institute missed it during our week dedicated to Jefferson Davis, but the two could have been celebrated in tandem. Davis’s cause in 1861 was no less than what Randolph consistently championed during his long career in the United States Congress. The “American Burke” as he has been…
This piece originally appeared in the North American Review, February 1890. To DO justice to the motives which actuated the soldiers of the Confederacy, it is needful that the cause for which they fought should be fairly understood; for no degree of skill, valor, and devotion can sanctify service in an unrighteous cause. We revere the memory of Washington, not…
Delivered by Jefferson Davis on 21 January 1861 before leaving the United States Senate. I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course my…
Few actors in history have been hallowed in as many points of the political compass as Abraham Lincoln. During the 1930s, portraits of Lincoln appeared at New York City rallies of American fascists and in the publications of American Communists. He was also the favourite of the most reactionary industrialists and the most advanced liberals of the time. “Getting Right…
Fifty years ago the master narrative of the Civil War Centennial failed to synchronize with the momentous 1960s Civil Rights movement. It minimized the roles of slavery and race. Instead the War was characterized as a unifying ordeal in which both sides fought heroically for their individual sense of “right” eventually becoming reconciled through mutual sacrifice. Slavery was considered only…
Fifty years ago the master narrative of the Civil War Centennial failed to synchronize with the momentous 1960s Civil Rights movement. It minimized the roles of slavery and race. Instead the War was characterized as a unifying ordeal in which both sides fought heroically for their individual sense of “right” eventually becoming reconciled through mutual sacrifice. Slavery was considered only…
At the annual reunion of the Alabama Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans I sat at the head table looking out at so many of my friends, compatriots and brothers of the South. It occurred to me that we share many commonalities beyond the lone fact that our ancestors all served under the same standard in a war that took place…
When I was a child growing up in Kirkwood Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, I was fascinated by three works of Atlanta public art: The Cyclorama [and Civil War Museum at Grant Park] next to the Atlanta Zoo, is a 358 foot wide and 42 foot tall painting of the Battle of Atlanta, July 1864, the largest painting in the…
Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1806, the son and grandson of Revolutionary War heroes. His family was of Presbyterian Scots-Irish descent and had become successful in the plantation economy of the colonial South. His cousin, James K. Polk, later became President of the United States. In his late teens, Leonidas received an appointment to the United…
I was disappointed to hear of the demands of a group of Washington & Lee law students to ban the flying of the Confederate battle flag and denounce one of their school’s namesakes, General Robert E. Lee, as “dishonorable and racist.” This latest controversy appears to be yet another example of the double standard and prejudice against anything “Confederate.” Why,…
Limited by a popular and academic culture at the beginning of the 21st century that denigrates the past and places too much confidence in the present, the thoughtful student of Georgia politics and history should not be surprised that Alexander Stephens (February 11, 1812-March 4, 1883), Confederate Vice-President and American statesman, has often been neglected. One possible remedy to the…
Russell Kirk called the early post-bellum period in American history the age of “Conservatism Frustrated.” He lamented that the leading members of the conservative mind from 1865-1918 flirted with the radicalism of their compeers both before and during the Civil War and now were left with the daunting task of closing Pandora’s Box, a Box they helped open: The New…
Within two months of taking office, in the midst of what he termed a “rebellion” and an “insurrection” against the national authority, the President of the United States took an extraordinary action. Sending a letter to the army’s commanding general about the deteriorating situation, the commander-in-chief authorized the suspension of habeas corpus, a legal safeguard that requires a detained citizen…
Why were Confederate monuments built? If you listen to modern establishment historians, the answer would be racism and to perpetuate the “myth of the Lost Cause.” But is this true? Not if you actually read what these people said.
