This is the second installment of the series ‘What Makes this Musician Great,” and will focus on the man from Butler County, Alabama – Hank Williams. In this ongoing series,…
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Editor’s Note: In an effort to “explore what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition,” we offer an explanation of what it “meant to be a Southerner” in 1958….
I have a good friend who continually asks me what I think are the prospects for sensible, conservative—that is, normal—folks in these parlous times, what I think will happen to…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute July 26-30, 2021 Topics: Southern tradition, Southern culture, Southern music, Secession
At the top of the hill where my great-grandparents lived, there was a dusty, black and white picture on a shelf. It could’ve been my grandpa or great-uncle, but it…
Daniel Webster was one of the most notable Northern statesmen of his day. He was an American lawyer who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress. His list of…
John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, one year before James Madison, and the boys were neighbors; but Taylor afterwards moved to Caroline County, where he lived…
Recently, I started looking into the connections between musical preferences and personality types. In the early and middle parts of the 20th century, there were some questionable and unfortunate attempts…
“Who’s your people?” Though now somewhat rare, one still hears that question in Dixie, usually uttered from the lips of older or rural Southerners. Much is implied by the question….
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 19-23, 2021 Topics: Southern Tradition, Cancel Culture, Southern Politics
Although commonly portrayed as one of the largest mob attacks on blacks by white racists during Reconstruction, the so-called 1874 Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans was really a…
It is maddening to listen to people who attempt “conservative thought” with but a shallow mentality for the concept. True conservative thought comes from the seeds of agrarians and various…
If timid and pacified Southerners needed more proof that we are a defeated and occupied people, then indisputable proof was recently provided by the United States House of Representatives. At…
Many Southerners are familiar with James “Ron” Kennedy and his brother, Walter “Donnie” Kennedy, who are prolific writers and staunch defenders of (what is left of) Southern tradition and heritage….
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, July 12-16, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Yankees, Southern History, Southern Tradition, Abraham Lincoln
“To those who are ignorant of the jurisprudence of their country can have no taste for reasoning…” Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born roughly 61 A.D, to…
With the onset of the latest leftist government regime, many Americans are migrating South to escape oppressive taxes and gain other income advantages. Some of you may even be moving…
The date of the latest federal holiday, June 19th, was touted as the one marking the end of slavery in America. While few today would argue with the idea of…
Hit mus’ be now de kingdom comin’, an’ de year ob Jubilo! … (1) “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” has come down to us as the lofty rallying-cry of the French Revolution,…
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and…
The week in review at the Abbeville Institute July 5-9, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture, “Lost Cause Myth”
The happy land of Caannan may be a Biblical story, but for some of us, it truly was fact. Growing up on the land my ancestors settled in the 1850s…
I have been studying the War Between the States for 53 years. In all those years, the one quotation I have read which summarizes the true reason for the differences…
Some twenty years ago I had planned to write a full-length study of John Pelham—known in the South as the Gallant John Pelham—and the making of myth. The business of…
The “ultimate cause” of the War of Secession was two mutually exclusive understanding of government. The South embraced the view of Aristotle that government was a natural outgrowth of communal…
July 4, “Independence Day,” has become for most Americans little more than another holiday, a day off from work, and a time to barbecue with family and friends. Yet, the…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute June 28-July 2, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, The War, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture
The solution offered by Mr Vivek Ramaswamy to the destructive ideology of the Woke Social Justice Warriors could not be stranger: The antidote isn’t to fight wokeness directly. It can’t…
The Southern version of Thoreau’s Walden may be considered I’ll Take by Stand, by Twelve Southerners, with its subtitle, The South and the Agrarian Tradition. It was published in 1930…
In past columns I have written about some classic films, some of which have been effectively banned or “cancelled” by our contemporary cultural gatekeepers. The case of the immortal Disney…
A review of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2014) by William C. Harris. William C. Harris has set before him the admirable task…
Facebook canceled the Abbeville Institute. I was notified on June 10 that the Abbeville Institute Facebook page had been unpublished due to “repeated community standards violations.” Our offenses? We used…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 21-25, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Southern Tradition, Southern Culture
We all, as we go through life, encounter people that who deserve to be remembered. Everyone does, in a sense. But all these people, their good and bad characteristics, are…
While the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has also wreaked havoc throughout the South, there was an even more deadly epidemic that attacked a number of Southern states almost a century…
“The Hispanic community understands the American Dream and have not forgotten what they were promised,” declared Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who fled their native land…
God’s guidance and blessing began in Virginia. But Civil War is where we are today. For those who have had the usual blather from a contemporary public-school education, a little…
As most Americans have learned by now, in their rush to do something politically correct, Congress passed, and the president signed, a bill making “Juneteenth” a federal holiday. Some of…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 14-18, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Western Civilization, Abraham Lincoln, Maryland
Sometimes readers will ask me: “Why did you write on that? What were you trying to say?” My response has always been that just about everything I attempt to convey, to…
On June 1, 2021, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) – historic, meritocratic, renowned for rigor and its graduates’ service, and, for decades as color-blind as any institution may reasonably expect…
A review of Rebirthing Lincoln, A Biography (Southern Books, 2021) by Howard Ray White I have always been skeptical of historical mysteries. We know that there have been people who…
“When we talk about the War it is our history we are talking about, it is a part of our identity. To tell libellous lies about our ancestors is a…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, June 7-11, 2021 Topics: Secession, Southern Tradition, Abraham Lincoln, Wokism, Western Civilization
First some context. The South did not secede to “preserve and extend slavery.” Its “pro-slavery“ arguments were not in response to any major political party in the antebellum period calling…
A review of The Retribution Conspiracy: The Rise of the Confederate Secret Service (Scuppernong Press, 2021) by Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. In a world full of ever arising new…
The Federalist online magazine has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative media. This hit home for me on May…
I once wrote an article on the problems arising from what I termed “group condemnation.” I believed that in attempting to warn people of dangers lurking in the culture, those…
As Memorial Day approaches, I am thinking of a man I never met. His name is Charles Willis Kessler; he was a young, second Lieutenant from the small town of…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 31 – June 4, 2021 Topics: Secession, Slavery, Southern Music, Yankees
Nearly two weeks ago, five counties in Oregon voted to approve a measure to secede from the state and join its neighbor Idaho. The counties of Malheur, Sherman, Baker, Grant,…
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crimeAre pronest to it, and impute themselves…Tennyson, from Idylls of the King (1) The US Supreme Court, in Texas vs. White, ruled…
One of my colleagues in the ministry of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) recently wrote that among “good uses” for the Confederate battle flag are “diaper, shop rag,…
My name is Tom Daniel, and I’m a happy guy. I’m naturally optimistic, and I love talking about all the good things that come from the South. I get discouraged…
Reviewers are unrelenting in their praise for the new Amazon streaming television series The Underground Railroad, a magic realist cinematographic depiction of the eponymous book by Colson Whitehead, which won…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 24-28, 2021 Topics: Reconstruction, Social Justice, Neoconservatives
Why bother with opening the schools, if all that you’ll have is the same uneducated blowhards filling the minds of children with the same monstrous mush that is conjured by…
While Critical Race Theory and Black Liberation Theology are 20th century creations, the cultural and theological roots of these ideas find a clear path back to the mid 1800’s. Black…
Seventy-six years ago, on May 8, 1945, at 2301 hours, Central European Time, World War II in Europe officially ended. Although the war would continue in the Pacific Theatre for…
It is a testimony to the prevalence of anti-Southern sentiment that The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the most prominent evangelical parachurch entities, has provided a platform for such sentiments…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 17-21, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, Academic Establishment, Southern Literature, Southern Culture, Southern History
For Christmas, I gave my granddaughter a compilation of Eudora Welty’s novels. She’s an avid reader and tore into the book as soon as she unwrapped it. The short stories,…
In the 1986 comedy film Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield’s character, Thornton Mellon, a wealthy, middle-aged father, decided to attend college with his young son. Never serious about the endeavor,…
Originally posted at LewRockwell.com You may remember a meme circulating widely after the U.S. presidential election last November with a picture of Kamala Harris and the following comment: “She will…
A review of Secession, State & Liberty, (Transaction, 1998) edited with an introduction by David Gordon. If there is a single book you should read on the subject of secession,…
As the “Exceptional Nation” totters and pratfalls further toward perdition, some on what is commonly, if not entirely accurately, known as the “Right” are calling for the various factions to…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute May 10-14, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Robert E. Lee, Southern Tradition