The so-called “Cornerstone Speech “delivered March 3, 1861, is one of the go-to documents of purveyors of the “Pious Cause Myth” in modern academia. This choice of title reveals their own deep-seated bias for a fabricated fashionable narrative popular among today’s academics. That narrative claims the War Against Southern independence was “all about slavery.” If you do not believe there…
Five Classic Films that Southerners Should Explore It’s no secret that Hollywood over the past three decades has not been kind to the South or to the Confederacy. The last major films that have in any way been fair or which attempted to be objective about the Confederacy were, probably, “Gettysburg” (in 1993) and “Gods and Generals” (in 2003). But…
From Confederate Military History, Vol I, 1899. The Southern States have shared the fate of all conquered peoples. The conquerors write their history. Power in the ascendant not only makes laws, but controls public opinion. This precedent should make the late Confederates the more anxious to keep before the public the facts of their history, that impartial writers may weigh…
From the 2005 Abbeville Institute Summer School. Continued from Part One. Over the course of the 20th Century, the States have been increasingly sidelined. Everything is considered through a national lens and said to have a national scope. Consider, for example, the Seventeenth Amendment, which gave us the direct election of senators. In a recent Supreme Court case, the State…
The names, below, are a few of the 375,000 Confederate soldiers about whom Union soldier and president of the United States, William McKinley, said: . . . every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity…
The problem now is the same as it was in 1994, the same as it was in 1980 (Reagan) and 2016 (Trump). The greatest Republican measure of conservatism that creates “waves” as opposed to pond-stills, e.g. Ford, Romney, McCain, Bush (any one of the New England preppies, carpetbagging Bush clan), is in the South. The real South. Not the South…
In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy issued a report on the five most important Senators in United States history. He included John C. Calhoun, and while he understood the historical controversy it might create, Kennedy insisted that Calhoun’s “masterful” defense “of the rights of a political minority against the dangers of an unchecked majority” and “his profoundly penetrating and original…
I. The Diversity of America Parts of this chapter (along with several others) are from “Sectionalism in the United States,” Hound and Horn, VI (July-September, 1933). The link to Davidson’s “Sectionalism” essay provides some context of its genesis—some of which is a smidge uncomfortable. In The Idea of the American South (1979), Michael O’Brien portrays Davidson as a misfit compared…
Part 6 in Clyde Wilson’s series “African-American Slavery in Historical Perspective.” Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell “Live asses will kick at dead lions.” Admiral Raphael Semmes In the long run of history, the story of…
By Forrest McDonald and Clyde Wilson. These essays were originally published in the Fall 1982 issue of Southern Partisan. A review of M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution. Marlborough, NH: Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982 and M.E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. La Salle, Ill.: Sherwood…
In the summer of 2015, a 60-year old former-member of the American Service and retired-electrician determined on a course that would result in a pedestrian protest from his home in the state of Alabama, culminating in the hall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. In response to the removal of the Confederate Battle Flags from the Alabama state capital…
This essay was originally published in the First Quarter 1992 issue of Southern Partisan. A Review of: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (UNC Press, 1991) by Alan T. Nolan When Frank Owsley sought from among the vast number of interpretations of the cause of the war of 1861 for the principal cause, he defined it as “egocentric…
The current conservative populist movement appears to offer some hope of mounting an effective resistance to the corporate state that was established during, and has largely adapted and stayed in power, since the failed War for Southern Independence. While having turned away from the endless wars and being able to effectively mobilize people to resist the political establishment that has…
It is not the purpose of this article to set forth any new discovery, nor to present any reflections which are especially startling or original. The purpose is, to emphasize a neglected fact of American history; a fact attested by ancient records, narrated in historical works, and familiar to historians; yet a fact the full significance of which is not…
Thomas Carlyle said that it takes men of worth to recognize worth in men (1). Among the many worthy men across Western Civilization who recognized the worth of General Robert E. Lee was Sir Winston Churchill who summed it up, saying Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains in the annals…
The numerous declarations among “right-wing” websites, blogs, and print publications usually present a conundrum of any given thoughts among them. It is like a string of firecrackers exploding. They are necessarily lighted in sequence but seem to sound in explosive randomness. Afghanistan a catastrophe? Of, course. What do you expect? That is if you are a conservative, what do you…