During the ongoing debate regarding the removal of the monuments honoring Confederate Generals, those in support of the statues often say in defense, “The statues are part of America’s history;…
Over half a century before the Imperial German Navy launched its new and deadly method of undersea warfare against the Allied navies and merchant shipping in World War One, the…
Continued from Part 3. “And of all the officers or men whom I ever knew he came (save one other alone) the nearest in likeness to that classical ideal Chevalier Bayard…And…
In the early 1870s, a young pre-law student at Howard College was inspired by classmate and future wife, Mamie Friend. James Alan Bland would listen to the homesick sentiments of…
After the end of the War Between the States, the Union army established the District of Texas under the command of Major General Gordon Granger. The Emancipation Proclamation had been…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, May 3-7, 2021 Topics: Southern Politics, Cancel Culture, Southern Religion, Southern Heroes, Robert E. Lee
In 1960, the great Southern political philosopher Richard Weaver penned an essay titled “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground.” Most people considered Weaver to be a “conservative,” and he accepted…
Wokeism is a bit like kudzu. It’s not indigenous to the South, but once it starts growing… brother you better believe it will be hard to contain. And soon enough,…
Continued from Part 2. “He [Lee] was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring…a Christian without…
A review of Preachers with Power: Four Stalwarts of the South (Banner of Truth, 1992) by Douglas F. Kelly I first became aware of Douglas F. Kelly through some videos…
Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon, and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost—it seems—on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,”…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 26-30. 2021 Topics: Political Correctness, Robert E. Lee, Southern Literature, Confederate Monuments, Memorial Day, Union Monuments
Written in the Year 2021 Hampton, our stalwart Wade, As wily as Odysseus in warAs full of rage for truth in time of fraud As any celebrated Greek,He saw his…
Marjorie Taylor Greene forced the political left into an apoplectic rage two weeks ago when they discovered she intended to form an “America First Caucus” based on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”…
Continued from Part I. “He [Lee] was a superb specimen of manly grace and elegance…There was about him a stately dignity, calm poise, absolute self-possession, entire absence of self-consciousness, and…
Daybreak in Dixie: Poems of the Confederacy by Linda Lee. Privately published, 2019. For those of us who value the history of our Southern people, these are the worst of…
On April 14, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden announced that, beginning May 1, the United States would begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. The project to extract the Yankee Empire from…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 19-23, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, Agrarianism, Southern Tradition
Ah! My Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?For now I see the true old times are dead… Tennyson, from Idylls of the King…
In the Year of Our Lord 2021, it is fashionable for American Christians to despise the antebellum South. Many Christian leaders, Evangelical and otherwise, have defended or even applauded the…
Robert E. Lee considered reconciliation and education to be his highest duties after the War. While many other Confederate leaders left the United States, Lee remained in Virginia and worked…
Like many traditional-minded people of this era, I have become disenchanted with products of the modern movie industry which are mostly either filth, silliness, or formulaic pablum. To my fortunate…
Our “conservative” punditry go forth daily in what seems increasingly to be an already lost battle against the agenda of the left and its progressivist minions in and outside the…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, April 12-16, 2021 Topics: the War, Robert E. Lee, Southern Heroes, Southern Tradition, John C. Calhoun, Military Bases
The spring of 1850 is an ominous perpetrator. Notwithstanding the crisis our country faced during those trying years leading to the so-called compromise of 1850, March 31st marks the death…
Robert E. Lee’s tenure as President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) should be regarded as one of the most important events in American educational history, and it…
During the past half century, there has been an ever-increasing tide of derogatory comments about the South in general and the Confederacy in particular. In more recent years, what began…
A Review of Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation (W.W. Norton, 2019) by Steve Luxenberg In 21st-Century America, there are precious few…
We have been told that the first shot fired in the “Civil War” was fired by the Confederacy at Fort Sumter in response to the Lincoln government’s attempt to rearm…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute April 5-9, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Woke, Slavery, Secession, the War
Take up the White Man’s burden – Ye dare not stoop to less –Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness;By all ye cry or whisper, By all…
Major League Baseball on 2 April announced that both the All Star Game and the draft would no longer be held in Atlanta as retribution for Georgia’s recent election laws….
On the Ingraham Angle recently, guest, Craig Shirley offered an opinion that should cheer the people who have read (best seller) The South Was Right. Even those who haven’t read…
A review of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s Press, 2021) by Ty Seidule A number of good historians…
Three years ago, Woke General Ty Seidule of West Point addressed the students and faculty at Washington and Lee University on the life and character of Robert E. Lee. He…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute March 29 – April 2, 2021 Topics: History, John C. Calhoun, Southern Music, Southern Culture, Southern Tradition, Woke Social Justice
“Take but degree away, untune that string,And hark! what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy”—Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida One of William Gilmore Simms’ abiding concerns was the almost complete…
It’s strange to think that until 1962 — when the Houston’s Colt .45’s enjoyed their inaugural season as an expansion team — the only baseball teams in the South were…
Sometimes, you need to go halfway around the world in order to make a point, especially if the point to be made is not a simple one. This is one…
No American is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. A recent biography has labeled him the American “heretic,” and it has become fashionable to blame every political problem in American…
Any fool can write history, and many do. Please do not assume that I mean by this statement to vaunt the “expert” and slight the amateur. In writing history the…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute March 22-26, 2021 Topics: Robert E. Lee, Ty Seidule, Southern Manners, Southern Tradition, Southern Politics, Decentralization
A white house sits on the outskirts of a small town in upstate South Carolina. It is modest in both size and appearance, and rather old, and in front of…
Published in 2016, the book Our Man in Charleston tells the story of Robert Bunch (1820-1881), the British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, who is described in the subtitle as…
Many today feel that true Southerners living in the eleven States of the former Confederacy are, in many ways, once again fighting for their very existence and face the dismal…
A serial review of books numbering the States after a dissolution of the Union. A review of Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy (W.W. Norton, 1993) by…
Ty Seidule’s mea culpa memoir, Robert E. Lee and Me, has generated the predictable supporters: mainstream media outlets, leftist dominated history departments, and neoconservative “intellectuals.” This says more about Seidule…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute March 15-19, 2021 Topics: John C. Calhoun, Woke Politics, Southern Tradition, War Crimes
Editor’s Note: This speech was delivered before the Senate on March 12, 1910, at the dedication of John C. Calhoun’s statue in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. Address…
A review of The Greatest of All Leathernecks (LSU Press, 2019) by Joseph Simon. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in eastern North Carolina along the Atlantic shore…
It is time to consider the crimes committed against Southern prisoners of war by their federal captors. In 1903, Adj. Gen. F. C. Ainsworth estimated that more than 30,000 Union…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute March 8-12, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Yankees, VMI, Civil Rights, Andrew Jackson
As part of its campaign to pander to the important and urgent needs of African-Americans with extremely divisive yet ultimately performative identity politics,[1] the Biden-Harris administration has announced that it…
The Virginia Military Institute, ever the underdog. . . . For longtime VMI football fans, the above score may be all-too-painfully reminiscent. I recall the first time I heard of…
These past several years, we Americans have been living in an accelerating anti-cultural vortex. Day by day the Yankee juggernaut gains steam. Once content with carpetbombing Hanoi and Baghdad, the…
“Dear me, what’s the good of being a Southerner?” asks one of the characters on the very first page of Henry James’ nineteenth-century novel The Bostonians. Though this question may…
I have written here before about my beloved hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama. Forgive me if you’ve read this before, but Tuskegee was unique among small rural Southern towns because of…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, March 1-5, 2021 Topics: Cancel Culture, Political Correctness, Southern Tradition, Southern Literature
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked? Ecclesiastes 7: 13 Scott Howard, in his book The Trans-gender Industrial Complex, says on pages 164-5:…
During last week’s ice storm misery, I thought a lot about my southern upbringing and the good things I’ve received from my small, poor state with a jagged past and…
It was a late night in Boone County, Arkansas when me and my newly married wife attended a party not far from our home in Lead Hill. The ol’ boy…
In June 1863, Fitzgerald Ross, a British military man who was collecting information about the war in America, paid a visit to Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the Confederacy….
Two terms that are tossed about with great liberality today are “racist” and “white supremacist.” Like other words with specific definitions, such as “fascist” and “Nazi,” these labels are losing…
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute Feb 22-26, 2021 Topics: George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Political Correctness, Southern History, Nullification
“The Burning of Atlanta,” 82 minutes. Produced and directed by Christopher Forbes. 2020. I have written a great deal on the Abbeville Institute site in the past on the portrayal of…
The principal character in Joyce Maynard’s 1992 novel “To Die For” said that if you look too closely at a black and white photograph, all you see are a series…
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