Wokeism is a bit like kudzu. It’s not indigenous to the South, but once it starts growing… brother you better believe it will be hard to contain. And soon enough, you’ll wonder what life was like before it infested everything. Kudzu is pervasive south of the James River, which runs through Richmond. Wokeism, alternatively, is less common in the southern…
Continued from Part I. “He [Lee] was a superb specimen of manly grace and elegance…There was about him a stately dignity, calm poise, absolute self-possession, entire absence of self-consciousness, and gracious consideration for all about him that made a combination of character not to be surpassed…His devotion to his invalid wife, who for many years was a martyr to rheumatic…
As part of its campaign to pander to the important and urgent needs of African-Americans with extremely divisive yet ultimately performative identity politics,[1] the Biden-Harris administration has announced that it will resume Barack Obama’s decision in 2015 to remove Andrew Jackson from the twenty-dollar bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman. Jonathan Waldman’s celebratory and condescending column in The Washington…
Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.” Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing their specific social, economic, political, and legal meaning, and have essentially become nondescript slurs thrown at anyone a Progressive disagrees with. All of these words are routinely used against those…
In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” the central governmental agency in his fictitious country of Oceania is the antonymic Ministry of Truth, a body charged with the duty of erasing actual history and then rewriting it to meet what was considered to be more acceptable ideological concepts. In America today, the same type of inane metaphorical thinking is also taking place,…
Reading an article in the latest Hillsdale College newsletter Imprimis I was shocked by the outrageous comparison of Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson as people fighting to “divide the nation.” The article was adapted from the speech, “American Sports Are Letting Down America,” in an online Hillsdale lesson by prominent black sports columnist,…
The tiny hamlet of Lake Hill in New York State’s Catskill Mountains was my mother’s hometown, and her ancestors there, the Howlands, could trace their family history to its roots in Fifteenth Century England and to Bishop Richard Howland of Peterborough who officiated at the burial of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. During the next century, Henry Howland sailed…
Kwanzaa is an invented tradition. Billed as a kind of “black Christmas”—you can even buy Kwanzaa greeting cards at the store and mail them with Kwanzaa stamps—the odd holiday was created out of spite by a certain Ronald Everett in the 1960s in a fit of pique after the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Kwanzaa begins the day after Christmas,…
On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War of Independence. These brave men embodied that irrepressible Southern spirit, that martial valor and moral sublimity that suffused the souls of Dixie and her children for generations upon generations, stretching…
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your land in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a…
While Fake News may be a new term, the concept has a long history. We have been taught that a free, independent, and ethical press is essential for a free society to function and thrive; however, in practice, the American press has typically been far from these ideals. The press has been most malicious in times of crisis, acting not…
“Southerners who still value their heritage but don’t know what to do about it in such a hostile environment. They are our audience.” DM: What is your best short answer to people who say the War for Southern Independence was all about slavery and nothing but slavery? Should we come at this from an offensive posture, rather than being defensive,…
A review of How to Study History When Seeking Truthfulness and Understanding: Lessons Learned from Outside Academia by Howard Ray White Howard White has written a dozen or so highly original books on the War Between the States (Bloodstains, The C.S.A. Trilogy, and others). In the midst of a very successful career as a chemical engineer, he was drawn to the…
On January 21st Washington Post reporter Courtland Milloy wrote an article about my “Defending Confederate Monuments” speech at the January18th Lee-Jackson Day in Lexington, Virginia. His “Lee-Jackson Day with a bit of history and context” article portrays me unfairly. Today’s post responds to one Milloy comment excerpted below: Before giving his keynote speech, Civil War book author Phil Leigh made an offhand remark discounting the role of…
Theories of education in any land are never easily divorced from the prevailing ideas regarding civics and economics. Education’s function, particularly toward the young, will become merely to render them fit to partake in the civic and economic institutions of a nation. Thus its methods and goals will be shaped by these spheres. The end result is a reciprocal relationship…
Symbols Used ** Indicates one of the more than 100 most recommended films. The order in which they appear does not reflect any ranking, only the convenience of discussion (T) Tolerable but not among the most highly recommended (X) Execrable. Avoid at all costs 3. The Colonial and Revolutionary South Colonial and Revolutionary Southern history does not have a…
Driving thru Southern Maryland’s rural scenery- farms, woods, and villages, history greets you around every curve. Strong traditions in the heart of the people make it easy to appreciate the deep roots of that tradition. Villages and harbour scenes, rivers and marshland, lighthouses and beaches, historic sites and quiet churchyards; it’s no wonder they say: “Southern Maryland, where time and…
This essay was presented at the 2019 Abbeville Institute Summer School on the New South. In 1965 Texas novelist William Humphrey wrote: If the Civil War is more alive to the Southerner than the Northerner it is because all of the past is, and this is so because the Southerner has a sense of having been present there himself in the person…
Review of The Barber of Natchez (LSU, 1954, 1973) edited by Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan. Author’s Note: In 1938 a trove of documents dating from 1793 -1937, “over 60 volumes of account books, “nearly 1400” financial and legal documents, bound and unbound volumes of “rare antebellum newspapers” including 2 editions unknown before, “over 400” sheets of 19th century…
A review of For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford, 1997) by James McPherson Miss Emma Holmes of Charleston, SC, and a survivor of the War Between the States, has left us one of innumerable diaries from the South about the conflict of 1861-1865 (see The Diary of Miss Emma Holmes, 1861-1866 edited by John…
So, smart moms in two homeschool social-media groups of which I’m a member are super-excited about Hillsdale College’s free “Constitution 101” course. “Hillsdale’s conservative, so it must be teaching Christian-centered history,” they say. “Hillsdale doesn’t accept grants from the federal government or participate in federal financial-aid or student-loan programs. How principled,” they opine. “Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine both endorse…
I hope that no one who reads this paper will suppose that I have any feeling in the matter. I am only correcting errors in Northern writers, and I trust that, after more than half a century since the war between the States, this may be done without exciting any sectional bias. On the other hand, I have no idea…
In 1875, Rev. Moses Drury Hoge stood before 40,000 people in Richmond, Virginia, at the foot of the newly dedicated statue of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and delivered what one historian called the “noblest oration of his later life.” He believed that in the future, the path to that statue would be “trodden” by the feet of travelers from “the…
A review of From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South (Columbia, SC: Shotwell Publishing, 2018) by James Rutledge Roesch. Mr. James Rutledge Roesch is doing God’s work with the publication of his book, From Founding Fathers to Fire-Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States’ Rights in the Old South. Riding to the sound…
Whether it’s the Civil War, War Between the States, the War for Southern Independence or Lincoln’s War, this extremely important period of American history continues to resonate powerfully over 150 years later. And with American Veterans monuments and artwork being censored and removed throughout the country, some might even say that Reconstruction and the fight over Jeffersonian ideals vs. Hamiltonianism never…
“Anybody who would trash Lee and laud Lincoln is either stupid as a post or just plain evil,” said a sage reader. This applies in spades to anyone who would laud the Radical Republicans of 1865, as one TV GOP blonde has recently, and asininely, done. The Radical Republicans, if you can believe it, considered Abraham Lincoln a moderate (a…
This article was originally published in Southern Partisan magazine in 1994. The past—what we believe happened and what we think it means—can be a very slippery customer. Even the recent past can be elusive. In the early 1950s, when I was a student at Johns Hopkins, C. Vann Woodward gave an amusing but provocative talk called “Can We Believe Our…
A Review of M.E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. 1979. The world’s largest, most ancient, and most exemplary republic observed its bicentennial not long ago. One would expect such an occasion to be a time of rededication and renewal, of restoration and recovery. Instead, we had a value-free official celebration that was expensive, dull,…
A review of All Clever Men, Who Make Their Own Way: Critical Discourse in the Old South, edited with an introduction by Michael O’Brien. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. 1982. 456 pages. The intellectual history of the South is yet to be written. This assertion bootlegs two assumptions that do not go unchallenged. The first is that there is something…
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…
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…
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…
Hollywood has struck again with another “Civil War” movie that, unsurprisingly as it may seem, does not do justice to the real Southland or the Confederacy. The latest episode is an epic by director Gary Ross, “Free State of Jones,” starring Matthew McConaughey as the film’s hero, Newt Knight. “Free State of Jones” tells the story of a Knight-led rebellion…
“We abhor the doctrine of the “Types of Mankind;” first, because it is at war with scripture, which teaches us that the whole human race is descended from a common parentage; and, secondly, because it encourages and incites brutal masters to treat negroes, not as weak, ignorant and dependent brethren, but as wicked beasts, without the pale of humanity. The…
“And the cause of all these things was power pursued for the gratification of avarice…..” — Thucydides Lee made few political statements, as befits a soldier. When he did it was almost always in private and in response to questions. The most important of such statements is his letter to Lord Acton after The War, which will be treated later….
This piece is taken from Varina Davis’s recollections of life in the South, published in the New York World on December 13, 1896, and reprinted here. …Rice, flour, molasses and tiny pieces of meat, most of them sent to the President’s wife anonymously to be distributed to the poor, had all be weighed and issued, and the playtime of the…
Gentlemen of the Historical Society of Mecklenburg (1876): Our president has appropriately introduced the series of historical lectures with the inquiry, why so few have attempted to preserve the record of the great events in the history of North Carolina, and to. embalm the memories of the illustrious actors therein. Perhaps, it may not be amiss in me to pursue…
When William Faulkner visited Japan in 1955 to attend a literary symposium in Nagano, he noted certain parallels between the aftermath of the Confederacy’s defeat in 1865 and that of Japan’s a century and a half later. In an address, “To the Youth of Japan,” Faulkner summed up these mutual experiences by saying; “My side, the South, lost that war,…
Address of Colonel Edward McCrady, Jr. before Company a (Gregg’s regiment), First S. C. Volunteers, at the Reunion at Williston, Barnwell county, S. C, 14th July, 1882. It is with divided feelings, my comrades, that we meet upon this occasion. It is indeed doubtful which emotion is the stronger, that of pleasure in once more grasping the hands of those…
This essay originally appeared in Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture. In the previous chapter we discussed the early stages of the North American War of Secession of 1861-63 as the minority Lincoln government attempted to suppress the legal secession of the Southern United States by military invasion. In this chapter we will discuss the conclusion of the…
Reconstruction. There is no part of American history in which what is taught these days is more distorted by false assumptions and assertions. For leftists, Reconstruction can be celebrated as a high point of revolutionary change and egalitarian forward thrust in American history. This interpretation is untrue in the terms in which they portray it, but that is the dominant,…
“Nations are the wealth of mankind, its generalized personalities; the least among them has its own unique coloration and harbors within itself a unique facet of God’s design.” —Alesandr Solzhenitsyn James Warley Miles was librarian of the College of Charleston in the mid-nineteenth century. He was also an ordained Episcopal priest. Miles had spent some years in the Near and…
This essay originally appeared at the Front Porch Republic. Marietta, GA. It was the spring of 2009. I was in a class called Lawyers & Literature. My professor, Jim Elkins, a short-thin man with long-white hair, gained the podium. Wearing what might be called a suit—with Elkins one never could tell—he recited lines from a novella Decoration Day. I had…
In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It was voted down May 3, but the move received national press. The Daily Beast published an article on both the resolution and modern secession movements in Vermont and Alaska, and…
In April, several members of the Wisconsin Republican Party inserted a resolution in the State Party platform expressly recognizing the right of their State to secede from the Union. It was voted down May 3, but the move received national press. The Daily Beast published an article on both the resolution and modern secession movements in Vermont and Alaska, and…
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